Congolese forests grabbed by foreign timber companies

Photo from Greenpeace by Filip Verbelen

'Democracy' might have come to the Congo, but that hasn't stopped Western and Chinese countries from continuing to pillage its resources. The Guardian has an article on how logging companies have been defrauding the people of the DRC on a massive scale.

Lamoko, 150 miles down the Maringa river, sits on the edge of a massive stretch of virgin rainforest in central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On February 8 2005, representatives of a major timber firm arrived to negotiate a contract with the traditional landowners.

[...]

in just a few hours, the chief, who had received no legal advice and did not realise that just one tree might be worth more than £4,000 in Europe, had signed away his community's rights in the forest for 25 years.

In return for his signed permission to log thousands of hectares for exotic woods such as Afromosia (African teak) and sapele, the company promised to build Lamoko and other communities in the area three simple village schools and pharmacies. In addition, the firm said it would give the chief 20 sacks of sugar, 200 bags of salt, some machetes and a few hoes. In all, it was estimated that the gifts would cost the company £10,000.

It was the kind of "social responsibility" agreement that is encouraged by the World Bank, but when the villagers found out that their forest had been "sold" so cheaply, they were furious.

From another Guardian article on the World Bank-sanctioned rape of the Congolese forests

Hilary Benn, the UK international development secretary, said: "50 million people rely on the rainforest of the Congo for food, shelter and livelihoods. We rely on it as an ecological handbreak for our rapidly changing climate."

The report criticises the World Bank for encouraging logging in Congo in the knowledge that corruption was rife. It refused to comment until the report has been published.

Greenpeace, naturally, was on the ball a lot earlier than the media, releasing a report on the matter in February.

This whole issue ties in with Larry's post on Malcolm Turnbull's proposal to consider a proposal to ban or confiscate furniture made of timber from illegally logged forests (rather than the inherently more sensible option of banning all timber imports from countries where illegal logging is rife). As far as I'm aware, most Australian imports of illegally logged timber originate in South East Asia and the Pacific region, but all that means is we're doing our exploiting elsewhere, not that the problem doesn't exist here.