Untitled - Greenpeace

CARVING UP THE CONGO
33
INDUSTRIAL LOGGING IS
SUSTAINING CORRUPTION
IN THE DRC
In an environment of endemic corruption,
logging companies inevitably operate beyond
the rule of law. In the DRC, the logging
industry continues to feed the networks of
corruption that are obstacles to genuine
development. Through support for an
extractive industry-based model of
development, donor countries and agencies
such as the World Bank are effectively
undermining their own rhetoric on establishing
good governance and alleviating poverty.
In 2003 the Extractive Industries Review (EIR),
commissioned by the World Bank,
acknowledged the significant economic, social
and environmental risks of extractive
industries. It recommended that the World
Bank shape and sequence its interventions
according to the quality of governance in the
host country. Governance criteria can include,
amongst other things: the quality of the rule of
law; the risk of conflict; human rights
protection; recognition of and willingness to
protect the rights of indigenous peoples;
capacity to mitigate and manage the impacts
of extractive industries; and, government
capacity and willingness to publish and manage
revenues transparently and ensure effective
revenue sharing. 145
‘It is not accidental that no
efforts have been made to
construct the fundamentals
of a regime to combat
corruption and illicit finance
schemes in the DRC. The
DRC’s history is one of rulers
aspiring to hold and retain a
monopoly of power. Salaries
of DRC officials have, in
practice, been regularly and
heavily supplemented by
revenues from bribery.’ 149
Report for USAID, 2003
Clearly the DRC has governance problems: the
Government’s institutional capacity and its
ability to manage revenues, including those
generated by industrial logging, remain weak.
Control over natural resources has been at the
heart of nearly a decade of war in the DRC and
serious questions have been raised about the
role of foreign companies in the extraction and
export of the country’s resources. 146 Instability
plagued the transitional government and
violent conflict continues in parts of the
country. 147 Corruption as a strategy for
survival among low- and middle-ranking law
enforcement civil servants (eg the acceptance
of bribes and lack of enforcement of
regulations) fuels and is fuelled by the highlevel
corruption practised by the country’s
political elite whose power is based on profit
from natural resources such as forests. 148
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