Washington — The World Bank is scrambling to respond to complaints that it broke its own rules to support commercial logging at the expense of Pygmy lands and livelihoods in the war-wrecked Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
At issue is the future of the Congo Basin, home to the world's second largest virgin rainforest following Latin America's Amazon.
The DRC government and the bank view logging as a key source of export revenue for a country struggling to recover from a 1998-2003 war. Pygmies, numbering around 600,000 in a country of some 58 million people, rely on the forest for income, shelter, food and medicine, and cultural identity.
In all, some 40 million Congolese are thought to depend on the forests for their livelihood.
Bank managers have dispatched a team of technical staffers to Kinshasa, capital of the former Zaire, in a bid to satisfy the lender's executive board that they are taking adequate measures to address Pygmies' concerns.
"In the near term there will be a meeting in Kinshasa and the bank has made it clear that we'd like to be guided by the Pygmy groups to make sure that we're being more effective in our consultations," said John Donaldson, the bank's Africa spokesman.
"This should lead to addressing other concerns and it would be a deepening of a process already under way," Donaldson told IPS.
This, after delegates of Congolese indigenous communities -- encouraged by a bank inspection report validating many complaints they had previously submitted in writing -- met senior officials here on the sidelines of the agency's Oct. 20-22 annual meetings.
The Pygmies, accompanied by environmental and indigenous peoples' advocates from the Rainforest Foundation and other groups, pled for an immediate halt to industrial logging, a greater say in forest issues for communities affected by the timber trade, a thorough assessment of logging's environmental impact, and support for more forest-friendly ways to boost the economy.
"We want to be partners with the World Bank but there must be real and effective participation by local people," Adrien Sinafasi, of the Bukavu-based group Pygmy Dignity, said in an interview.
Sinafasi said his delegation pressed their case in a minutes-long encounter with Robert Zoellick, the bank's president, here late Thursday and in subsequent talks with Obiageli Ezekwesili, its vice president for Africa, staff members, and representatives of European countries on the lender's executive board.
Executive directors are expected to meet in early December to review the Pygmies' complaints, the results of an investigation by the bank's quasi-independent inspection panel, and managers' response.
Donaldson said the management document was being revised. The document could rebut the Pygmies' charges or it could explain lapses. Managers typically outline steps to rectify problems identified by inspectors.
The inspection panel, in a widely leaked report, faulted the bank for backing logging in the DRC based on exaggerated estimates of the export revenue to be reaped. In consequence, inspectors found, sustainable forestry and conservation were discouraged.
Sinafasi said alternative forest products include mushrooms, medicinal plants, handicrafts, honey, and bush meat.
The panel also found that the benefits of logging have accrued mainly to foreign firms and their local affiliates, and that companies have not made good on promises to invest some of the proceeds in local aid projects.
"The benefits from the industrial harvesting of trees ... are not going to the people living in and around the forest," it said, adding that investigators "found evidence that the promised benefits to the communities ... such as schools, clinics and other facilities, have not materialised."
The report further assailed the lender for failing to meet its own standards for environmental impact assessments and for lax monitoring of the situation on the ground.
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Sinafasi, citing signals from bank executive directors and managers as well as growing appreciation of the forests' role in regulating climate, said he was optimistic the bank would pay greater attention to forest communities but added: "Of course, we are not naive."
Bank officials said a logging moratorium in the DRC was imposed in 2002 and that commercial concessions are under review and will be converted into new contracts only if they pass legal muster. The agency supports these measures as a way to bring some order to a system unable to keep up with fast-moving logging companies.
Sinafasi, however, said Zoellick appeared unaware that 107 new logging contracts have been issued in violation of the moratorium.
Logging companies are required to ensure their operations fall within government business and environmental regulations. In practice, local and international watchdogs have said, the companies proceed at will and, if confronted over violations by government agents, simply bribe the poorly paid civil servants to look the other way.
