...because it can.
World Bank accused of razing Congo forests
Internal report says mass logging threatens Pygmies; Findings
are embarrassing for British government
Source: Copyright 2007, Guardian, UK
Date: October 5, 2007
Byline: John Vidal
The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively
log the world's second largest forest, endangering the lives
of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an
internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside
experts. The report by the independent inspection panel, seen
by the Guardian, also accuses the bank of misleading Congo's
government about the value of its forests and of breaking its
own rules.
Congo's rainforests are the second largest in the world after
the Amazon, locking nearly 8% of the planet's carbon and
having some of its richest biodiversity. Nearly 40 million
people depend on the forests for medicines, shelter, timber
and food.
The report into the bank's activities in Democratic Republic
of Congo since 2002 follows complaints made two years ago by
an alliance of 12 Pygmy groups. The groups claimed that the
bank-backed system of awarding vast logging concessions to
companies to exploit the forests was causing "irreversible
harm".
It will be discussed at board level in the World Bank within
weeks and may lead to a complete rethink of how forestry in
the DRC is practised.
It is particularly embarrassing for the British government,
which is a development partner of the bank and its third
largest financial contributor. It encouraged the bank to
intervene in the Congo forests with export-driven industrial
logging and has earmarked £50m for further Congo basin
forestry aid.
When the bank moved back into Congo in 2002, after years of
war which cost up to 4 million lives, it said industrial
forestry could contribute most strongly to the country's
recovery. In its rush to reform the economy it devised new
forestry laws, divided the county into zones and aimed to
create a favourable climate for industrial logging.
But although the bank is legally committed to protecting the
environment, and trying to alleviate poverty, the panel found
that the policies it imposed on the Congo were having the
opposite social and environmental effects:
• An area of 600,000 square kilometres (232,000 square miles)
of forest was earmarked for logging companies.
• The bank failed to address critical social and environmental
issues.
• It ignored between 250,000 and 600,000 Pygmies believed to
be living in the Congolese forests, even though their presence
was well known and documented.
• It put the Pygmies in serious potential harm.
Criticism is made of the forestry reforms that the bank
imposed in return for loans of more than $450m. Initially,
said the panel, "the bank provided [to the government]
estimates of export revenue from logging concessions that
turned out to be far too high. This encouraged a focus on
reform of the forestry system at the expense of pursuing
sustainable uses of forests, the potential for community
forests and for conservation.
For the most part foreign companies, or local companies
controlled by foreigners, have been the beneficiaries of
this," the report said.
In a scathing analysis of the bank's economic reasoning, the
panel said the bank had "distorted the real economic value of
the country's forests" by looking solely at the tax and
revenue that increased industrial logging might generate.
"There seems to have been little action to support alternative
uses of the forest resources," it said.
The panel travelled deep into the forest to take evidence from
the Pygmy communities, who told it they were not consulted
before the bank launched its wide-ranging forestry reforms.
One Pygmy leader told the panel: "We are being made poor in
every aspect ... the [logging] company prevents us from going
into the forests." Another said that the company had bought
the land so that people could no longer live in the forests.
"Roads are going ever deeper into the forests, opening it up.
We are increasingly deprived of our foods and drugs. We have
never seen anything from the bank except promises," said a
third.
Research by non-government groups last year showed that 12
foreign-owned or foreign-controlled companies were encouraged
by the bank to dominate the entire industry. Some had
concessions of more than 5m hectares, and all included Pygmy
communities in their holdings. The bank is reviewing the
legality of many of these concessions.
Yesterday international groups that have worked with Congolese
communities said they were shocked by the panel's findings.
"The Pygmies must be fully involved in developing any future
plans for the forest, and the bank need to find ways of
helping them uphold their rights, rather than helping logging
companies to destroy them," said Simon Counsell, director of
the Rainforest Foundation.
"The World Bank must change drastically its forest policies.
Industrial logging is not contributing to poverty reduction,
while its expansion undermines future financial benefits for
environmental services," said Staphan van Praet, the Africa
forest campaigner for Greenpeace International.
ITEM #2
Title: Congo’s Pygmies vindicated as official watchdog
condemns World Bank’s role in Africa’s great rainforest
Source: Press Release, Rainforest Foundation -- UK
Date: October 4, 2007
PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGO: 4th October 2007. 00.01 hrs
Congo’s Pygmies vindicated as official watchdog condemns World
Bank’s role in Africa’s great rainforest
An unreleased report of the World Bank Inspection Panel
obtained today by the Rainforest Foundation shows that the
World Bank has committed grave errors in its projects in the
rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are the
second largest on Earth after the Amazon [1]. The Panel’s
investigation was undertaken after a formal complaint was
submitted by a number of organisation’s working with Congo’s
indigenous Pygmy people, who expressed their concern about the
impact of Bank-funded activities in the forests which they
inhabit [2]. An area of rainforest the size of France is at
risk.
The report finds that two projects funded by the Bank since
2002 would have promoted massive industrial exploitation of
Congo’s rainforests for timber production, potentially turning
the country into ‘Africa’s premier timber producer’. However,
the Inspection Panel also finds that there was inadequate
consideration of the “many important socio-economic and
environmental issues of forest us” at the time that the Bank
projects were prepared and started; that the Bank had not even
identified the fact that Congo’s forests were inhabited by
indigenous people, and had only given ‘limited attention’ to
the fact that some 40 million other people (mostly subsistence
farmers) also depend on Congo’s forests for their survival. As
well as threatening the environment, the projects would also
probably not serve to help alleviate poverty; the Panel has
found that the Bank misled the Congolese government into
believing that the revenues from logging its rainforests would
be much higher than were likely in reality.
Most damningly for the Bank, the Panel has found that Bank
staff broke many of the agency’s own internal ‘safeguard’
policies, which are designed to protect the environment,
natural habitats, and the rights of people living in the areas
affected by Bank projects. Bank staff ‘downgraded’ projects to
lower levels of potential environmental risk, thus reducing
the level of environmental assessment required, and then
anyway failed to carry out environmental and social impacts
before the projects started.
The Panel also finds that, whilst the Bank has repeatedly
claimed that it is helping to bring Congo’s existing and
mostly illegal logging operations under control, especially by
reviewing the legality of all the existing 150 or so logging
companies, there had been serious flaws in this process, with
inadequate management of it by the Bank. The fate of around 15
million hectares of rainforest (about the size of England),
some of it inhabited by Pygmies, could be determined by this
flawed ‘review’ of logging concessions.
Simon Counsell, Director of the Rainforest Foundation, said;
“The Panel’s report is a major victory for the ‘Pygmy’ peoples
of the Congo whose rights and livelihoods would be seriously
harmed by inappropriate development of the country’s
rainforests. We are now calling on governments to put pressure
on the World Bank Board to realise the gravity of the report
and ddemand immediate action to safeguard the Congo forests
and the 40 million people depending on them.”
