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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Why I Was Banned from a Congo Rain Forest
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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
http://forests.org/
12/3/96
OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE
Following is an account from the Christian Science Monitor of the extent
to which multi-national timber companies can pull the strings, in this
case restricting access to logging in the Congo. Concerns and opinions
are expressed about World Bank strategy currently being prepard for the
Congo Basin rain forest, which covers about 80 percent of Africa's
remaining forest. It is asked whether foreign timber operators can act
in a sustainable and responsible manner.
g.b
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WHY I WAS BANNED FROM A CONGO RAIN FOREST
World Bank should check 'ugly business' that loggers keep visitors
from seeing
BY: Korinna Horta
11/25/96
Copyright 1996 by Christian Science Monitor
A demonstration of how much power a transnational company can wield in a
poor African country hit close to home recently.
I was visiting the Congo to participate in a meeting that brought African
governments and nongovernmental organizations together to discuss the fact
that the Central African rain forest, the second-largest expanse of rain
forest in the world (after the better-known Amazon rain forest), may soon
disappear unless some concerted action is taken.
Following the meeting and at the recommendation of Congolese environ-
mentalists, I had planned to visit the northern part of the country. About
45,000 square miles of rain forest, an area about the size of New York
State, was destroyed between 1980 and 1990 - and with it many plants and
animals that can be found nowhere else in the world.
My plans were unexpectedly thwarted by a private German logging company,
Congolaise Industrielle des Bois, which decided I wasn't a welcome visitor
to a part of the country where the company is running a logging concession
occupying land about the size of Delaware. While my entry visa into the
Congo was good for the whole country, the company had such clout that a
simple fax sent from its headquarters to the travel agent in charge of my
transportation led to the cancellation of my visit.
The fax said for certain reasons, which weren't specified, that no help
should be given to me to reach this remote area, 600 miles from the
capital. This was enough to intimidate those who had been ready to assist
me.
"Logging is an ugly business," explained a foreign official. "For every
tree that is taken out, many more are destroyed and left to rot, and
entire areas are turned into wasteland. Had you gone to that area, you
would have seen the carcasses of dead gorillas and other endangered
wildlife dangling down from the logs being transported on company trucks,
and that would have been bad public relations for the company."
The same company banned from the northern Congo other people it believed
were environmentalists. In researching the company, I discovered there was
a trail leading back to Washington and the World Bank. The company used to
be a recipient of development aid provided by a World Bank branch that
supports private-sector enterprises, the International Finance
Corporation.
Why is this example of a single company important? Because the World Bank
is preparing a strategy for the Congo Basin rain forest, which covers
about 80 percent of Africa's remaining forest. The proposal assumes
forestry operations of multinationals will be handled in a sustainable and
responsible manner, although none of these companies has a record of
protecting the forest and its wildlife or of contributing to sustainable
development.
Ironically, the company with the best reputation in the Congo is the same
German firm that tries to keep environmentalists out of the area of the
country where it operates. The World Bank's proposed strategy doesn't deal
with the environmental and social aspects of the forest, promising that
these will be taken care of later.
This has a familiar ring to those who have looked at past and ongoing
World Bank forestry projects in Africa and elsewhere. In case after case,
the timber-production components of the projects have moved ahead, while
promised environmental and social safeguards for people living in and
around the forests were delayed or never got off the ground.
An example from the northern Congo is a sawmill project funded by the
World Bank several years ago with the goal of expanding logging and wood
processing in the area. It was supposed to include a study on how the
Pygmy population could be protected and benefit from the project. But a
later World Bank report found that the study was never done.
Many of the multinational forestry companies in Central Africa previously
logged the now-depleted forests in West Africa. Typically, the companies
log the best timber and leave the rest of the forest damaged from the
careless use of equipment. Previously inaccessible areas are opened up
through logging roads that attract game poachers, as well as farmers who
convert the remaining forest to agricultural uses, although the soils are
too poor to support permanent agriculture.
In Central Africa, the logging companies and those that follow in their
tracks are likely to displace Pygmies and other forest-dwelling
communities whose knowledge of forest ecosystems allows them to obtain
food, shelter, clothing, and medicines from the forest without disturbing
its delicate ecological balance.
If poverty alleviation and sustainable development are at the core of the
World Bank's mission, then it should focus on helping countries create
conditions under which forests can be protected.
Korinna Horta is an environmental economist at the Environmental Defense
Fund.
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