Why I Was Banned from a Congo Rain Forest

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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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

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

environmentalists, 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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