The Challenge for Africa

by Wangari Maathai

  Forests also play an important role in regulating the global albedo—the amount of light that is reflected off the Earth's surface and which can either increase or decrease temperatures. Once more, scientists are only just discovering the complex role that trees, whether in temperate or tropical climates, play in the albedo; research suggests that deforestation in the tropics, including in the Congo Basin, will likely increase temperatures and decrease albedo.

  Over half of the Congo Basin forests are located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). During the late 1990s and early 2000s, armies from nine surrounding countries, along with numerous militias, fought for control over the abundant reserves of natural resources such as timber (and wood products such as charcoal), gold, copper, diamonds, coltan, cobalt, zinc, and other minerals. That this was truly an international war, beyond the reaches of central Africa, was confirmed by a report that experts prepared for the UN Security Council, which found that up to eighty-five multinational corporations from the United States, Europe, and South Africa had done business with criminal networks operating in the DRC.

  The war was, in many ways, merely the latest fight to utilize the forests' resources stretching back to the days of Mobutu Sese Seko, who as the president of Zaire enriched himself and his coterie for three decades at the expense of his people. This conflict mirrored the exploitation of the Belgian colonial administration that preceded Mobutu, and the Belgian king Leopold II, who ran the Congo as his personal estate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  For the poor who live in the Congo Basin, hunting for bush-meat and the collection and burning of firewood for charcoal are the highest sources of income. Wood and charcoal constitute four-fifths of the energy used in the households of the DRC, while bushmeat has provided the peoples of the Congo forest with a vital source of food for centuries. Recently, however, the subsistence-level hunting in the forest that sustained the local communities has expanded and intensified to threaten the wildlife that populates the entire basin. Some one million tons of bushmeat is now consumed annually, and around thirteen thousand pounds (most of it in the form of primate flesh) arrive in Europe and North America every month, where it is consumed as a delicacy by expatriate Africans and others.

  The increase in the number of animals killed for bushmeat is directly correlated with the opening up of the forest to logging companies. Penetrating the parts of the forest previously unreachable by mechanized transport, the timber trucks literally make inroads and, as they do, allow easier access to the animals. The results can be dramatic. A mere twenty days after a logging company arrived in one of Congo's forests, the density of animals there declined by more than a quarter.

  About a quarter of the rain forest area of the Congo Basin has been divided up into timber concessions. The irony is that timber itself has an economic value far below the other products that come from the forest—such as medicines, plant foods, and condiments—even though it is the sector where there is the greatest danger of the misuse or plundering of public resources. Penetration of the forest brings about its own risks as well. Increased contact with the animals of the forest has enhanced the possibility of exposure to diseases, such as Ebola, that can cross the species barrier.2 Such tropical diseases, along with HIV/AIDS and malaria, only further complicate, and in some cases hinder, efforts to conserve the forest.

  MOVING BEYOND THE YAOUNDé DECLARATION

  In a recognition of the importance of the Congo Basin to their countries' forest ecosystems, the heads of state of six surrounding countries issued the Yaoundé Declaration in 1999, in which they agreed to establish a framework for new conservation efforts throughout the region. Because of the conflict in the DRC, however, little was implementable at that time. In September 2002, at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, the United States and South Africa joined with twenty-seven other partners, both public and private, to launch the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), to conserve the basin through economic development, poverty alleviation, better governance, and the establishment of a network of protected areas. The CBFP also issued a code to try to ensure that any contracts awarded to private corporations by the region's governments seeking to exploit the forests' resources were well managed.

  This last provision—which, among other stipulations, mandated that all companies should consult local people, allow them to keep all their rights as traditional users of the forest, and ensure that 15 percent of the concession area was protected—was long overdue. It sought to address the concessions for many millions of acres of forest that had been handed out or bought both before and during the war. In spite of efforts to establish a moratorium on new concessions, a number of new contracts have been offered to logging and mining companies since 2002. Instructively, perhaps, these corporations are headquartered, or have offices in, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Portugal, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, China, Canada, Singapore, and the United States, as well as Côte d’Ivoire, Congo-Brazzaville, and the DRC. Some of them have received investment funds through the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, which was instrumental in supporting the 2002 moratorium.

  In the past few years, a welcome measure of peace has come to the DRC and its neighbors, and in June 2006 Congo held elections under UN supervision. Nevertheless, not all conflicts in the region have been resolved, especially in the eastern part of the country where civilians are still being threatened, displaced, and even killed by continued fighting between the government and militia. And under the protection of heavily armed warlords who continue to fight the Congolese government, charcoal syndicates are threatening the Congolese section of Virunga National Park. The park also stretches into Rwanda and Uganda, both countries that have seen internal conflicts spill over into Congo. About one hundred thousand people displaced by Congo's wars have settled on the park's boundaries. With no other sources of energy for heating or cooking, the refugees rely on illegally harvested charcoal—up to four thousand sacks of it a day. Takings from the trade are $30 million a year, and the charcoal merchants protect their turf fiercely. In 2006, seven of the park's endangered mountain gorillas were killed (not poached—no body parts were taken), an act that was widely interpreted as a warning from the charcoal syndicates not to interfere with their business.

  As I have argued repeatedly throughout this book, Africa is a rich continent, and should be able to improve the standards of living of its peoples by their utilizing the resources around them sustainably, especially when those resources (such as oil, gold, diamonds, and minerals) garner high prices on the world market. Additionally, the potential to derive energy from the Congo Basin remains enormous. Indeed, water-generated electricity alone, if developed, might amount to almost a sixth of the global total.

  All such endeavors, of course, come with possible dangers. The extraction of oil and minerals not only leaves the environmental cost of lost future earnings from the ecosystem in question, but also contains the potential for long-term and perhaps irreversible pollution (as Nigeria's Niger Delta bears witness to). Mining creates waste in the form of slag heaps and rock piles, as well as dust from detonation, the silting of rivers, and toxins from chemical leaching and smelting. Once the mining has been finished, the areas will need to be reseeded, recon-toured, and fenced in so that chemicals do not leak and there are no hidden pits or shafts. While hydropower does not add to the carbon footprint, there are environmental impacts of building dams, including habitat destruction, displacement of local populations, deforestation, and soil erosion.

  Here, the principles of sustainability, accountability, and equity need to be made real and tangible. In a manner that is likely only to become more vivid as the decades pass, sustainability entails recognizing that the destruction of the Congo's forests has global implications—not simply in further destabilization of weather patterns that may mean reduced harvests in the American Midwest and increased desertification in central Asia, o
r the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; but also perhaps in the loss of critical medicines and minerals that may allow for human development in the future, both in Africa and beyond.

  Accountability must mean local, regional, and international institutions working in concert to ensure that the industrialized countries do not repeat the sins of the colonial period, and extract without genuine recompense or an eye to protecting the resources of the future. This will require international efforts to bolster government and civil society institutions to ensure that private interests—which have a role to play in developing the region—do not do so at the expense of local citizens and the short- and long-term survival of central Africa and beyond.

  It is a tragic irony that it may be the area's political instability that has allowed the Congo Basin ecosystem to remain as intact as it has. With the emergence of peace and opportunities for development, conditions may suit the increased exploitation of the basin's resources. Once the militias are disarmed and the roads are repaired or built, small-scale and subsistence-level businesses have a chance to grow. Likewise, with prices for certain minerals continuing to rise, companies that previously prospected only in the savannahs or the riverine areas may feel it is worth the cost and the difficulty to go deeper into the woodlands and forests for those resources, potentially threatening delicate ecosystems.

  In both cases, it is likely to be the large multinational corporations, with their capital and economies of scale, that will gain the most. It is up to the governments of the region, and indeed the world, to make sure that the Congo Basin's peoples, too, benefit from these investments and are lifted out of poverty.

  This is why the third element—equity—is essential. In order for the ecosystem to be protected, it is vital that the people who live in and around the forests of the Congo Basin feel they have a stake in its protection. This means acknowledging that the peoples of these forests have had a centuries-long relationship with the area's flora and fauna, and need both to be included in any decision making about its future and to benefit from its development. For instance, it would be important to establish governance systems to make sure that local communities prosper from the commercial use of as-yet-undiscovered medicinal and other properties of the biodiversity of their region.

  The multinationals and the relevant governments must recognize that it is in the companies' own best interests that the forests' essential ecosystem functions are maintained. Equity will also mean international cooperation at an unprecedented level to ensure that effective institutions are established that will collect data, map and monitor existing concessions, and ensure transparency and a sound basis for future development.

  All of this will be difficult—not least because mechanisms for this kind of multicountry, multistakeholder approach are not yet in place in many parts of the world, let alone a region that has seen the displacement and killing of millions of people, the near total infrastructural and institutional breakdown of governance associated with a failed state, and, preceding that, a century and a half of exploitation, corruption, and mismanagement on an unimaginable scale. Combine this history with the sheer size of the area and the diversity of its natural and human ecosystems, and the challenge becomes all the greater.

  CARBON AND CONCESSIONS

  Nevertheless, there are a number of policies that could and should be implemented. First, it is clear that no more resource concessions should be granted until there has been a thorough review of all the contracts, and effective mechanisms are in place that will allow those contracts that are awarded to be monitored and policed, by those who are capable of monitoring and policing them.

  Second, the collection of revenues from the taxes levied on companies gaining access to these forest concessions must be made more transparent, and a sizeable portion of the monies returned to the areas where the concessions have been made, so that local communities benefit directly from the exploitation of their natural resources. This will, of course, mean ongoing monitoring of contracts to make sure that the Congo Basin Forest Partnership's forest code requirements are implemented.

  Third, it is important to support small-scale ventures, ensure that they are sustainable, and encourage local communities to work to preserve and even rehabilitate areas of the forests that are especially vulnerable. Here, the Green Belt Movement model may be applicable.

  Ultimately, of course, all stakeholders should be encouraged to move away from viewing the forest as a seemingly endless source of extractable minerals and various carbon-based life-forms, and instead look at it holistically. Efforts are already being made in this area. The Coalition for Rainforest Nations, which includes Costa Rica, Indonesia, and the DRC, among others, is working to persuade governments in the global North and South to accept the idea that a forest has value by not being exploited, in that it stores carbon in the ground, and if left undisturbed will continue to do so into the future. In this way, nations such as the DRC with large tracts of intact forest would receive remuneration for protecting their forests, so that carbon is not released into the atmosphere.

  Ongoing research indicates that, assuming a market rate of $4 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, the DRC could generate around $200 million a year by selling carbon credits. According to the U.S.-based Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, the forests found in the fifteen countries that are part of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations could have a value in carbon credits of over $1 trillion. Private companies have an opportunity to act as good global citizens and help existing forests by buying credits to offset their carbon emissions as part of their corporate social responsibility policies. Of course, it is vital to make sure that the revenues raised by such carbon concessions in the Congo Basin are managed transparently, and that the benefits are shared equitably, particularly with poor communities who depend on the forest.

  Scientists estimate that the clearing of forests throughout the world currently amounts to about 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Protecting intact forests has become an important element in a comprehensive approach to addressing global climate change, which is a welcome development. Governments have agreed that in the next treaty to guide national-level action on global warming (the successor to the Kyoto Protocol), protecting standing forests and avoiding further deforestation and forest degradation must be a priority. A mechanism is being developed that would compensate developing countries that have significant forest cover if they slow rates of forest clearing, reverse these trends, and manage these forests sustainably.

  While the details of establishing, regulating, and ensuring the fairness and transparency of a global market for such carbon credits are not fully resolved, it is an enterprise I support. The markets, though, must serve the forests, and not solely the other way around. It is also essential that any such system for selling carbon credits be part of a national framework and coherent policy of sustainable use and conservation, rather than a mishmash of piecemeal actions that do not protect the ecosystem as a whole, or provide a front for further indiscriminate exploitation of the natural resources. This is why there must be multisectoral involvement and cooperation at every level between NGOs and advocates for environmental conservation, indigenous peoples' rights, human rights, and private and public institutions.

  Nations, particularly in Africa, will also need assistance to develop their capacity to negotiate more effectively within global climate change policy-making bodies, particularly the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) as well as with the private sector.

  In 2005 in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, the heads of state of the ten countries that have within their borders parts of the Congo Basin asked me to serve as the goodwill ambassador for the Congo Basin Rainforest Ecosystem. In that role, I have been seeking to raise awareness of the importance of the region and its biodiversity. In 2006, the UK government pledged $116 million to establish the Congo Basin Forest Fund. Housed at the African Development Bank in Tunis, the fund will accept proposal
s from the region for initiatives that both protect the forests and support livelihoods that don't depend on their destruction. Former Canadian prime-minister Paul Martin and I are the fund's cochairs. At the fund's official launch in London in June 2008, the Norwegian government donated a further $100 million.

  The first project to receive funding is focused on monitoring: to track forest loss—and seek to arrest it—cameras mounted on satellites will provide precise, high-resolution images of forest cover. The use of technology is essential, since, for instance, there are only thirty-four Central African botanists who have been trained to study, monitor, and protect the diversity of plants in the basin. It is also a good example of utilizing international funds to enhance local knowledge and capacities.

  As both the founder of an NGO and a cochair of the Congo Basin Forest Fund and goodwill ambassador for the forest basin, I am aware of concerns about the extent to which the governments in the region, the international community, and corporations active in the Congo Basin are committed to the protection of the forest ecosystem. Many have other interests, and some may at times try to hoodwink those who are indeed committed. This makes it even more necessary for genuine leadership to be shown by heads of state and their foreign and environment ministers in Central Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and elsewhere; similar will and commitment needs to be evident from civil society, and at the community level. It also means that international institutions, such as the World Bank, must ensure that their stated aims are not in conflict with their actions.