world news - 26.06.2007
Congo to Cancel Logging Deals to Protect Forests
Congo is ready to cancel more than half its timber contracts to
protect the world's second biggest tropical forest but it wants more aid from
foreign governments to help do so, the environment minister said. Congo issued a
five-year moratorium on new logging contracts in 2002 in an effort to stem
rampant deforestation aggravated by the conflict. That measure went largely
unheeded and companies continued to sign new deals. Around three
million hectares (7.4 million acres) of illegal concessions have already been
cancelled by Congo's new government, which took office this year after historic
post-war elections in 2006. "We have between 24 and 25 million hectares still
held by individuals and companies. I would say that I am capable of cancelling
another 12 to 15 million hectares of contracts. That's the minimum," Environment
Minister Didace Pembe told Reuters. "Anyone
who doesn't conform to the criteria, those that signed logging contracts during
the moratorium and are unable to justify how, we are going to cancel their
contracts," he said. "All those
who have forestry concessions but don't pay their taxes, we are going to cancel
them," he said in an interview late on Thursday, without citing any
companies or individuals. Amongst the
biggest timber firms operating in Congo are a subsidiary of Germany's Danzer
Group, Siforco, and Portuguese-owned Sodefor, a unit of holding company NST.
Together with a third company, Safbois, they account for over two-thirds of the
country's capacity, researchers say. Congo hopes to
receive up to US$6 billion a year under an international conservation scheme
which would provide financial incentives to preserve the forests in the future,
the minister said. At the G8
summit in Germany this month, leaders from the world's eight richest countries
proposed a Forest Carbon Initiative to give developing countries financial
incentives to combat global warming. Cutting and
burning tropical forests contributes 20 percent of the overall carbon emissions
that are accelerating climate change. Logging and
land clearing for agriculture are eating away at the ecosystems of the Congo
Basin forest, which are being degraded at the rate of more than 800,000
hectares every year. The initiative
would create a fund to compensate developing nations like Congo, with the
world's second largest tropical forest after the Amazon, for not granting
logging concessions. "When we
see the benefits this forest brings ... to the entire planet, it is about time
the major world powers think about compensation for everything this forest
does," Pembe said. Fair
compensation, he believes, could inject around US$6 billion dollars a year into
Congo's coffers -— a massive windfall for a country with a total proposed 2007
budget of just over US$2 billion. "That will
be an enormous way for us to pull ourselves up," Pembe said. "You
risk pushing us to destroy our forests because we need money. They say we are
the second lung, but that second lung has to be taken care of."
Democratic
Republic of Congo is carrying out a World Bank-sponsored review of 156 logging
deals, most of them issued during the vast country's 1998-2003 civil war and a
subsequent three-year transitional government.
G8 INITIATIVE
See also:
- — Mill acts for future
- — Rainforest furniture
- — County's timber harvest declines
- — Innovativ Vision is expanding its sales and service organizations in Europe
- — More wood than ever growing in Swedish forests
