world bank

If the testimonies of our two Congolese visitors weren't enough to convince you that there's trouble of the arboreal variety brewing in the Democratic Republic of Congo, try this film for size.

Adrien Sinafasi Makelo (left) and René Ngongo (right) address MPs, civil servants and campaigners

On Thursday, I found myself at Portcullis House, an imposing edifice that sits across the road from the main Houses of Parliament building. The occasion was a panel discussion hosted by Greenpeace and (deep breath) the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Great Lakes Region of Africa, to discuss the crisis in the Congo rainforest. As the name suggests, it's a collective of MPs from all parties with a special interest in that part of the world who try to make sure issues affecting the region remain on the political agenda.

Forest officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo are woefully under-resourced

It's not a trick question, and the answer is simple: when a moratorium is failing to stop the problem it was originally designed to address, then it's not much of a moratorium at all. There's one in place right now in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is supposed to help prevent the destruction of the country's rainforest, and yet it has been repeatedly breached until the moratorium itself is practically worthless.

Our report on the con in the Congo really did catch the attention of the World Bank. They were referenced many, many times in its pages and have taken a keen interest in what we have to say about their role in the destruction of the African rainforest at the hands of the international logging companies.

Such is their interest that a special event was held at the spring meeting in Washington DC last weekend - even though it was in the offing before we released the report, it wasn't on the official agenda and was held as a direct result of the work done by ourselves and other organisations, both globally and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the last few weeks.

Following on from the release yesterday of our major new report about the con in the Congo, our campaigners met with Hilary Benn to ask what he intends to do about it. As the UK governor of the World Bank, he is extremely well-placed to make a big noise about it at the bank's spring meeting this weekend.

As we revealed last week, we've been doing a lot of work recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), researching the threats that currently face the vast rainforest that stretch across the Congo basin.

It's a forest we can ill-afford to lose: 40 million people depend on the forest in one way or another. It is also critical for the survival of our closest animal relatives, including gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, and like all large intact forests, it's crucially important for regulating the local and global climate.