Second in size only to the Amazon, the Congo Rainforest is being systematically destroyed, and its peoples taken advantage of

Last week, a modern David and Goliath story emerged in Washington, DC. A pygmy delegation from the Democratic Republic of Congo had arrived to challenge the World Bank over logging in its rainforest, the second largest in the world after the Amazon. Though during the summer the World Bank claimed to be reviewing over a hundred logging titles, the Congo ecosystem is continuing to disappear at a rate of 2 million acres a year. In the DRC specifically, about 100 million acres (or 43.5 million hectares) of forest are controlled by logging companies, winding deforestation practices through villages, farmland, and even the habitat of the unique bonobo ape population. Many of the millions of felled trees from this forest are used to make European garden furniture and flooring.

The World Bank’s logging contracts emerged in 2002, a period of moratorium immediately following the DRC’s bloody civil war. The Bank’s plan for the DRC’s economic success was to turn the country into Africa’s leading timber producer. Instead, the region’s vast deforestation has put the area’s environmental and humanitarian balances at risk.

The pygmy delegation’s visit came after a leaked report by a World Bank inspection panel. The report criticized the World Bank for failing to consult the indigenous population of the DRC before issuing logging contracts. It also noted that the World Bank's promise to the DRC government of high revenue from the logging failed to prove true. Instead, the Bank’s logging policy, which is said to have avoided sustainable forestry and conservation practices, has resulted in loss of access to food, shelter, medicine and other necessities of the 600,000 pygmies in the DRC. A total of 40 million people in the DRC, including the pygmies, depend on these forests for their livelihood.

Adrian Sinafasi, one of the delegation members, said that the logging industry, whose entry into the country they were unaware of until it had arrived where they were living, has disregarded the indigenous population’s rights:

When the logging companies arrive, they restrict on our right to use the forest and forbid us access to vast areas. They cut pell-mell, with no consideration for the trees we depend on for caterpillars to eat, or the places where we can find mushrooms or get honey. We have no say about whether a tree should stand or whether it should fall. - Independent

While the World Bank responded with a promised visit and review of the situation in the DRC this December, it is the global community’s responsibility to put pressure on the organization to immediately re-evaluate the country’s logging industry and to begin to explore more sustainable alternatives. The Bank is not surprisingly involved in green washing at the moment, promising hundreds of millions of dollars to fight deforestation, while still supporting the DRC’s logging market. Re-evaluating (and ceasing) their involvement in this industry could begin to help the Bank speak a more consistent environmental mantra.

Eight percent of world’s carbon is held in this vast rainforest. The delicate habitat is an important pair of lungs for our Earth. Unless powerful leaders like the World Bank begin to take into account our climate condition during policy development, we will continue to fight an uphill battle with global warming.

Further Reading:

• World Bank Sets Its Sights on the Congo
• 'Protected' Congo forest is logged regardless
• World Bank accused of razing DRC forests