Untitled - Greenpeace

62
CARVING UP THE CONGO
WILL DONORS’ SUBSIDIES
SUPPORT THE ROAD-TO-RUIN
POLICY?
In the absence of land use planning and
governance, the emphasis of the World Bank’s
strategy to drive development for the people
of the DRC has shifted from attempts to
control the resurgence of the logging
industry’s operations (eg through the
moratorium and legal review) to attempts to
control its social and environmental impacts
through the development of forest
management plans.
‘As USAID has long
recognized, donors encounter
extreme difficulty and little
success in trying to use
foreign assistance (grants
and loans) to impose new
behavioural norms in political
systems based on the
“rule of men” rather than
the “rule of law”.’ 377
ARD report for USAID, 2003
©Mauthe/Greenpeace
The coordinator of forestry for Equateur
Province at Mbandaka told Greenpeace in
October 2006 370 that although he has had
reports that there are problems with Trans-M,
he does not have the resources to investigate
the matter. The local forestry authority at
Befale – even more poorly resourced than its
provincial head office – is largely cut off from
the supervision of the provincial coordinator,
although he is ‘aware’ that the branch has
problems, such as low wages, no transport and
no proper equipment, which makes it
extremely dependent on the good will of
companies such as Trans-M.
Representatives of the Ministry of
Development are also present in Befale,
but they too are without capacity, skills
or equipment.
In the absence of strategic zoning, in a context
of corruption and weak institutional capacity,
de facto land use planning is rapidly taking
place through the expansion of destructive
logging practices. This happens even in areas
already identified by the international
community as priority areas for conservation
and responsible management.
In February 2007, international donors
attending a conference on the DRC were asked
to help logging companies with the cost of
doing business in Central Africa. The head of
the Interafrican Forest Industries Association
(IFIA) 371 – which represents some 300
companies in the Ivory Coast, Ghana,
Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African
Republic, the Republic of the Congo, the DRC
and Angola – asked for ¤75 million to
subsidise the cost of developing forest
management plans. 372
Despite the complete lack of institutional
capacity in the DRC, the French and German
Governments accordingly intend to provide
public money to support the preparation of
forest management plans for the DRC
operations of Danzer’s Siforco (see pages
82–85). The German development bank KfW
is looking to support development of a forest
management plan for titles within Siforco’s K8
holding. 373 The French development
corporation Agence Française de
Développement (AFD) is considering financial
support for development of a forest
management plan for titles within Siforco’s K9
holding. 274 Logging may start in 2007 in these
areas. It is highly questionable whether an
international company, with an annual turnover
of over ¤400 million, 375 should benefit from
foreign aid assistance in a country where
people are still dying from starvation, and
where corruption and institutional incapacity
are major hurdles to progress.
Siforco is currently the largest timber producer
in the DRC, producing some 90,000m 3 of
timber in 2005 – more than 20% of the entire
industrial timber production for that year. 376