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Country Profiles - Democratic Republic of Congo

Political, social and economic framework

AFTER 32 YEARS of "kleptocracy" under Dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1997. Hopes that its poverty-stricken people would see more than a change of name in their country were, however, soon thwarted.

Located on the equator, east of Congo (Brazzaville), DRC would be a landlocked country but for 37 kilometres of coastline. It is the largest country in the Congo Basin region. Of its 2.3 million square kilometres, nearly half is forestland (1.1 million square kilometres in 1993).1 DRC contains 12.5% of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest — only Brazil and Indonesia have larger areas. As well as its immense forests, it has vast deposits of cobalt, copper and diamonds. Its network of rivers are a natural transport system and huge potential source of hydroelectricity. Its farming land is rich; 70% of the population is involved in subsistence farming. Many of the country’s 48 million people depend on the forests for non-timber forest products such as food, building materials and medicines.2 In 1994, both urban and non-urban dwellers collected fuelwood and charcoal from the forest at an estimated rate of 42.6 million cubic metres every year.3

Despite being such a large and relatively fertile country rich in natural resources, there is hunger, competition for land, and pressure on the rainforest arising from landlessness. In large areas of DRC, the people with power have managed to expropriate the land from those less powerful than themselves. For example, although the region of Kivu, which borders the Ituri Forest, is one of the greenest and most luxuriant parts of DRC, one researcher noted that food security there "is not about how lush and productive the region is, but about access to its lushness, and to its product."4 Those pushed off their land move into forest areas to clear other land for cultivation, often making use of the roads created by logging companies.5

The country has had decades of economic mismanagement, corruption, lack of investment in infrastructure and widespread insecurity caused by political conflicts. Real wages, even before the upheavals of the 1990s, were one-tenth of what they were at independence from Belgium in 1960. Chronic malnutrition is rife, and 80% of people live in absolute poverty.6 The economy shrank under President Mobutu; GNP in 1996 was less than half that of 1980, while per capita GNP fell even more dramatically.7 Per capita GNP in 1997 was US$ 110, the lowest of the six countries featured in this report and the second lowest in Africa (Mozambique being the lowest at US$ 90).8 The total debt of DRC in 1996 was US$ 12.8 billion, including nearly US$ 7 billion in arrears, the majority of which was owed to bilateral creditors.9 Despite its unrepayable debt and qualification for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), the country has little chance of having its debt cancelled because of the ongoing political and economic upheavals.

DRC has a long history of conflict. Before independence in 1960, a particularly brutal colonial regime had dominated the country for decades. In 1965, General Mobutu Sese Seko took over in a military coup and stayed in power for over 30 years, until Laurent Kabila ousted him in another military coup in 1997. Mobutu presided over widescale corruption, paying large amounts of money to friends and foe alike to keep himself in power.10 He is alleged to have built up a massive personal fortune,11 while receiving foreign assistance from the US, Europe and international organisations such as the World Bank. When Kabila took power, western nations signalled their willingness to work with the government upon condition that it committed itself to democracy and human rights. Hopes that Kabila would meet these requirements, however, soon faded. Since the assassination of Kabila in January 2001 and his replacement by his 31-year-old son, the country remains unstable.12

DRC is at the centre of what has been called the "First African War" because of the number of countries involved — Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and, briefly, Chad on the side of President Kabila’s government, Uganda and Rwanda on the side of the rebels. The war has worsened the economic and political situation. Human rights’ abuses by all parties in the conflict have been reported. Many commercial logging companies have suspended or closed their operations in the country. The war has pushed refugees into the forested areas, thereby increasing population density, and has intensified insecurity, two factors that contribute to deforestation. Amnesty International estimates that as many as one million people have been internally displaced, on top of the several hundred thousand who have fled to neighbouring countries.13

Forest policy and practice

President Laurent Kabila made many promises when he assumed power in 1997, including pledges in 1998 to establish a genuine conservation agenda for DRC.14 No progress has been made since. The civil war that started in 1998 devastated large parts of the country such as the province of Orientale (formerly Haute Zaire) and has halted most logging operations throughout the country. If logging resumes, however, it is questionable whether it will contribute to the reconstruction and sustainable development of DRC.

Logging companies operate in DRC without an institutional or legislative framework to ensure the forests’ sustainable and equitable use. According to a study conducted by the World Resources Institute, none of the concessions in DRC have been managed responsibly15 and little changed under Kabila. Many concessions were still operating as they did under President Mobutu, that is, by indirect management through European logging companies because of a lack of trained local staff. Concessions which were dormant tended not to be withdrawn, although many of them had been granted to cronies of Mobutu’s regime.16

In 1988, over 21 million hectares were designated for timber production.17 At present, concessions cover approximately 11.8 million hectares of which 8.2 million hectares are possibly active. The active concessions are in the provinces of Bas Congo, Bandundu, Orientale and Equateur. The most important logging company in the country is Siforco, a subsidiary of the German company, Danzer, which holds 2.9 million hectares — one quarter of the country’s concessions.

Formally, a company must spend one year evaluating the concession area and three years constructing infrastructure such as roads before it can have guaranteed use of the concession area. Logging concessions are allocated on a renewable 25-year lease.18 But loggers have commented that, in practice, the contracts can be terminated at any time.19 Logging companies also report that they have to give 10% of their profits to chiefs, bureaucrats and generals.20 Tax revenues from logging are low. Concessionaires pay US$2 per hectare for each 1,000 hectare block for which they have been granted a "Permit to Cut".21 A law from the Mobutu era mandates anyone who cuts a tree to replant one or two trees.22 In practice, companies and individuals do not comply with this law.

Most timber exports from DRC are of logs rather than processed wood. The only measure taken to encourage the export of processed products rather than logs is variable taxation. The "ad valorem" tax on exports is 4% for logs, 2% on sawn wood and 1.5 % for veneer sheets.23 In April 1999, log exports were briefly banned, an initiative which foreign logging companies claimed would lead to the end of the forestry sector in the country. They put pressure on the government, and the prohibition was lifted three months later.24

Production and EU trade

In 1995, DRC produced about 300,000 cubic metres of logs.25 Although formal sources suggest that there was a substantial increase in 1996, available figures indicate that total production in that year dropped to 287,000 cubic metres.26 The war slowed production in 1997 to 236,000 cubic metres and still further in 1998 to 224,000 cubic metres.

In 1994, log exports totalled 118,000 cubic metres, sawn wood exports came to 41,000 cubic metres and veneer sheet exports amounted to 8,000 cubic metres.27 Data for the following years show approximately the same breakdown between the three types of export, although official data vary. Just as production dropped slightly in 1997 and 1998, so did exports. In 1997, log exports were 103,000 cubic metres, sawn wood exports were 32,000 cubic metres and veneer sheets were 6,000 cubic metres; In 1998, log exports totalled 97,000 cubic metres, sawn wood totalled 37,000 cubic metres and veneer sheets totalled 4,000 cubic metres.28 The main species exported are Sapelli, Sipo, Tola and Iroko, but also Afrormosia, Tima, and Wenge.29 The main importing countries are Portugal, Germany and France.

International financial assistance

Apart from humanitarian aid, other donor projects in DRC have been affected by the conflict in recent years. EU support through ECOFAC, for example, was prepared for the country, as for other countries in the region, but none of the planned activities has been carried out. In 1990, the World Bank was exerting pressure to increase timber exports to pay the country’s debt, and to this end it provided US$ 12 million more in aid.30

Environmental impacts

In theory, logging companies who were working in the country up until the civil war broke out in 1998 would return to take a second cut. In practice, they did not, since the amount of forest destroyed during the first cut, and the influx of shifting cultivators, have both meant that there were not enough valuable trees left for a second cut. Logging is thus both highly selective and unsustainable. Only the best trees are taken — the average timber yield is 8.7 cubic metres (less than one tree) per hectare, a yield so low that it effectively quickens the pace at which more rainforest is opened up. The massive trunks can be taken out of the forest only on feeder tracks and logging routes before travelling down river; thus these selectively-logged areas are criss-crossed with a network of roads. The heaviest logging has occurred in the province of Bas-DRC, which is relatively close to both the capital, Kinshasa, and the ports. In the wake of the loggers, people have moved in to clear huge areas for farming. Hardly any primary rainforest now remains in Bas-DRC. The other rainforest areas of DRC face a similar future if logging continues to impoverish the ecosystem, and land appropriation and lower prices for agricultural and forest produce continue to impoverish the poor.31

There are 18 protected areas covering an area of 18 million — 7.69% of the country.32 Although the percentage of formally protected areas in the country is relatively high, in practice forests in these areas are at risk of being seriously degraded.

Because of the war, the government cannot manage, let alone monitor many of the formally protected areas. The Maiko National Park and Okapi Wildlife Reserve, for instance, are in the eastern regions of DRC currently occupied by the rebels and their foreign allies; the Virunga National Park is on the border with Uganda, one of the countries supporting the rebels. Even before the current war, these areas had been threatened by the arrival of large numbers of refugees from Rwanda who had been pushed into the forest by Kabila’s rebel army, ADFL (Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo). The retreating Zairian army (fighting on the side of Mobutu) also damaged many eastern areas.33

But monitoring of protected areas outside the war zone is also deficient. The state department responsible for protected areas, the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN), spends between 75 and 85% of its budget in Kinshasa,34 leaving just one guard per 20,000 hectares in the field. Moreover, because official pay is low, guards sometimes depend on handouts from illegal hunters and mining operations.35

It is not surprising that logging takes place in protected areas. A UNDP report estimates that, in 1995, between 7,000 and 10,000 cubic metres of timber were leaving the southern part of Virunga National Park every day.36 The destruction of these areas has serious economic consequences, particularly for an impoverished country. In the late 1970s, tourism revenues from chimpanzee viewing amounted to over US$ 1 million for the ICCN, financing the management of all protected areas.37

Social impacts

In social terms, the records of logging companies are mixed. On the one hand, they provide a certain level of health, education and transportation services to villagers that cannot currently be provided by the State.38 On the other, they pay Congolese workers very low wages and feel no responsibility towards them once they have finished logging and moved away. This means that those who have moved into the forest to work for the company often have to switch to clearing the forest to grow food in order to feed their families.39 Moreover, companies tend to ignore safety requirements, such as provision of safety equipment, so accidents are frequent but compensation is rare.40

Insecure land rights also cause deforestation. Historically, shifting cultivation, customary tenure and an abundance of land meant that land was held by groups in which the elders had to remain responsive to the needs of the village as a whole. Conflicts were resolved by people moving to establish other villages in which the chiefs or elders sought to attract people to settle rather than to exclude them. Once Belgian colonial law, enforced by European colonial companies, was imposed, people had to remain in the area where they were registered and to grow crops to pay as tax. The post-colonial state has continued the colonial policy of ensuring that chiefs remain in power only if they retain control over their population in a way that extracts wealth for the benefit of those who control the state. In this framework, all land belongs to the state. In practice, however, land belongs to the chief to whom peasants must pay their dues to use the land, dues which those higher up the hierarchy can then extract from the local chief.41 This arrangement does not secure villagers’ access to land, since the chief can use his connections with those higher up the hierarchy to support him in selling land to anyone he wishes to. Those pushed off their land often move into forest areas which are accessible because of roads opened by logging companies. They clear the land, contributing to deforestation, which in turn makes forest resources such as fuelwood more scarce. In some areas of Orientale where deforestation was already occurring in 1990, women of all ages have to walk longer and longer distances to obtain fuelwood, up to six or seven kilometres.42

The more powerful people tend to expropriate the land from those less powerful. Logging simply replicates on a large-scale the continual expropriation of land and resources from the poor. This is a form of wealth accumulation by the powerful which is based not on the accumulation and investment of capital, nor the maintenance of a strong political structure, but on the intentional creation and perpetuation of insecurity at all levels of society. This occurred during Mobutu’s regime and did not appear to have changed under Kabila’s government.43

As in the other countries of the Central African region, the Pygmy peoples are particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of logging. Their numbers are relatively high in the DRC, estimates varying between 39,000 and 154,000. They are broadly divided into the Bacwa, Batwa and the Bambuti. They face several threats, such as the destruction of their forests, malnutrition and diseases including tuberculosis and leprosy. Venereal diseases have made many Bacwa women infertile, while in some areas the Bambuti have suffered badly from alcoholism and violence at the hands of both rebels and regular armies. On their forest lands, the historic relationships of exchange with local farmers are being severely disrupted by the influx of farmers from outside the area who want to grow cash crops. Pygmy rights to forest lands appear not to be recognised in customary or national law. The Pygmies are additionally at risk through some conservation initiatives. Plans for a forest reserve to protect the central Ituri Forest, for example, includes a core area where hunter-gatherers are not permitted to hunt or gather.44 In the 1970s and 1980s, Batwa Pygmies were expelled from the Kahuzi-Biega forests in Kivu, without compensation or provision of alternative lands.45

Companies logging the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo

It is not clear which companies have suspended operations but plan to resume once the conflict has lessened, and which companies have ceased operations altogether. No map of concessions is available but field work undertaken in October 1999 gleaned the following information on concession holders (see Table 4). It should be noted that most current concessions are believed to have suspended operations because of the war.

A number of Asian companies were reportedly considering the acquisition of logging concessions in DRC, for example, Idris Hydraulic and Innovest,46 but no further information was available during field visits in 1999. In addition, several companies are believed to have ceased operations altogether because of the political situation and/or financial difficulties. These include: Amexbois; Agrifor; La Forestiere; and Soexforco.47 Recent unconfirmed information suggests that a Thai forestry company, DARA Forest, is buying timber from rebels in eastern DRC.