Untitled - Greenpeace

44
CARVING UP THE CONGO
LOGGING AT LAKE TUMBA
IS DESTROYING FOREST
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
The Lake Télé-Lake Tumba Swamp Forest
landscape is a priority landscape identified by
the CBFP for conservation and sustainable
management. Covering 12.6 million hectares
(or about four times the size of Belgium) and
straddling the border between the DRC and
the Republic of the Congo, it is the most
extensive block of swamp and seasonally
inundated forest in Africa. The rainforests to
the west of Lake Tumba are important for the
conservation of bonobo. Other threatened
species that occur in this landscape are forest
elephant, hippopotamus, red-tailed monkey
(Cercopithecus ascanius), red colobus monkey
(Piliocolobus badius) and slender-snouted
crocodile (Crocodylus cataphractus).
Additionally, fish biodiversity and endemism
are high, although as yet poorly researched. 255
Local communities in this landscape rely on fish
for 90% of their protein consumption and
overfishing has been identified together with
bushmeat hunting as the two major threats to
the landscape. 256 However, the expanding
logging industry looks set to become a major
additional threat.
The Lake Tumba region is home not only to
Bantu agriculturalists but also to numerous
Twa pygmy (semi hunter-gatherer)
communities. The logging operations already
active and planned often overlap to a large
degree with the forest on which these
communities depend; consequently, the
forest-dwellers may be forced to go further
into less disturbed areas to meet their needs.
Once companies establish themselves in the
region – building roads, negotiating social
responsibility contracts, bringing in workers –
it will be very difficult to turn back the clock.
The Lebanese logging company ITB has been
actively logging in the area since mid-2005,
and several other companies may start up
operations soon (Sodefor is already
prospecting in the area).
In conversation with Greenpeace, ITB’s chief
forester claimed that the company is making a
positive contribution to the communities of
Bikoro, near Lake Tumba – it contracts some
140 local workers plus 20–30 workers on a
daily basis (journaliers) for its nearby logging
©Kim Gjerstad
operations (it is said that on average six people
depend on the salary of one worker in a
logging company). The company pays the
school fees for its workers’ children and claims
to contribute some 250,000 CFR per month
(about $475) to the hospital in Bikoro for
treatment of its workers. ITB’s chief forester
also stressed the fact that thanks to ITB’s
logging road it is now much easier for people
to transport their agricultural products
to market. 257
However, in terms of sustainable development
for the local communities, ITB’s contribution is
minimal, and jobs are likely to disappear once
the area is commercially logged out, as has
happened elsewhere.
In exchange for a few gifts to local Bantu
community leaders (part of the social
responsibility contract practice explained on