Along with Canada's Boreal Forest and the Amazon, the Congo rainforest plays a vital role in regulating the global climate. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) alone accounts for over 8% of the world's carbon stocks, making it the fourth largest forest carbon reservoir in the world. 

In spite of the forest's critical importance, industrial logging is putting the future of the forest and the life that depends on it in jeopardy.

Logging titles across Central Africa, mainly in the DRC, cover 50 million hectares of rainforest – roughly the size of France. One-third of logging contracts are in areas that are home to the endangered tree species afrormosia and a third are in areas identified as priorities for conservation. All are in areas inhabited by communities dependent on the forest for their survival.

Supported by the World Bank and international donors, the DRC government has encouraged industrial logging as a means of fostering development and alleviating poverty. But such logging fuels these problems, cheating the people, all who live on below a dollar a day, out of their land and livelihoods.

Greenpeace has uncovered the social chaos and environmental destruction brought about by the logging sector, exposing international logging companies involved in illegal timber trading, tax evasion, bribery and dealing with traders blacklisted by the United Nations Security Council.

Companies like the German-Swiss Danzer group are cheating the people of this region out of vast amounts of revenue each year through evading taxes. In 2008, Greenpeace exposed the company for failing to pay nearly 8 million euros in taxes; enough to pay for 700,000 Congolese children to be vaccinated.

It is common practice for companies to ‘pay' for forest access that yields them hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits with sacks of salt, soap, coffee, beer and sugar. Furthermore, their requirement to build critical infrastructure, such as schools or hospitals for local communities, either fails to materialise or is far from adequate.

Helping to fight climate change

If logging continues at the projected rate, the DRC risks losing over 40% of its forest, with the area north of the Congo River being entirely cleared by 2050. This will release up to 34.4 billon tonnes of C02, roughly equal to the United Kingdom's total emissions over the last 60 years.

The potential value of these forests as a carbon store is far greater than the current income generated by industrial logging. Deforestation accounts for about one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. Replacing industrial logging by an internationally financed forest protection system would not only be financially beneficial to the people of the region by protecting livelihoods and biodiversity, it will also help save the climate.

Solutions

It is not too late to protect large areas of intact rainforest, but action must be taken swiftly. Greenpeace is calling for:

• Zero deforestation in the world's intact tropical forests by 2015;
• Adoption of "Forests for Climate", an international financing mechanism that makes safeguarding intact forests more economical than their wholesale destruction;
• Stringent steps to end the international market for illegal timber;
• The DRC government to develop an integrated, national land use plan, including designating 15% of the area as protected with local communities' full involvement in identifying forest protection areas from the outset.

Once lost, the forest, its wildlife and the vital environmental services it provides cannot be replaced. It's not too late to save the forests of the Congo, but the clock is ticking.