58 CARVING UP THE CONGO INDUSTRIAL LOGGING OPENS UP INTACT RAINFORESTS, PRECLUDING PROPER LAND USE PLANNING The World Bank’s strategy for reform of the forestry sector in the DRC includes as a goal protection of the rainforest’s local and global environmental values, including its contribution to climate stability. 337 However, without a forest land use planning process which prioritises large-scale conservation, the measures the World Bank has pushed through – a moratorium on the allocation of new forest titles, a legal review of existing titles, and a new Forestry Code – will not stop industrial logging moving into valuable intact rainforest. This will result in de facto land use decisions in favour of the loggers rather than the forestdwelling communities, the DRC’s unique biodiversity or the global environment. The rainforest of the DRC is critical to the health of the global environment. Its massive stores of carbon help keep the global climate stable. It plays a significant role in regulating one of the world’s largest river basins. It is also a unique reservoir of biodiversity. 338 Once lost, the forest, its wildlife and the vital environmental services it provides cannot be replaced. The CBFP has to date identified several large forest landscapes within the DRC that are important for conservation and require sustainable management. Moreover, as shown by the case of the Lomami forest (see pp64–67), there are also other vast tracts of intact forest landscape not included in the CBFP’s priority conservation areas, that nevertheless have huge value for forest communities and biodiversity, and whose large-scale protection would contribute to the forest’s continued provision of global environmental services such as climate stability. But destructive logging operations are set to go ahead both within the CBFP priority landscapes (in spite of the CBFP’s recommendations to aim for sustainable forest management) and in other important areas, curtailing the options for protection and responsible forest management. As the World Bank itself recognises: ‘There is a serious risk that economic development initiatives will be accepted by the Government without adequate consideration being given to their environmental impact, or to alternative options such as biodiversity conservation and community based management.’ 339 Many logging companies whose operations threaten important forest landscapes have rushed to obtain logging titles in advance of any land use planning process (eg Trans-M case study on pages 50–53). It is clear that in this context there is an urgent need for full and extensive land use planning prior to the expansion of industrial logging: social and environmental values need to be recognised and protected so that critical areas of rainforest are placed off limits to commercial logging or other extractive industries. Strategic land use planning provides an essential framework for long-term management of any forest. It has been shown to be effective at resolving existing disputes and avoiding future conflicts between the interests of indigenous peoples, logging companies, biodiversity and the environment at the local, national and international scales. In practice, however, just the opposite approach is being taken: existing titles, provided they satisfy the narrow criteria of the legal review, stand to be confirmed as newstyle forestry concessions irrespective of their potential impacts on forest-dwellers, wildlife or climate, pre-empting any attempt at a rational land use planning exercise with irreversible decisions in favour of the logging industry. Meanwhile, the protection of the rainforest’s social and environmental values will be largely abandoned to the good offices of the logging industry itself through the forest management plans it is required to develop, four years down the line. Rather than insisting first on land use planning being the absolute priority, donors are aiding and abetting this free-for-all by giving companies development money to complete these management plans, which being mandatory are critical to their expansion into new areas of intact forest – and to their profitability (see case study, page 45). ‘With the largest share of the Congo Basin and 50% of Africa’s moist tropical forests, the occurrence of 12 ecoregions on DRC’s territory and a unique level of natural habitats and species diversity and endemism, the DRC is recognised as one of the world’s most important countries for environmental protection.’ 340 World Bank, 2006 ‘Independent of their species richness and their level of endemism, the forests of the Congo Basin represent one of the last regions in the world with vast areas of interconnected tropical rainforest where the biological processes can still proceed without disturbance. It is for example one of the rare places in the world where an animal the size of the forest elephant can still play a natural role in shaping its ecosystem, like an “engineer” transforming the landscape, influencing species distribution and maintaining the functioning of natural ecological systems. In addition, simply by virtue of its size, the forest of the Congo Basin constitutes a carbon reserve of global importance for the regulation of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Finally, this forest also has a role in regulating the regional and local climate. In particular it ensures the hydrological cycle, since more than 50% of the precipitation that falls on the Congo Basin comes from local evaporation and evapotranspiration.’ 341 Congo Basin Forest Partnership, 2006
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