ENVIRONMENT: World Bank Failing to Rein In DRC Logging

By Eli Clifton Reprint | | Print |

Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON, Apr 13 2007 (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.

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, “àthe 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.”