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ENVIRONMENT: World Bank Failing to Rein In DRC Logging
By Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON, Apr 13 (IPS) - The World Bank is failing in its efforts to
bring the Democratic Republic of Congo's rainforest logging industry under
control, leading to negative implications for climate change, and rampant
corruption, according to a new report.
Released on Wednesday by Greenpeace International in the run-up to the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund Spring meetings this weekend,
the report documents the extreme social and environmental damage caused by
large-scale logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Greenpeace says that up to 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions comes
from rainforest logging-related infrastructure and that by 2050, forest
clearance in the DRC will release up to 34.4 billion tonnes of carbon
dioxide - equivalent to Britain's release of CO2 emissions over the past
60 years.
"The report is very useful in underscoring the gap between the rhetoric
from the (World) Bank and reality on the ground," Nikki Reisch, manager of
the Africa Programme at the Bank Information Centre, a watchdog group,
told IPS. "There is a large division between policy commitments and things
that happen in a country the size of Western Europe."
One of the main sources of both CO2 emissions and forest degradation has
been the massive logging roads - some wider than major European
motorways - built on cleared rainforests, and which are crucial
infrastructure in the logging industry.
The report, "Carving Up the Congo", finds that the roads and
infrastructure installed for logging are also being used by poachers as a
way to access previously unreachable areas.
This new access has led to increased poaching of large mammals to meet
commercial demands for ivory and bush meat.
Due to violent instability, most rainforests in the DRC were left alone by
commercial logging, but the return of a relative peace has brought a
renewed interest in logging, and over 20 million hectares of logging
titles have already been issued.
Greenpeace and various non-governmental organisations are calling on the
World Bank to halt its support of development through extractive
industries in the DRC.
"We don't have a single example where industrial-scale logging has
reduced poverty," Susanne Breitkopf, Africa Forest Campaign specialist at
Greenpeace, told IPS.
The World Bank suspended assistance to the DRC in the 1990s while violent
conflict exploded over control of natural resources. Foreign multinational
corporations and corrupt local elites gained control of 43.5 million
hectares of rainforest - an area larger than the U.S. state of California
and twice the size of Britain - in a virtual free-for-all to profit from
the nation's immense natural wealth.
In 2001, the World Bank resumed lending to the DRC and is now the
country's largest lender, putting it in a situation to pressure for
changes in the logging industry and a crackdown on illegal poaching, says
Greenpeace.
In May 2002, the World Bank successfully pressured the DRC government to
put a moratorium on the allocation of new logging titles and the extension
of existing ones, following a World Bank-instigated tax review of logging
contracts resulting in the cancellation of 163 non-compliant contracts
covering 25.5 million hectares of rainforest.
The World Bank has celebrated this review as "an unprecedented move
anywhere in the world," critical to "slow(ing) the expansion of logging,"
and "free(ing) up space for potential new protected areas in the
rainforest part of the country."
But Greenpeace says that despite the moratorium, "By April 2006 members of
the transitional DRC government had signed 107 new contracts with logging
companies covering more than 15 million hectares of forest. These include
contracts approved under the guise of remapping, exchange, adjustments and
relocations of old titles, as well as out-and-out new allocations."
"The bank has acknowledged the problems (in industrial logging in the DRC)
but our concern is that those statements are not matched by actions on the
ground," said Reisch.
"(The World Bank) was instrumental in using the extractable sectors as way
to kick start the economy," Breitkopf said. "They have set this process in
motion. We need assurance that there is enforcement on the ground. The
bank at best is being very naive in pushing the extractive sector without
having any means of control in place or functioning governance framework."
The report's review of the major logging companies whose contracts have
been submitted to the World Bank's legal review of titles found "serious
lapses of governance, a massive lack of institutional capacity to control
the forestry sector, widespread illegalities and social conflicts, as well
as clashes with established conservation initiatives."
Without proper government frameworks and oversight, the report finds that
logging industry in the DRC has damaged both the indigenous animal species
of central Africa as well as contributed to global warming through massive
greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenpeace concludes that, "ąthe World Bank has so far failed in it
objectives of controlling the expansion of industrial logging and
improving governance of the sector. In the absence of enforcement, the
moratorium has been a cover for behind-the-scenes jostling for valuable
forest holdings."
(END/2007)
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