© Stok/Greenpeace
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has, at long last, completed a review of the logging industry. Although there are some positive results, at the same time it has allowed an expansion of the industry to more than twice the recommended size.
Back in October last year, the government announced the results of a three-year review of logging contracts that had been issued. Logging companies which had contracts cancelled were then allowed to appeal against the decisions and this week's announcement is the final result of that process.
The good news is that 68 out of 87 appeals from logging companies were rejected, and such a high number of rejections is a positive sign that the government is starting to take a stand against the logging industry so the forest can be protected along with the communities who rely on it.
But the government has also gone against the recommendations of its own advisors on the amount of logging it should allow. In a review of all existing logging contracts, they said that new long-term logging areas should be reduced to 4.4 million hectares, but the government has approved 65 new logging contracts totalling over 9 million hectares.
Worse still, some companies have been allowed to keep their logging titles - obtained after a moratorium on the issuing of new contracts which has been in place since 2002. The Swiss-based Danzer Group (also the focus of our report which revealed how some companies operating in the DRC are not paying tax) and Liechtenstein-based Nordsüdtimber Group both managed to keep hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest which they grabbed while the moratorium was in place.
In cancelling so many contracts, the DRC government has taken some positive action to protect the forest, and hopefully this will create momentum for developing alternatives to industrial logging. But it still needs to take a firmer position and resist pressure from greedy international timber companies, so the moratorium remains in place and the dodgy contracts are cancelled.
