Logging decimates African rainforest

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

*
Perilous Times

Logging decimates African rainforest*

POSTED: 1333 GMT (2133 HKT), April 16, 2007

(CNN) -- The world's second largest rainforest -- a haven of
biodiversity and one of the planet's vital safeguards against runaway
global warming -- is being devastated by illegal logging,
environmentalists have warned.

More than 15 million hectares of central African forest in the
Democratic Republic of Congo has been given away to international
logging companies since a moratorium sponsored by the World Bank was
agreed in 2002, causing "social chaos environmental havoc," Greenpeace
said in a new report.

Up to 40 million people in the region depend on the rainforest for
survival, but Greenpeace found evidence of communities granting logging
rights to companies worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for gifts
such as bags of salt, machetes, soap, coffee and beer or unfulfilled
promises to build hospitals and schools.

In one case a community was persuaded to give up its rights as the
traditional landowners of an area of forest for a package worth around
£10,000. Yet the timber from a single tree was worth around £4,000 in
Europe. Greenpeace also said that local communities had failed to
benefit from taxes paid by logging companies.

"Logging companies promise us wonders: work, schools, hospitals, but
actually, they seem to be only interested in their own short term
profits. What will happen when our forests have been emptied? They will
leave and we'll be the ones left with damaged roads, schools with no
roofs and hospitals without medicine" Congolese activist Matthieu Yela
Bonketo told Greenpeace.

"Industrial logging doesn't bring benefits... The local communities who
live in them are suffering because of the presence of the industry."

As well as destabilizing human communities, logging also threatens to
decimate an ecosystem that is critical for the survival of wildlife
including forest elephants and endangered apes such as gorillas,
chimpanzees and bonobos.

But in the longer term the damage caused to the forest by human activity
could have even greater repercussions.

With other rainforest regions such as the Amazon also being depleted
rapidly -- the percentage of the earth's land surface covered by
rainforest is estimated to have slipped from 14 percent to around six
percent -- the sudden disappearance of millions of hectares of the
earth's natural defenses against climate change is likely to have
consequences far beyond local communities and wildlife.

Around eight percent of the earth's forest carbon storage is trapped in
the DRC's 86 million hectares of rainforest. At current rates, forest
clearance is set to release more than 34 billion tonnes of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere by 2050 -- the equivalent of the UK's total
emissions for the past 60 years. Some scientists predict all of the
planet's natural rainforests could have disappeared by the mid 21st century.

According to the 2002 deal, the government of the DRC agreed not to
issue any further logging licenses or to renew any existing contracts in
return for $90 million in World Bank development aid.

But Greenpeace estimated that up to 100 logging contracts had been
issued since the moratorium was due to come into force. It also fears
many of those could be legalized as part of a review subsequently
initiated by the World Bank.

"Our findings expose serious lapses of governance, a massive lack of
institutional capacity to control the forestry sector, widespread
illegalities and social conflicts, as well as clashes with established
conservation initiatives," the report said.

Urging the World Bank to take fresh action to clean up the logging
industry, Greenpeace senior forest campaigner Belinda Fletcher said it
was "crunch time" for the DRC's rainforest.

"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."