The Power Plants That May Save a Park, and Aid a Country

VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — On the verdant savanna of Virunga National Park, a herd of elephants clustered near an umbrella-shaped acacia tree to seek shelter from the blazing morning sun. From a Cessna far above, the giant animals looked like brown-gray miniatures.

Emmanuel de Merode, the director of Virunga National Park, piloted the plane. He wore a Virunga park ranger uniform and had his green beret tucked into the shoulder of his khaki shirt. Mr. de Merode flew over the dazzling 50-mile-long Lake Edward, then descended to a grassy airfield flanked by palm trees.

On this day, the flight was his commute. “It’s the best job in the world,” he said.

Mr. de Merode was visiting a small hydroelectric power plant — built more than four years ago with an investment from the European Union — that has lofty goals. It powers a soap factory, providing jobs and a market for local palm oil. It supplies electricity to homes, reducing the need to illegally chop down Virunga’s trees to make charcoal. Ideally, it will spark entrepreneurship among carpenters, tailors and others whose businesses struggle to exist without electricity.

In short, the tiny power plant is crucial to an ambitious attempt not only to protect Virunga — Africa’s oldest national park — from threats including armed rebels, deforestation and oil prospectors, but to jump-start the local economy and potentially help stabilize one of the world’s worst conflict zones.

The challenges are immense. In the past two decades, a civil war and feuding insurgents in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo have resulted in the deaths of 5.6 million people, making the ongoing conflict the deadliest since World War II.

Another hydroelectric plant — funded largely by Howard Buffett, a son of the billionaire businessman Warren Buffett — began operating nearly two years ago on the southern edge of Virunga, and four more are planned near the park. But most basic services and infrastructure in eastern Congo are crude or nonexistent. Only 3 percent of the region has electricity. Across the entire country, which is the second-largest in Africa and the size of Western Europe, there is scarcely 15 percent electrification for a population of 80 million.