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Africa Insight: DR Congo chiefs give away forests for bags of sugar
Published: 6/01/2007
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King Leopold II of the Belgians treated the entire Congo as his personal estate. Now timber companies are doing slightly better by duping chiefs into signing away vast swathes of forest, some with trees each worth £4,000 in Europe



An Okapi grazes in a protected part of a DR Congo forest: In the wake of dubious logging concessions, Greenpeace and other international environmental NGOs say the fate of the Congo forests depends on the World Bank and other donors, including Britain, rejecting industrial logging in the country and demanding a comprehensive land-use plan.
On February 8, 2005, representatives of a major timber firm arrived to negotiate a contract with the traditional landowners. The place was Lamoko, 150 miles down the Maringa river on the edge of a massive stretch of virgin rainforest in central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Few in the village realised that the talks would transform their lives in the wrong way, but in just a few hours, the chief, who had received no legal advice and did not realise that just one tree might be worth more than £4,000 (Sh528,00) in Europe, had signed away his community's rights in the forest for 25 years.

In return for the signed permission to log thousands of hectares for exotic woods such as Afromosia (African teak) and Sapele, one company promised to build Lamoko and other communities in the area three simple village schools and dispensaries. In addition, the firm said it would give the chief 20 sacks of sugar, 200 bags of salt, some machetes and a few hoes. In all, it was estimated that the gifts would cost the company £10,000 (Sh1.3 million) - some pick up trucks cost more.

It was the kind of "social responsibility" agreement that is encouraged by the World Bank, but when the villagers found out that their forest had been "sold" so cheaply, they were furious.

They complained to the local and central government that there had been no proper consultation; that the negotiations had been conducted in an "arrogant" manner, and that people had been forced to sign the document. They demanded that the company pull out.

Since February 2005, logging roads have been built deep into the forests near Lamoko and the company has started extracting and exporting timber, but the villages have yet to see their schools and dispensaries.

"We asked them to provide wood for our coffins and they even refused that," said one man who asked to remain anonymous.

The Lamoko agreement is just one of many contracts, or concessions, that European companies have signed with tribal chiefs in the DRC as the country begins to recover from a decade of civil wars and dictatorship.

But according to a Greenpeace report, Lamoko did better than many communities. Some contracts seen by The Guardian newspaper show only promises of sugar, salt and tools worth about $100 (Sh7,000) in return for permission to log.

Others have reported that pledges made three years ago have still not been fulfilled. The report, which took two years to compile, claims that industrial logging backed by the World Bank is now out of control. "Younger people feel that elders have failed to look after the long-term interests of the community," it says.

Community leaders say that their villages will sink into destitution if the logging isn't stopped. As many as 40 million of the poorest people in Africa depend on the Congolese forests and all the concessions handed out by the transition government in May 2002 are in inhabited areas. More than a third are home to Pygmy communities.

"If the trees go, then we will have nothing. The forests are our only hope. If they go, we only become poorer," said a man who lives near Kisangani. Like most people in the area, he did not want to give his name for fear of intimidation from corrupt local authorities.

"The logging companies are obliged to employ local people, but they bring in their own people and we are left at best with unskilled jobs for which they less than 50p a day," said another man.

It is believed that 20 foreign-owned timber companies are active in the DRC, and that Chinese and other logging groups are also seeking to gain concessions. Ordinarily, the ought to be prevented from doing so by a moratorium negotiated by the World Bank in 2002 as part of an initiative to control the forestry industry. Most of the major logging companies, including Danzer, Trans-M, TB, NST, Olan, and Sicobois have concessions signed after the World Bank moratorium, but although there is an investigation into their legality, the majority are expected to be rubber stamped this year.

"Most of the companies have benefited from the World Bank's failure to ensure that the moratorium it negotiated with the transitional Congo DRC government has been enforced," says Greenpeace's Africa forests campaigner, Stephan van Praet.

The companies, which export both logs and sawn timber, supply wood all over Europe but considerable amounts are thought to be shipped to Britain, mostly as finished products such as flooring, windows, furniture and doors.

African Teak wood is protected by a global agreement and cannot be exported from some tropical countries such as Cameroon, which have few trees left, but there are still no restrictions on its export from the DRC.

Greenpeace and other international environmental NGOs say the fate of the Congo forests depends on the World Bank and other donors, including Britain, rejecting industrial logging and demanding a comprehensive land-use plan for Congo DR, a country that is effectively lawless, and insisting that the government tackles corruption.

The bank accepts that logging could destroy the forests in a short time, leading to immense social problems.

"If we do nothing it is certain that the forests will disappear and poverty will increase. Not one dollar of tax that has been collected has returned to the provinces," says Kankonde Mukadi, the forest officer for the World Bank in Kinshasa.

There is also concern because rainforests are important carbon sinks.

Meanwhile, adds GITAU MUTHUMA, despite the recent historic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo that saw President Joseph Kabila retain power, the government has yet to fully control the whole country. Various rebel groups are still operating in the east primarily for the control of natural resources.

The DRC is rich in minerals, including copper, diamonds, uranium, gold and coltan. Coltan, a combination of columbium-tantalite, is today among the most important strategic minerals found in the Congo due to its use in the ever increasing number of mobile phones.

Coltan is found in abundance in the highlands near rivers and riverbeds throughout the two Kivu and Maniema provinces. Coltan deposits are also found in farms, forests, savannahs, on private and government land. In South Kivu province, coltan is mostly exploited in forests that constitute critical habitats for biodiversity conservation. The uncontrolled influx of thousands of people for coltan mining onto different sites has therefore impacted negatively on the environment.

While 80 per cent of the world's coltan reserves are said to be in Africa, the DRC accounts for 80 per cent of these African reserves. This explains in part why recent conflicts have been concentrated in the eastern part of the country. The mineral resources of the Congo are so immense and so easily accessible that they continue to generate, without any substantial investments, considerable amounts of wealth measured in billions of dollars.

The legitimate and illicit extraction and exploitation of Congo's natural resources is a recurrent feature of Congolese history. Economic activity outside the formal legal sphere of the state is a predominant element in post-colonial Congo, particularly in the eastern parts of the country. As the economy under Mobutu's regime collapsed the informal, often illicit and sometimes violent, economy grew. Mobutu's regime, which was progressively unable to provide basic services to its population encouraged people to fend for itself.

In the Kivu's where the state entirely ceased to provide social services, the population took things in their own hands to provide the minimum of services, with some support from NGOs and churches. Businessmen abandoned Kinshasa as their point of reference for most of their commercial exchanges and turned to Rwanda, Burundi,

Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya as the transit or destination points for their goods. Local rebel administrations sprang up to fill this vacuum but were more interested in natural resource exploitation than in initiating any development projects.

In the absence of strong state apparatus, coupled with the need for high technology development materials in international markets, multinational corporations, local entrepreneurs and rebel groups, such as RCD-Goma, who are reportedly backed by Rwanda, have allied themselves with specific African countries to access these minerals.

As a result of coltan extraction, many Congolese families have been forced to leave their homes and lands and live in camps or in towns, especially Goma and Bukavu. The excuse for evicting them is to protect them from "negative forces" but it is commonly assumed that this is simply an excuse to vacate them from what is known as the Red Zones where coltan is found in abundance. Coltan is therefore a curse for the local population rather than a boon since people have been plunged into a state of hopelessness.

There is perceptible resentment among the Congolese population against the perceived invaders who are grabbing their land and pillaging their resources and they are longing for justice.

*Adapted from The Guardian with permission.