Visiting Congo’s logging fields
During 2006, I visited Congo’s three most forested provinces - Bandundu, Equateur and Oriental -to assess the ability of the Congolese authorities to control the logging companies that now threaten this unique area of rainforest. I was shocked by what I found.
In Equateur province – which alone covers an area five times the size of Scotland - the head of the government’s forestry agency told me that he does not have a single vehicle or boat to travel out and monitor what is happening in the forest. In effect, he was stuck in his office behind a typewriter, possessing only a bicycle, and powerless to control the activities of timber companies.
Even when officials are able to make rare trips into the forest, with salaries of only about US$15 per month, it’s easy to imagine how wealthy loggers “solve” their problems with local forestry agents…
When travelling through this vast province, I observed how a moratorium on new logging activities, which is supposed to have come into force in 2002, has been massively violated. In the Lac Tumba region, a very destructive logging operation which started less than two years ago is going ahead in the middle of an area that the international community has identified as a priority for conservation and sustainable development!
Even though they are the first victims, neither the local Twa ‘Pygmy’ communities nor the Bantu farmers were properly consulted about the logging activities. Carelessly constructed roads have already destroyed the fields of Bantu farmers. Twa ‘Pygmies’ complained that the timber trees being cut down were where they find a particular kind of caterpillar, which form an important part of Twa ‘Pygmies’ diet.
Sure, these people accepted the tin roofs for a school yet to be built, and poorly paid jobs offered by the company. But while these communities are currently left with no choice but to accept the logging, they do realise that the “benefits” they are getting are negligible compared to the value of the commercial hardwoods that are fast leaving their forest.
(by Filip Verbelen, Greenpeace)
