Posted by jamie — 6 July 2007 at 3:16pm
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Right now, a group of Greenpeace climbers are perched on top of a set of cranes in the port of La Rochelle on the French Atlantic coast. They've been there since Wednesday night and as well as admiring a no-doubt magnificent view, they're also preventing a ship unloading its cargo of timber which has come from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
We need your help to protect the Congo rainforest. It's the second largest rainforest on Earth (only the Amazon is bigger), supporting millions of people as well as being stuffed full of unique and engandered species, including gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. And like all large forests, it is crucially important for regulating the local and global climate.
Posted by jamie — 6 June 2007 at 5:23pm
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The BBC have published a gallery of images focusing on the work of the rangers in Virunga National Park. Found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it's the oldest reserve in Africa and home to the DRC's remaining mountain gorillas.
Posted by jamie — 30 May 2007 at 12:26pm
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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.
Posted by jamie — 21 May 2007 at 5:12pm
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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.
Posted by jamie — 19 April 2007 at 1:43pm
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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.
Stretching across central Africa, the rainforest of the Congo basin is the second largest on Earth; only the Amazon is larger. Around two-thirds of the region's intact forest is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but it also covers large areas of Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.
Millions of people across the region depend on the forest for food, medicine and shelter, and the cultures of many communities are founded on their relationship with the forest. No less than two-thirds of the DRC's 60 million people rely on the forest in one way or another.
Posted by jamie — 12 April 2007 at 6:04pm
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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.
Posted by jamie — 12 April 2007 at 1:33pm
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If you like the animation we produced (with the glorious help of Will Flash For Cash), then you can easily send it to a friend - just click the envelope icon by the title of this blog entry.
You can also use it on your own blog or website. In fact, that's the idea - we want as many people as possible to find out what's happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo and take action to stop it.