The Courier

© Greenpeace / Philip Reynaers

Tropical forests in a number of regions of the ACP give these countries vital strategic value. Many of them have an important primary forest cover that provides essential services to humanity as a whole. First and foremost, in this age of standardisation introduced by genetically modified organisms, they are of great value as sanctuaries for biodiversity. This is true in central Africa (home to the world’s second largest tropical forest after the Amazon), but also in Guyana and Suriname, South America, the Caribbean islands and the Pacific in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, the forests are home to around 400 species of mammals and as many reptiles, 80 amphibians, 1,000 species of freshwater fish and almost as many varieties of butterflies. Ten thousand species of plants, including 3,000 endemic species, have been identified in the Congo Basin alone . At the end of the 1990s the tiny country of Belize (20,000 km²) boasted 528 species of birds, compared with 650 for the whole of the United States, and over 6,000 species of plants grow in Guyana’s forests. The second vital service rendered by these forests is their ability to capture greenhouse gas emissions. The third is their role in regulating the local and regional climate. It is partly due to the destruction of large areas of the Kibira  forest that Burundi has been hit by repeated droughts over recent years.

Defoliants

A number of factors threaten these ecosystems, some of which have suffered terrible destruction. Deforestation in Haiti, prompted mainly by the absence of an alternative to wood as fuel, has already caused erosion and landsides. In Timor-Leste much of the vegetation was destroyed by the use of defoliants by the occupying Indonesian army in the 1970s. These exceptional cases aside, the main factor responsible for destruction is the unsustainable logging that – even if limited to certain species – opens up access to the forest for poachers and dealers in wood for use as fuel. Such damage is also exacerbated by random events. In Timor-Leste (described historically by Chinese dealers as ‘Sandalwood Island’), the occupation by the Indonesian Army (1975–1999) resulted in the destruction of 99% of these trees. This is according to reports by the ‘forests’ department of the interim UN authority shortly before the island gained its independence in 2002.

The 2006 report on the state of the forests in central Africa also identifies the oil industry as a potential threat because of pollution. At the same time the report issued a warning that this same industry’s decline in Gabon could cause the resulting jobless to turn their attention to the forest for their livelihood, either through hunting or illegal logging. The report also stresses that the decline of fishery resources threatens to add further to the pressure on forest ecosystems.

DRC: a progressive lifting of obstacles to forest access

However, vast areas of forest have been preserved. In DRC, the chaotic economy under the Mobutu regime and two wars, in 1996–1997 and 1998–2003, impeded exploitation of the Congolese rainforest (110 million hectares), which represents more than half of central Africa’s forest cover. The congestion of the port of Matadi and, until August 2006, the absence of any marker buoys on the Congo River and its tributaries also helped protect this resource. Its rate of destruction has remained low at 0.26% a year, compared with 0.35% for central Africa as a whole. But the country’s reunification and the return of peace are bringing a progressive lifting of these constraints and facilitating easier access to forest zones.

Bad governance

In this huge country, marked by a long history of bad governance, the danger today is that we will see a repeat of what happened in Cameroon and Gabon, where in 2002 the World Wildlife Fund estimated that between 50% and 70% of the timber was logged illegally. In 2000, a French company was also forced to remove its equipment from the Lopé Nature Reserve in Gabon which it had entered illegally, while in Congo-Brazzaville the government had to crackdown on a Franco-Chinese firm that was engaging in “anarchic exploitation” of the forest resources without respecting tree felling quotas.

Already 90% of the forests of Lower Congo, close to the Atlantic, have been exploited, regrets Cosme Wilungula, director of the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN). “We are witnessing, episodes of drought never before experienced in this province,” he told The Courier, “in particular a notable fall in water levels in all the rivers”.

Slash-and-burn farming; trafficking in wood fuel, gold washing and ‘necrofuels’

In the DRC, the threats are growing: slash-and-burn farming, poaching, tree felling to produce makala (fuel wood) and invasion of the Kahuzi-Bihega National Park (South Kivu) by gold prospectors: the latter also observed in the French Overseas Department of Guyana. In the meantime, potentially new threats are appearing on the scene: deforestation caused by the need to free areas for extensive breeding or to grow biofuels (‘necrofuels’, grumble some ecologists) in South America and Borneo, which have been condemned by European MP Dan Jorgensen.

Last February in Brussels at the international conference on the forests of Congo, co-organised by the Belgian Government, the president of the National League of Congolese Pygmies (LINAPYCO), Kapupu Diwa, condemned the unfair distribution of concessions in Ituri by tribal chiefs. He also protested the continuing illegal logging and trafficking in undressed timber bound for Uganda on the part of local warlords.

DRC: ensuring the ban on granting new concessions is respected

The World Bank recognizes the risk of growth in illegal logging. The Kinshasa government introduced a ban on granting any further concessions in 2002, confirmed by a presidential decree in 2005 and the adoption of a forest code. “A gesture of strong governance”, remarks the World Bank forests expert, Laurent Debroux. What is more, in May 2002 the Congolese Government cancelled the 25 million hectares of illegally allocated concessions.

But the Congolese authorities are finding it difficult to enforce their decisions and the ban has been violated. Of the 156 concessions covering 22 million hectares, 107 were awarded after the ban, mainly to companies with Portuguese or German capital. According to the British Department for International Development (DFID), concessions were awarded following ‘arrangements’ reached with a number of members of the Congo’s political elite during the time of the transitional government (2003–2007). One company owned by a Lebanese businessman is accused of illegal tree felling close to the Bonobo monkey sanctuary in Bandundu Province and felling afromisia trees in the forests around Kisangani. The latter is a species listed in appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). To combat this situation, agents from the waters and forests departments charged with ensuring that the ban is respected have limited means at their disposal and are paid pitiful wages. In Bikoro (Bandundu) they do not even have transportation.

Legal review of concessions: the risk of a whitewash

Currently, the World Bank supports maintaining the ban while ultimately trying to relaunch forestry activity following a legal review of the validity of 156 contracts – contracts that must be either converted into legal concessions or cancelled. But the environmental NGO Greenpeace fears that the review will in practice simply amount to validating permits acquired illegally and thus will be no more than a ‘whitewashing’ exercise.

Greenpeace has also expressed fears about the amount of the financial rewards for Congo, following a reform of the tax system for forestry companies and improvements to contracts where some of this revenue is going to the provinces and community development projects. These fears are based on the fact that during the past three years the money that should have gone to the communities has “evaporated,” says Greenpeace. According to the Congolese Finance Ministry, 45% of taxes due in 2005 have not been paid. The compensation paid by the companies to the local communities has also been minimal. For example, Sodefor offered two bags of salt, 18 bars of soap, four bags of coffee, 24 bottles of beer and two bags of sugar in exchange for access to a vast concession!

Conflicts with the local communities

Beneath the high canopy of the trees and in the clearings of the vast tropical forest, conflicts simmer and often boil over. In 2006, the ITB logging company was accused by villagers of Ibenga of granting them derisory compensation after having used a bulldozer to destroy their manioc and cocoa plantations to open up access. Local populations also complain of being neglected when drawing up forest policy. The president of the National League of Congolese Pygmies welcomes the desire for dialogue on the part of the Environment Minister but regrets what he regards as a lack of consideration on the part of other ministries.

In the case of the Congo, conserving these precious ecosystems is a difficult challenge. At times the perfectly understandable cries of alarm from some environmental campaigners could induce defeatism or resignation. But much still remains to be saved. In Central Africa, in Guyana, in the mangroves of the Caribbean, in Papua and elsewhere.

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1 Les forêts du bassin du Congo : Etat des forêts 2006, report co-financed by the Central Africa Forest Commission, France, the European Commission and US AID,
www.cbfp.org
2 Burundi : Des lacs qui rétrécissent et des forêts décimées, IRIN, 7 June 2007, www.irinews.org

Tropical forests: A threatened resource
Forests under close surveillance
ACP: a forest mosaic