The World Bank decides to destroy the 2nd largest forest in the world
The rainforest in the Congo is the second largest forest after the Amazon. The trees, soils and ecosystem locks 8 percent of our planet’s carbon. This ecosystem, through a multitude of services, provides medicine, shelter, timber and food for 40 million people. Today, the World Bank working indirecly with the UK Government, has decided to strip the forest of its timber, displace the local culture, and export its value to foreign markets.
The Guardian says “The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log the world’s second largest forest, endangering the lives of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside expertsâ€.
To bring this into focus, the UK government is the third largest contributor and has pledged another 50 million GBP for forestry aid in the Congo. TheWorld Bank, funded by the UK, sent in foreign companies to prosper from the forests timber, without any regard to the people that lived in the forest or its biodiversity. Instead under the machines of logging companies, the forest is simply regarded as an inventory for timber.
Once you create a favourable export market for industrial logging, other effects (not shown on the profit and loss accounts) start to appear, namely the social and environmental problems. The World Bank ignored 850 000 Pygmies living in the area, they knew these tribes lived there, and put them in serious potential harm. “Although the bank is legally committed to protecting the environment, and trying to alleviate poverty, the panel found that the policies it imposed on the Congo were having the opposite social and environmental effects:â€The Guardian
The World Bank has effectively declared war on nature. Pointing at the growth economy to solve Congo’s woes. This plan all over the world is increasingly looking like a mirage, an illusion of the mind that has deserted nature’s true value.
If you solely look at the revenue that industrial logging may generate, you distort the forests’ real value. One Pygmy leader said: “We are being made poor in every aspect … the [logging] company prevents us from going into the forests.†Another said that the company had bought the land so that people could no longer live in the forests.
Research has shown that foreign owned companies dominate the entire industry, some had the go ahead to log over 5 million hectares right across Pygmy territory.
“The Pygmies must be fully involved in developing any future plans for the forest, and the bank need to find ways of helping them uphold their rights, rather than helping logging companies to destroy them,†said Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation.
From the Amazon, a great shaman and leader, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami is delivering a letter to Gordon Brown. He argues: “…the only way to save the rainforest is to save the Indians, by recognising their land rightsâ€, and he continues “Without the forest, there is only sickness, and without us, it is dead land. The time has come for you to start listening to us. Give us back our lands and our health before it’s too late for us and too late for you.†Source Survival International.
US and Brazilian researchers has shown that the most effective way to stop logging in the Amazon is to protect Indian lands, which occupy one fifth of the Brazilian Amazon. The main problem is that most tribal lands remain unprotected, as in the case of the Pygmy areas of Congo.
The time has come to listen to the indigenous mind, learning the timeless values about our interdependence with our resources and not taking more than what the ecosystem can support. These values have been replaced by an illusion of economic progress. But as the storm gathers and the seas rise – global warming has made “economic progress†take on a whole new meaning.