Congo DR

Members of farmers’ organizations, women’s movements and civil society organizations from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Swaziland, Lesotho, the DRC and Mozambique gathered on August 15-16 in Maputo, Mozambique, to analyze the multi-dimensional global crisis and the response of African governments.

By Belmond Tchoumba This report is based on the fi ndings of research conducted by WRM on the REDD pilot project being undertaken by Conservation International and the Walt Disney Company in the province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, specifi cally in the so-called community reserves of Tayna and Kisimba-Ikobo.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Conservation International (CI) is promoting a REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) pilot project financed by the Walt Disney media and entertainment company. The project is being implemented in the Tayna and Kisimba-Ikobo nature reserves, and is one of the first of its kind in the region.

The natural and environmental resources of Africa like land, minerals, gas, oil, timber, territorial waters among others have been the object of the persistent scramble for the continent. Natural resources are often at the heart of the scramble for Africa.

By Forests Monitor, 2001 Sold Down the River - The Need to Control Transnational Forestry Corporations: A European Case Study

Along the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo the Inga hydropower scheme has developed a series of hydroelectric dams, two of them already built – Inga I and Inga II- and two more under development – Inga III and Grand Inga (see WRM Bulletin 138, 77).

The forest of the Congo Basin expands over an area of continuous tropical rainforest cover only second to that of the Amazon forest. Those forests are currently receiving a lot of attention within the Climate Change negotiations.

The Batwa (often described as “pygmies”) are widely regarded as the original forest-dwelling inhabitants of the Equatorial forest in the Great Lakes Region comprising Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Uganda, they lived in the forest of the Mufumbira Mountains in the South West. They were hunter-gatherers that relied on the forests for their livelihood and found in the forests the sustenance for their spiritual and social life. 

The Inga hydroelectric scheme (Inga 1, Inga 2, Inga 3 and Grand Inga) is located 140 miles southwest of capital city Kinshasa. It lies on the largest waterfall by volume in the world, the Inga falls, where the Congo River drops 96 m (315 ft) over the course of nine miles with an average flow of 42,476 m³/s. The project started in 1920 during Belgian colonial rule. Colonial authorities forced the site’s first inhabitants to leave without any compensation. Inga’s displaced communities haven’t received any compensation till today.

Oil palm and rubber plantations occupy extensive areas in many countries in tropical Africa. In spite of their social and environmental impacts, until now they have received scant attention both at the national and international level.

DRC’s rainforest --the world’s second largest-- is disappearing through logging. According to a report from The Guardian (1), “today a dozen large, mostly European, companies dominate the industry and have vast concessions: Trans-M has Lebanese owners; another group, which controls around 15m acres, is owned by the Portuguese Trinidade brothers; the American Blattner family has more than 2m acres; the German Danzer Group has 5m.