Congo Rainforest

World Bank Ties

There are direct ties between the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private arm, and Olam International, a company involved in illegal logging operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Controlled by rich industrialized countries, the World Bank is one of the largest sources of funding for developing countries. It is the most important international donor in the DRC.

The World Bank suspended financial assistance to the DRC during the conflicts of the 1990s and resumed lending in 2001. By August 2006, the World Bank Group had approved loans, credits and grants to the DRC worth more than $4 billion.

In June 2002, the World Bank approved a $450 million Economic Recovery Credit for the DRC. The release of $15 million of this was made conditional on the adoption of the DRC forestry code. They also created a moratorium on the granting of new logging titles.

However, the moratorium was quickly overlooked as the DRC’s rich rainforest and mineral resources are eyed as a quick source of tax revenue and foreign earnings to kick-start the country’s collapsed economy.

Ancient Rainforests Vanishing

Even though there has been a moratorium on new logging permits, over 37 million acres of rainforest have been granted to the logging industry - that's an area the size of Illinois, and most of this is in areas that are vital for protecting biodiversity.

The DRC Rainforest is a critical habitat for the endangered bonobo (man's closest relative) and other threatened species such as forest elephants and hippopotamus. DRC forests have also been identified as critical for the livelihoods of an estimated 40 million rural people.

Broken Promises

Because of corruption and flawed law enforcement, taxes paid by the logging companies is not going back to the communities to provide essential services like education and healthcare. Even the World Bank admits that over the last three years, not a single penny paid by the logging companies has reached local communities. This leaves the local communities not only without the forest that provided their food, shelter and medicine, but without the benefits they have been promised.

A Call for Change

Today, the intact rainforest of the DRC needs to be valued and conserved in the interests of both the Congolese people and the global environment. These interests are incompatible with industrial logging: logging brings roads that open up – and thereby degrade – intact forest – a destruction that anyone with access to Google Earth can bear witness.

Greenpeace is demanding that all forest titles allocated in breach of the 2002 moratorium be cancelled through the ongoing legality review of all logging titles.

Greenpeace is also calling on the World Bank to stop funding illegal logging in the DRC and set up programs and projects that will actually help local communities—not harm them.

More Information

Congo -- Sold Down the River
Logging decimates African rainforest
Robbing the Rainforests
Letter to World Bank President
Lessons Learned from Cameroon