Congo Clearing Contributing to Climate Change

A new report released by Greenpeace exposes that international logging companies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are causing social chaos and wreaking environmental havoc. “Carving up the Congo,” presented in four sections, uncovers endemic corruption in the DRC’s logging sector at a time when key decisions that will determine the future of these forests are about to be made.

The Congo rainforest is the world’s second largest tropical forest after the Amazon and one of the planet’s essential defenses against global climate change. Global emissions from tropical deforestation alone contribute up to 25% of total annual human-induced CO2 emissions.

The DRC rainforest contains 8% of global carbon stores. It is estimated that forest clearance in the DRC will release up to 34.4 billion tons of CO2 by 2050.

"It’s crunch time for the DRC’s rainforests. The international logging industry operating in the country is out of control. Unless the World Bank helps the DRC to stop the sell off of these rainforests, they’ll soon be under the chainsaws," said Greenpeace International Africa Forest Campaign Co-ordinator, Stephan van Praet.

In spite of a national moratorium on logging titles since 2002, 100 logging contracts covering 15 million hectares of rainforest have been issued to the logging industry, an area five times the size of Belgium. 40 million people depend on the DRC’s rainforest. Few benefit from logging. The World Bank admits that in the last three years, none of the forest area taxes paid by companies have reached forest communities.

Greenpeace is calling for the cancellation of all logging titles issued since May 2002 and for the moratorium on new logging titles to be extended and enforced until the logging sector is cleaned up and controlled and a land-use plan that includes the participation of local communities is fully in place.

The complete report is available on the Greenpeace website.

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Greenpeace International: Greenpeace exposes that logging in the Congo rainforest is out of control