The meeting, convened by the Congolese Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, considered lifting the long-standing national moratorium on the allocation of new industrial logging concessions, which for some years has restrained DRC’s chaotic and often illegal logging industry and helped to keep the country’s forests relatively intact.
An expansion of industrial logging following the lifting of the moratorium would unleash a tidal wave of environmental destruction, social abuses and corruption in the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest. It would also create a significant increase in carbon emissions, including from the recently discovered and extensive peat deposits which underlay many areas of DRC’s forest.
This would make a mockery of efforts of the international community to improve forest governance in DRC, work with and fund the government of DRC to protect its forests and peat swamps, as well as DRC’s leadership of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations.
We call on the DRC government to renounce its plans to move towards a lifting of its logging moratorium, to state that it will retain the moratorium, and to cancel and publish details of any agreement with companies on the allocation of new concessions. We encourage the international community to support the DRC government to immediately cancel the five million hectares of logging concessions in the country which are currently operating without management plans and are therefore illegal.
Contacts:
In Bonn: Lars Løvold, Director, Rainforest Foundation Norway: [email protected] +47 481 88 148
Victorine Che Thoener, Project Leader, Greenpeace: [email protected]
In DRC: Jean-Marie Nkanda, Acting Coordinator, Réseau des Ressources Naturelles (RRN): [email protected] +243998316349
In UK:
Simon Counsell, Executive Director, Rainforest Foundation UK: [email protected] +44 (0)7949559969
Jo Blackman, Campaign Leader, Global Witness: [email protected] +44 (0)7912 517 126