Sold down the river - Salva le Foreste

40SOLD DOWN THE RIVERIn social terms,the records oflogging companiesare mixed. On theone hand, theyprovide a certainlevel of health,education andtransportationservices tovillagers thatcannot currentlybe provided by theState. On theother, they payCongolese workersvery low wagesand feel noresponsibilitytowards them oncethey have finishedlogging andmoved away.rainforest is opened up. The massive trunks can be taken out of the forest only on feedertracks and logging routes before travelling down river; thus these selectively-logged areas arecriss-crossed with a network of roads. The heaviest logging has occurred in the province ofBas-DRC, which is relatively close to both the capital, Kinshasa, and the ports. In the wake ofthe loggers, people have moved in to clear huge areas for farming. Hardly any primaryrainforest now remains in Bas-DRC. The other rainforest areas of DRC face a similar future iflogging continues to impoverish the ecosystem, and land appropriation and lower prices foragricultural and forest produce continue to impoverish the poor. 31There are 18 protected areas covering an area of 18 million – 7.69% of the country. 32Although the percentage of formally protected areas in the country is relatively high, inpractice forests in these areas are at risk of being seriously degraded.Because of the war, the government cannot manage, let alone monitor many of the formallyprotected areas. The Maiko National Park and Okapi Wildlife Reserve, for instance, are in theeastern regions of DRC currently occupied by the rebels and their foreign allies; the VirungaNational Park is on the border with Uganda, one of the countries supporting the rebels. Evenbefore the current war, these areas had been threatened by the arrival of large numbers ofrefugees from Rwanda who had been pushed into the forest by Kabila’s rebel army, ADFL(Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo). The retreating Zairian army(fighting on the side of Mobutu) also damaged many eastern areas. 33But monitoring of protected areas outside the war zone is also deficient. The statedepartment responsible for protected areas, the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation(ICCN), spends between 75 and 85% of its budget in Kinshasa, 34 leaving just one guard per20,000 hectares in the field. Moreover, because official pay is low, guards sometimes dependon handouts from illegal hunters and mining operations. 35It is not surprising that logging takes place in protected areas. A UNDP report estimatesthat, in 1995, between 7,000 and 10,000 cubic metres of timber were leaving the southernpart of Virunga National Park every day. 36 The destruction of these areas has serious economicconsequences, particularly for an impoverished country. In the late 1970s, tourism revenuesfrom chimpanzee viewing amounted to over US$ 1 million for the ICCN, financing themanagement of all protected areas. 37Social impactsIn social terms, the records of logging companies are mixed. On the one hand, they provide acertain level of health, education and transportation services to villagers that cannot currentlybe provided by the State. 38 On the other, they pay Congolese workers very low wages and feelno responsibility towards them once they have finished logging and moved away. This meansthat those who have moved into the forest to work for the company often have to switch toclearing the forest to grow food in order to feed their families. 39 Moreover, companies tend toignore safety requirements, such as provision of safety equipment, so accidents are frequentbut compensation is rare. 40Insecure land rights also cause deforestation. Historically, shifting cultivation, customarytenure and an abundance of land meant that land was held by groups in which the elders hadto remain responsive to the needs of the village as a whole. Conflicts were resolved by peoplemoving to establish other villages in which the chiefs or elders sought to attract people to settlerather than to exclude them. Once Belgian colonial law, enforced by European colonialcompanies, was imposed, people had to remain in the area where they were registered and togrow crops to pay as tax. The post-colonial state has continued the colonial policy of ensuringthat chiefs remain in power only if they retain control over their population in a way thatextracts wealth for the benefit of those who control the state. In this framework, all landbelongs to the state. In practice, however, land belongs to the chief to whom peasants mustpay their dues to use the land, dues which those higher up the hierarchy can then extract fromthe local chief. 41 This arrangement does not secure villagers’ access to land, since the chief canuse his connections with those higher up the hierarchy to support him in selling land toanyone he wishes to. Those pushed off their land often move into forest areas which areaccessible because of roads opened by logging companies. They clear the land, contributing todeforestation, which in turn makes forest resources such as fuelwood more scarce. In someareas of Orientale where deforestation was already occurring in 1990, women of all ages haveto walk longer and longer distances to obtain fuelwood, up to six or seven kilometres. 42The more powerful people tend to expropriate the land from those less powerful. Loggingsimply replicates on a large-scale the continual expropriation of land and resources from thepoor. This is a form of wealth accumulation by the powerful which is based not on theaccumulation and investment of capital, nor the maintenance of a strong political structure,but on the intentional creation and perpetuation of insecurity at all levels of society. Thisoccurred during Mobutu’s regime and did not appear to have changed under Kabila’sgovernment. 43