{"id":13072,"date":"2021-02-12T08:16:50","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T08:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=13072"},"modified":"2021-12-01T12:40:55","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:40:55","slug":"new-illegal-forest-concessions-in-the-drc-the-environment-minister-has-done-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/press\/13072\/new-illegal-forest-concessions-in-the-drc-the-environment-minister-has-done-it-again\/","title":{"rendered":"New illegal forest concessions in the DRC: the Environment Minister has done it again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kinshasa, February 11, 2021 – Greenpeace Africa calls on the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi, to order the immediate cancellation of four illegal forest concession contracts <\/a>signed last June 11 by the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Claude Nyamugabo. Greenpeace Africa calls on the public prosecutor to open proceedings.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

In an action brought by civil society before the conseil d\u2019Etat, the minister is already being pursued for having approved the illegal transfer a year ago of nearly two million hectares of concessions to two Chinese companies. Now Greenpeace Africa has discovered that in June 2020 the minister had illegally awarded four concessions, covering 777,639 hectares, to a Congolese company.<\/p>\n\n

If according to its website<\/a>, Groupe Services has no experience in logging and claims to be \u201ca national leader in ordinary cleaning,\u201d its CEO Andr\u00e9 Boluka Bomoh Lokolo is a former shareholder of Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Kiroise de Bois (SOKIBOIS). The director of the \u201cagriculture and forestry development department\u201d of the firm is Louison Ngwo Ekolonga, a former provincial Environment minister of the Bandundu province.<\/p>\n\n

The award of the four contracts is a violation of the moratorium<\/a> instituted in 2002 on the award of new industrial logging concessions. In addition, they exceed<\/a> by more than 400,000 hectares the legal limit attributable by ministerial signature and by more than 200,000 hectares the limit of forests attributable “to the same person, together or separately.”<\/p>\n\n

Two weeks after signing the illegal contracts, Claude Nyamugabo was the guest of honor at the 16th meeting of the Board of Directors of the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), a cohort of donors led by Norway, which has sunk more than 150 million euros in the \u201creform\u201d of the forestry sector since 2016. These friends of the Congo asked their guests to \u201cshare his vision.\u201d He retailed them “his commitment to reconcile the objectives of development and preservation of forests while ensuring that this sector contributes to the country’s economy.”<\/p>\n\n

In his  June 2, 2020 order seizing the concessions to be  handed over to Mr. Boluka, the minister used a CAFI demand as a pretext. The CAFI letter of intent signed with DRC in 2016 stipulates<\/a> that any concession lackingan approved management plan “or at least [one] officially submitted for approval” must be returned to the State no later than January 1, 2019.<\/p>\n\n

Ir\u00e8ne Wabiwa Betoko, international project manager for the Greenpeace Africa forest campaign: \u201cPresident F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi should be vigilant in the forming  of a new government. Decisions must be meticulous and reserved only for people who will truly serve the national interest.”<\/p>\n\n

The discovery of these secret contracts comes after the announcement<\/a> on January 29 by the Minister of Hydrocarbons of a plan to auction nineteen oil blocks across the country. On January 11, F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi presented himself as a great defender of the environment in a videoconference address to the One Planet summit in Paris.<\/p>\n\n

ENDS<\/p>\n\n

\n
PROTECT THE CONGO BASIN FOREST<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

Contact<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Ir\u00e8ne Wabiwa Betoko, International Project Manager for the Greenpeace Africa forest campaign, mobile: +243 976 756 102, Email: irene.wabiwa@greenpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Tal Harris, International Communications Coordinator for Greenpeace Africa<\/p>\n\n

mobile: +221 785 36 62 70, Email: tal.harris@greenpeace.org<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCongo Basin Forest\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n Get Involved\n <\/a>\n \t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/section>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greenpeace Africa calls on the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi, to order the immediate cancellation of four illegal forest concession contracts <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":5420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[24,47],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-13072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protecttheenvironment","tag-forests","tag-drc","p4-page-type-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13072"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49901,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13072\/revisions\/49901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13072"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=13072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}