A leaked report by the World Bank's independent inspection panel has found the World Bank gravely broke its own rules in regard to rainforest policies and projects pursued since 2002 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log DRC's rainforests, endangering the lives of thousands of Congolese Pygmies; misled Congo's government about the value of their forests, and repeatedly broke their own rules regarding natural habitat and indigenous protections.
Congo's rainforests are the second largest in the world, hold some 8% of the Earth's carbon, and possess critical global ecosystems containing rich biodiversity. These forests provide medicines, shelter, timber and food for 40 million people. When the World Bank reentered the Congo in 2002, after years of war, it said industrial forestry could contribute to the country's recovery. It rushed through new forestry laws, divided the country's rainforests into logging zones, and along with the British government aimed to create a favorable climate for industrial logging. These efforts have now been discredited.
This revelation of Bank corruption in order to ensure Western access to ancient rainforest timbers is a victory, albeit sad and impartial, as the Pygmies' rights and livelihoods are safe for now from illegally promoted inappropriate development of the country’s rainforests by the World Bank. It is a victory for Rainforest Foundation -- UK, whose persistent efforts to highlight the World Bank's bad faith efforts in the DRC have paid off. And perhaps the mighty Congo rainforest is secure for awhile from more misguided World Bank forest conservation policies and projects that intensify industrial logging.
And lastly, it is a victory for Ecological Internet's action network (you!), who in support of Pygmies filing the inspection panel claim, the Rainforest Foundation, and out of a desire to keep DRC's rainforests intact; launched one of our largest email action protests ever, as tens of thousands of protests emails were sent by thousands of protestors. The protest alert in December of 2005 had such high levels of participation that we crashed our server handling the volume!
The alert just prior to the World Bank Board's consideration of Congo rainforest policy called for an Inspection Panel "investigation into claims by the 'Pygmy' indigenous peoples that you have failed to take into account how your plans would impact people depending on the forest for their survival... The World Bank is laying the basis for the destruction of Congo's rainforests, and it has breached many of its own internal safeguard policies in the process". These allegations have been borne out in their entirety.
It is clear that the World Bank must completely rethink their forest policy in the DRC and the world. Industrial logging must be rejected and replaced with an emphasis upon community development based upon standing, intact rainforests. Further, it is clear that the World Bank has been discredited, shown to not be a good faith participant in world efforts to protect the world's remaining primary and old-growth forests. As such, they must be disqualified from further administration of GEF and proposed Forest/Carbon protection monies. Expect an alert to this effect shortly...
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PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGO: 4th October 2007. 00.01 hrs
Congo’s Pygmies vindicated as official watchdog condemns World Bank’s role in Africa’s great rainforest
An unreleased report of the World Bank Inspection Panel obtained today by the Rainforest Foundation shows that the World Bank has committed grave errors in its projects in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are the second largest on Earth after the Amazon [1]. The Panel’s investigation was undertaken after a formal complaint was submitted by a number of organisation’s working with Congo’s indigenous Pygmy people, who expressed their concern about the impact of Bank-funded activities in the forests which they inhabit [2]. An area of rainforest the size of France is at risk.
The report finds that two projects funded by the Bank since 2002 would have promoted massive industrial exploitation of Congo’s rainforests for timber production, potentially turning the country into ‘Africa’s premier timber producer’. However, the Inspection Panel also finds that there was inadequate consideration of the “many important socio-economic and environmental issues of forest us” at the time that the Bank projects were prepared and started; that the Bank had not even identified the fact that Congo’s forests were inhabited by indigenous people, and had only given ‘limited attention’ to the fact that some 40 million other people (mostly subsistence farmers) also depend on Congo’s forests for their survival. As well as threatening the environment, the projects would also probably not serve to help alleviate poverty; the Panel has found that the Bank misled the Congolese government into believing that the revenues from logging its rainforests would be much higher than were likely in reality.
Most damningly for the Bank, the Panel has found that Bank staff broke many of the agency’s own internal ‘safeguard’ policies, which are designed to protect the environment, natural habitats, and the rights of people living in the areas affected by Bank projects. Bank staff ‘downgraded’ projects to lower levels of potential environmental risk, thus reducing the level of environmental assessment required, and then anyway failed to carry out environmental and social impacts before the projects started.
The Panel also finds that, whilst the Bank has repeatedly claimed that it is helping to bring Congo’s existing and mostly illegal logging operations under control, especially by reviewing the legality of all the existing 150 or so logging companies, there had been serious flaws in this process, with inadequate management of it by the Bank. The fate of around 15 million hectares of rainforest (about the size of England), some of it inhabited by Pygmies, could be determined by this flawed ‘review’ of logging concessions.
Simon Counsell, Director of the Rainforest Foundation, said;
“The Panel’s report is a major victory for the ‘Pygmy’ peoples of the Congo whose rights and livelihoods would be seriously harmed by inappropriate development of the country’s rainforests. We are now calling on governments to put pressure on the World Bank Board to realise the gravity of the report and ddemand immediate action to safeguard the Congo forests and the 40 million people depending on them.”
Notes to editors
[1] The report results from a year-long investigation by the Panel, which serves as an official but independent ‘watchdog’ over the activities of the Bank, the world’s largest development funding agency. The Panel’s report on the Congolese rainforests would probably be made publicly available at the end of October.
[2] The Request for Inspection submitted by 12 Congolese activists can be found on the Inspection Panel website: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTINSPECTIONPANEL/Resources/RequestforInspectionEnglish.pdf.
For further information contact:
Simon Counsell, the Rainforest Foundation UK
T- 020 7485 0193 M- 07941 899 579 E: simonc@rainforestuk.com
Cath Long, Rainforest Foundation UK Programme Director
T- 020 7485 0193 M – 07932 635 798 E – cathl@rainforestuk.com
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