REM Rapport Annuel No. 1 OIF Congo Brazzaville - Forests Monitor

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report presents the observations and analyses of the Independent Monitor (IM) of Forest
Law Enforcement and Governance in the Republic of the Congo during the period from 1
January to 1 July 2008. It follows the first annual report that covered the period from January
2007 to April 2008, in which the results of the field missions had been left out to make room
for observations on more general operational and organisational aspects of law enforcement
by the Forest Administration.
During the first six-months of 2008, Resource Extraction Monitoring (REM), conducted four
new independent missions covering ten forest concessions located in the departments (forests
are divided into administrative units referred to henceforth as departments) of the Cuvette
Centrale, Kouilou and Niari. In addition, the reading committee met four times to validate
one mission report (five other reports were validated during the month of July). REM’s
various field missions revealed lapses in forestry company compliance with forest law and
identified some practices of the Forest Administration that could benefit from improvements.
REM regrets that no joint missions with the Forest Administration were able to be conducted
during these six months. Therefore, the usual field practices of law enforcement agents were
not observed, making analysis of these practices less complete.
The observations of the Forest Administration, via the Conference of Departmental Directors,
revealed a strong political commitment by the government to improving forest and fauna
resource management and exploitation practices. This commitment is demonstrated by the
opening of Voluntary Partnership Agreement negotiations between the Republic of the
Congo and the European Union (EU) in conjunction with the FLEGT process.
Nevertheless, despite the progress made by the Forest Administration in increasing
transparency, several problems were revealed in the forest concession allocation process.
Furthermore, determination to advance towards the management of all Forest Units has fallen
behind, especially in the southern part of the country where a support project will soon be
launched.
Regarding law enforcement and follow-up activities, it was discovered that the Forest
Administration’s forest unit inspection rate has been relatively low during the semester –
field missions covered 53% of forest concessions – with a large disparity between
departments.
Several issues requiring specific attention were revealed within the Departmental
Directorates, such as not updating the litigation registers and delays in transmitting the
necessary documents from the DDEFs to the DGEF. These aspects may lessen the
Administration’s effectiveness and transparency.
On the basis of the 6 mission reports that were validated during the semester, the main
infractions noted are: inaccurate filling of field documents (6), recurrent delays in the
implementation by logging companies of social contractual obligations (6), and non marking
of logs, stumps and abutments (3). The practices seem to recur due to the low amount of
fines, which do not deter companies from breaching the law, and to the lack of regular field
inspections by MEF to verify compliance. Additionally, recurrent delays were observed in the
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