Saving the Congo Basin: Just With Cash?
No commentsBy John Mbaria Environment Correspondent Business Daily Nation Media Group Ltd
As discussions in the United Nations conference on climate change prepare to enter their second week in the Polish city of Poznan, there are disagreements over how to compansate African countries and peoples hosting one of the most significant global ’lungs’ in order to keep it intact.
Together with the Amazon, the multi-million square-kilometre Congo Basin Forests hold the key to reducing the climate change caused by deforestation. But the world is yet to agree on how to preserve this second largest of the world’s last major carbon sinks.
And so disagreements here over the last week have featured civil society bodies saying the much-talked about cash-for-conservation approach is fundamentally flawed.
“Paying for carbon credits will not be the answer”, said Samuel Nnah Ndombe, an agricultural economist with the Cameroon-based Centre for Environment and Development. In an interview with the Business Daily, Ndombe termed the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme as a cash-for-environment quick fix that might, in the end, not work. “They go about it like it is all about money,” he said. But he said this approach resonates very well with African bureaucrats and relevant governments who will end up with additional disposable income. “But such money fixes have very little to offer to indigenous groups who have managed relevant forests throughout history,” he warned.
A similar position appears to have been taken during last year’s climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, by the Forest Action Network (FAN), a 400-strong coalition of environmental groups based in 85 countries. FAN recognized that securing the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities is paramount to the success of the REDD mechanism.
It was also clear that renewed efforts to save the Basin appear to have fallen lately under the banner of “a global response to a global issue.” The latest entrant into the fray is the renowned Greenpeace International, setting up an office a week ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Greenpeace, whose on-and-off presence in DRC goes back several years, now pledges its legendary agitation to stop the pillage of the Congo and ensure that the livelihoods of about 40 million people who depend on the forest directly are safeguarded.
The organization joins such earlier initiatives as the Congo Basin Forest Fund that was launched in a ceremony presided over by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in June. The initiative is meant to offer relevant African governments and local people finance for engaging in economic activities other than logging, mining or felling of trees for wood fuel. It was flagged off with Britain’s and Norway’s contribution of over 100 million pounds. Kenya’s 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai, and the former Canadian PM Paul Martin were picked to co-chair its governing council, while the African Development Bank hosts its secretariat.
Further, Britain and Norway’s cash injection built on an earlier informal association of 40 governmental and international organizations called the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) which was established during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. This was in response to a call by the UN on the international community to aid relevant Basin countries manage the forests more sustainably and reduce their destruction through poverty, shifting cultivation, population growth and civil conflicts.
The figures being talked about here are awesome. For instance, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) believes that what is needed to save the Congo Basin Forests, the Amazon and other natural forests is between US$10 billion and US$33 billion annually. With this kind of cash, UICN says that the world would stop deforestation in the countries responsible for 70 percent of the land use-based emissions. “To put these figures in perspective, even US$33 billion is less than half of the amount that US citizens spend on soft drinks per year,” IUCN says, adding that the conservation of such key natural forests as the Congo should be the priority for emerging cash-for-forests mechanisms.
But the money is yet to be made available. For instance, the US-based Conservation International (CI) laments that existing finances from both public and private funding only cover a third of the required cash.
But the cash-for-forests argument has raised considerable controversy here at Poznan. Some of the issues raised are of a fundamental nature, with questions raised as to whether injecting cash into a system that totally ignores the contribution of traditional stewardship of forests is what the doctor ordered. The indigenous people’s representatives from such far-flung areas as Indonesia, the United States, Brazil, Congo and even Maasai representatives from Kenya are unanimous that the world is wrong to believe that reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere can be achieved simply by cash injections. Tom Goldtooth, the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environment Network, told Business Daily that there is something fundamentally odd about the fact that the world finds it worthwhile to engage in intensive discussions on how to literally trade in air. “Looking at the atmosphere as a commodity negates our whole outlook and beliefs,” he said. Others within the network are not so critical but have nevertheless raised another fundamental issue: whether it is possible to make cash injections under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) permanent in a world plagued by cyclical shifts in fortunes.
Responding to the concerns raised, a top official of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change pointed out that if traditional mechanisms of climate adaptation are not married with modern systems of management, “then we will probably be doomed to failure.”
It also appears that the big cash-for-forests initiatives lacked the support of many civil society groups for not tackling the ‘real’ issues behind the destruction. This includes the usual problems of lack of transparency and corruption of DRC officials and those of other constituent countries managing the forests. For instance, an exposé’ published by Greenpeace on July 30 (Conning the Congo) revealed that over 25 percent of the Congo Basin forests are controlled by international logging companies, some of which are involved in denying the relevant governments much-needed tax revenues.
In addition, Greenpeace’s Africa Forest Coordinator, Michelle Medeiros, told Business Daily that her organization is unhappy with the forest codes that were set up in relevant countries with the assistance of the World Bank. “By facilitating the Codes, the Bank ended up setting the countries up to adopt models that have ruined forests elsewhere,” she said. She believes that the Code merely helps countries within the Basin to export forest products to China, the US and other countries. To her, any logging ought to be done “at the local level and for purposes of meeting the needs of the local people and not for making furniture that ends up lining conference halls in the developed world.”
Researchers attending the conference have also been hauled into the controversy. Some have openly supported the cash-for-forests mechanisms as a viable means of helping the world reduce emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. For instance, the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) supports such payments, saying that it could help the world to reduce temperatures by a quarter degree Celsius. CIFOR expressed its fear that if the raging controversy prevails, the suggested payment mechanism might not be fully adopted before next year’s global climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The international forestry research body concurs with fears expressed by the indigenous people that payments-for-forests mechanisms might end up denying them ownership and user rights over the Congo and other natural forests.
Among the issues raised by those opposed to the payment mechanisms is that there is a danger the money would not reach those it is meant to assist. Some have told Business Daily that such cash might be lost through lack of transparency and corruption as well as through payment of exorbitant salaries and allowances to expatriates managing the funds or relevant projects.
The Congo Basin hosts 26 percent of the world’s remaining forests and is estimated to be about two million square kilometres in extent. Estimates made here show that each week, the Basin loses forests the size of 25,000 football pitches or over 5,700 square kilometres. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that if the current destruction is not stopped, then the forests might be entirely lost in the next 30 or so years. This portends serious crisis for a world that desperately needs the Basin to absorb the greenhouse gases it has been throwing into the air. UNEP further estimates that the destruction is rapidly jeopardising habitats for 400 species of animals and 1,000 species of plants, not to mention the danger this poses to the lives and livelihoods of as many as 40 million people.
