- West and Central Africa: False words and corruption in the logging business

It seems that the road to the global market is paved with good intentions. And it utters void statements, it should be added.

The industrialized world tears its clothes off in the face of corruption, which it attributes to Third World country governments. And the World Bank brings together some of the leading logging companies in Africa –mainly European- with environmental NGOs to discuss issues related to Sustainable Forest Management, in what is called the “CEO Initiative”. However, true meaning should be discovered digging into declarations.

The Danzer Group takes part in the CEO Initiative. However, the Danzer Group is violating key principles in forestry and law as long as they are knowingly financing illegal loggers and bribing public officials. Since its origins in 1932, it has developed into one of the world’s biggest producers of hardwood veneers. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighbouring Republic of Congo (RC), Danzer Group’s concessions cover more than 4 million hectares of rainforest.

The Group’s holding company is ANBE AG, headquartered in Switzerland, and since 1962, Danzer Group’s international trade in tropical timber has also been based there, through Interholco AG. From there, Danzer Group’s global trading in tropical timber is organized, supporting a logging sector which is fuelling rampant corruption in the region. Interholco procures wood not only from the last rainforests being destroyed in West and Central Africa, but in many cases from companies that have been documented to be involved in illegal logging or, until very recently, associated with arms trafficking activities.

In a confidential report about Danzer Group’s business activities in Africa, written by René Giger, one of the two executive directors of Interholco AG, in April 2003 and obtained by Greenpeace, Giger summarises: “With regards to gifts/frais de mission (baksheesh), three philosophies occur to me in Africa. In Douala (Cameroon) one is blackmailed into having to pay baksheesh amounting to hundreds of thousands of FF (French Francs), and this is also paid out liberally. In Congo (Kinshasa) (DRC), Mr. H… tries to be more restrained but nevertheless is prepared to pay where necessary. At IFO both Mr S.... and Mr D...., are absolutely against such gifts and are also about to rigorously eliminate the old sinecures. Mr S....’s philosophy is not to give any gifts in advance in order to avoid any possible difficulties. If there is any threat of a fine, so-called conditioned cases, he is, however prepared to take care of this by giving a gift.” The way “gifts” are used is explained by Giger’s report in a reference to one of Danzer’s Cameroon subsidiaries, CCIB. According to Giger, the tax authority in Cameroon insists on a “fiscal control”, which he urgently tries to avoid, as there apparently have been “undeclared exports of IHC [Interholco] via Alima F.” Giger casually notes: “Mr. F…. is trying to resolve this matter with FRF 20-30,000 [around €3000-4500].”

Following years of debate, on 7 July 2003, the UN Security Council (UNSC) imposed sanctions on the import of Liberian timbers. The UNSC was forced to take this drastic, unprecedented measure because international dealers such as Interholco had been unwilling to voluntarily stop trading with an industry that financed Liberian president and warlord Charles Taylor.

Besides exporting Liberian wood supplied by the UNSC sanctioned Inland Logging Company (ILC), Interholco also procured from the Oriental Timber Company (OTC) and the Maryland Wood Processing Industry (MWPI). The OTC’s manager, Dutchman Gus van Kouwenhouven, is regarded by the UN as a key figure in the logistics of illegal arms movements to Liberia. The MWPI controlled Port Harper in the south of the country and has also been accused of involvement in illegal arms shipments entering Liberia through this port. Only increased rebel activities and finally the UNSC sanctions stopped Interholco trading with OTC, MWPI and other Liberian suppliers.

Trading in Liberian logs and with the OTC in particular did not, however, prevent the Danzer Group stating, in a letter (10 January, 2002) sent to a German citizen: “The Danzer Group and all its subsidiary companies will do absolutely no business with companies which trade arms ... In our business-to-business relations we make decisions solely in accordance with our standards and in no event do we wish our business relationships to be misused for financing weapons or civil wars.”

No more comments…

Article based on information from: “Danzer involved in bribery and illegal logging”, Greenpeace, http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/logging/danzergroup.pdf

---

top

- Congo: Forest communities and forests destroyed to pay debt

Like many other Third World countries pushed by the global policies of colonialism and later neocolonialism to poverty and indebtedness, Congo has a current debt of $4.9 billion. Like many other southern governments, too, advised by multilateral agencies to commerce their wealth –natural resources-, the government of Congo has been placing greater emphasis on the growth of the timber industry in the Congo Basin, which has the world's second largest stretches of virgin rainforest after the Amazon in South America.

Ba'aka pygmies, the indigenous population of the forest, have their traditional lifestyle under threat as the forest opens up to intensive logging, both legal and illegal. Certainly, trees valuable to the Ba'aka for their fruits, oil, medicinal bark and for the construction of pirogues are rapidly disappearing under the loggers' saws. For example, the Sapelli, an African mahogany, is one of the most highly-prized trees on the world timber market - and it is also host to a species of caterpillar, an essential food source, that emerge towards the end of the rainy season when hunting and fishing is limited. A sack of smoked caterpillars can sell for up to $100, and just one tree can provide up to five sacks per year. This money remains in the local economy, whereas a large proportion of the money from logging leaves the country.

An initiative to protect the forest area was launched in 2002 with the creation of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in South Africa. The CBFP has planned a network of new and expanded national parks which will cover 40% of the entire Congo Basin. But such conservation policy has been criticised for often having little regard for indigenous populations - for example, the Ba'aka have not yet been informed about the CFBP national parks development.

"Local forest communities and civil society groups have so far been completely excluded from the initiative, which is primarily about 'partnerships' between international conservation organisations and international loggers," said Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation.

Meanwhile "eco guards" police the forests to stop illegal hunting and trade in bush meat, which is the staple of the Ba'aka. Though, these regulations are undermined by corruption as the trade is organised by members of local elites who ensure that "their" bush meat sellers are not targeted by the eco guards - and instead, the eco guards have been accused of victimising the Ba'aka.

"We get so much suffering because of eco guards," Nyaku, a Ba'aka from Mbua, near the administrative centre of Pokola in northern Congo, told Focus On Africa. "We can't go and find things in the forest as we used to. All we hear is hunger."

Should any debt be paid by destruction, dispossession and hunger?

Article based on information from: “Concern over Congo logging”, Kate Eshelby, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3937829.stm

---

top

- Democratic Republic of Congo: After the war, the fight for the forest

Following decades of despotic rule by Mobutu Sese Seko, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) descended into a ‘civil war’ that claimed the lives of an estimated 3.5 million people. The mass carnage which reigned over the country has receded – though many believe only temporarily. The war has, at least in part, been fuelled by competition for control over natural resources.

Forest people such as the Twa 'Pygmies' of eastern DRC have suffered traumatic impacts during the conflict. As well as brutal treatment - including cases of cannibalism and reported 'genocide' - at the hands of one faction or another, Pygmy people have also suffered from a depletion of wild food resources, which have been exploited by armies, militias and the millions of refugees fleeing from the conflict.

With the establishment of the transitional government in 2003, the international community has quickly moved to rebuild the country's economy; forests are seen as a potential source of quick foreign earnings.

DRC's forests cover an area of 1.3 million square kilometres, more than twice the size of France. According to World Bank estimates, some 35 million people (nearly 70% of the national population) are resident within, or to some extent dependent on, the country's forests. Most are Bantu farmers, many of whom still practice traditional rotational farming or ‘forest gardening’; a smaller number are Mbuti, Twa, and other ‘Pygmy’ hunter-gatherers.

As of today, relatively little of the forest has been exploited industrially, although a few (mostly foreign) companies have had access to large areas for logging, such as the German group, Danzer, which has held logging concessions extending over 2.4 million hectares. In some areas, forest has been converted to farmlands, mostly for subsistence, and around major cities, collection of fuelwood has also led to loss of forest cover. However, compared to other parts of west and central Africa, deforestation rates have remained low. Under the guidance of the international community, this could be about to change.

In August 2002, a new Forest Code was adopted by the (unelected) Interim Government of DRC. The Code sets out the basic 'framework' for the DRC Government's forest policy, such as that the government continues to assert state ownership over all areas of forest. The development and adoption of the Code was supported financially by the World Bank, and was broadly modelled on the Forest Law that the Bank developed for Cameroon in 1994. Subsequently, both the Bank and UN FAO have also started projects to ‘zone’ DRC's forests, eventually parcelling the country´s entire forest area into areas for logging, conservation, and other uses.

The World Bank has taken some positive steps to reform the timber industry in DRC, for example, by pressing the Government to cancel certain existing logging contracts, and revoke 6 million hectares of concessions allocated illegally.

However, internal Bank documents obtained by the Rainforest Foundation reveal that the Bank’s ultimate intention is a massive expansion of the country's timber industry. A 60-100-fold increase of timber production to around 6-10 million cubic metres of timber per year is foreseen, with an area of some 60 million hectares (somewhat larger than the size of France) being put up for grabs. Bank documents refer to the “creation of a favourable climate for industrial logging”.

The proposed 'development' of DRC's forests, and the way in which this is being undertaken, presents a number of serious dangers.

Firstly, the World Bank and FAO have failed to take account of the highly unstable situation in Congolese politics, and the serious weaknesses of the government. The authorities in Kinshasa, the capital, are, as yet, unable to exercise any meaningful control over the activities of logging companies.

Secondly, the World Bank's approach to the development of DRC's forests appears to be based on the assumption that the expansion of industrial logging will necessarily bring economic benefits to the country's poor people (measured by average income per capita, DRC’s people are the world’s poorest). However, there is very little evidence that this assumption is valid. In fact, the evidence from countries such as Cameroon has been that communities living in the forest - often the poorest of the poor - are further impoverished, as the logging industry can destroy resources upon which they depend for their very subsistence, including small-scale forest farms, supplies of fresh water, wild game, fruits and oils, and natural medicines. The development of a large-scale logging industry in DRC could therefore have serious negative impacts on millions of poor people.

Thirdly, the approach being taken by the Bank also appears not to recognise that, as elsewhere in Africa, communities that have been present for hundreds or even thousands of years claim large areas of Congo's forests under 'traditional rights'. The experience from countries such as Cameroon has been that, the failure to properly recognise local peoples rights and claims when 're-zoning' forest areas and allocating logging concessions, can result in serious, persistent and violent social conflict.

On the 2nd of December, 2003, the Rainforest Foundation wrote a detailed letter to the World Bank, seeking clarification about its involvement in forestry in DRC, and raising the concerns noted above. At the time of writing this article - exactly one year later – we have still received no substantive response.

In the intervening time, it has become clear that the Bank is under heavy pressure from logging companies – especially, perhaps, from French and German interests, who may stand to gain most from a ‘reinvigoration’ of the Congolese timber industry. Whilst the Bank has emphasised its concern that the development of DRC’s forests should benefit the people living there, it has done nothing to put this concern into practice. Instead, it has continued with an extraordinarily naïve belief that, amidst a state of near-civil war, with a government that is largely only that in name and which mostly serves the personal vested interests of its members, with financial institutions known to be utterly corrupt, and basic functions of governance still fragile -at best-, it would still be possible to establish a timber industry that would be environmentally acceptable, socially sound, and economically beneficial.

Few observers believe that this is anything other than ideological dogma endorsed by promotion-hungry junior Bank officials who will ultimately be unaccountable for their actions.

In November 2004, a unique alliance of international NGOs, including the Rainforest Foundation, Greenpeace, WWF, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Conservation International and the African Wildlife Foundation, issued a joint statement calling for a moratorium on the issuing of any new logging contracts in DRC until such time as certain strict conditions are upheld. These conditions includ that the recognition of local peoples´ ‘free, prior and informed consent’, be made conditional to any changes in the use of forests during the new zoning process.

At the end of 2004, the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo remain as the largest relatively undisturbed rainforests on Earth. The international community has a momentous opportunity to explore and implement new approaches instead of those that have so dismally failed in other parts of the world. As an immediate priority, the Rainforest Foundation believes that the international community, especially the World Bank, should ensure that the existing moratorium on new logging in the Congo is strictly upheld.

By Simon Counsell, the Rainforest Foundation UK, http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org

---

top

- Kenya: The controversial 'shamba system' of exotic tree plantations

Kenya’s ‘shamba’ or Tongya system has been generally defined as a form of agroforestry, where farmers are encouraged to cultivate primary crops (maize, bananas, beans and cassava) on previously clear cut public forest land on the condition that they replant trees. Since the mid 19th century, Kenya adopted this system to establish tree plantations by means of cheap or totally free labour, in order to meet the demand for timber.

The shamba system, which in theory seeks to involve landless communities in forest conservation, has been steeped in controversy in Kenya for a long time now. By the early 1980's, many problems associated with the system started emerging –notably about 19% of Shamba systems were encroaching on natural forests.

Besides being open to abuse, critics point the replacement of indigenous forests with exotic tree monocultures. The most common exotic species planted in public forests include eucalyptus and cypress. Those plantations established under a monoculture regime interfere with the forest dwindling its biodiversity, and reducing its water catchment qualities.

This has led to a problematic scenario.

On the one hand, the “shamba” system is criticized on the grounds of the detrimental impacts of the monoculture exotic tree plantations it became. Under the present government of President Kibaki, farmers have been told to keep off indigenous forests. The Deputy Minister of the Environment and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Prof. Wangari Maathai contends that, “We cannot sacrifice indigenous forests at the expense of exotic plantations. Plantations represent a monoculture of trees, but a forest is an ecology system". Maathai affirmed that the system had been abused as farmers were allowed – through corruption – to turn large sections of indigenous forests into farmlands, "destroying local biodiversity and greatly reducing the capacity of the forests to be effective water reservoirs”. Furthermore, poachers, illegal loggers, charcoal burners and even drug barons had also invaded the forests.

On the other hand, the ban of the “shamba” system, intended to protect native forests implicates the eviction of thousands of farmers, raising controversy within society.

Overall, what is clear is that the root of the problem can be traced to a policy that has created dependency on an unsustainable monoculture tree plantation pattern which has globally proved to be socially, economically and environmentally harmful. The difficult blind alley of Kenya in this regard, is just another case in point.

Article based on information from: “Call to keep off indigenous forests,” Nation Reporter, http://www.ogiek.org/indepth/break-call-to-keep.htm ; “Smallholder agriculture: the Shamba system”, http://www.rsrg.uni-bonn.de/Projekte/kenya/dfg_rep/vegetation_types/farm_system/shamba.html