{"id":55297,"date":"2024-04-08T11:51:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T11:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=55297"},"modified":"2024-04-09T07:50:38","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T07:50:38","slug":"drc-greenpeace-denounces-the-illicit-allocation-of-a-million-hectares-of-forest-to-an-american-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/press\/55297\/drc-greenpeace-denounces-the-illicit-allocation-of-a-million-hectares-of-forest-to-an-american-company\/","title":{"rendered":"DRC: Greenpeace denounces the illicit allocation of a million hectares of forest to an American company\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kinshasa, April 8, 2024<\/strong> \u2013 At a time when the DRC is buzzing with wild rumors about Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba\u2019s possible role in a new government, Greenpeace Africa is calling on her to explain her award last year of hundreds of thousands of hectares of so-called \u201cconservation\u201d concessions in excess of the legal limit.<\/p>\n\n

On March 4, 2023, she awarded four concessions, including at least one in her electoral district, to subsidiaries of Wildlife Works Carbon (WWC), a powerful \u2013 and highly controversial \u2013 American carbon company. <\/p>\n\n

The surface area of three of these concessions totals 771,125 ha.  The area of the fourth is unknown: DRC\u2019s Official Journal indicates that it\u2019s 282,295 ha, but the location data points provided are incoherent.  <\/p>\n\n

The Forestry Code<\/a> stipulates that \u201cforests with a total area of more than 500,000 hectares, together or separately, may not be conceded to the same [natural or legal] person.\u201d<\/em> Concession contracts covering an area in excess of 300,000 ha are approved by presidential order, those in excess of 400,000 ha by a law passed by the National Assembly. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe Minister didn\u2019t respond to our request for clarification. Concession n\u00b0001\/23, near Basoko (Tshopo Province), was awarded to the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de restauration foresti\u00e8re et d\u2019am\u00e9nagement (SORFA). According to its articles of association, WWC owns 70% of the company, Prof. Jean-Robert Bwangoy, director of WWC operations in Congo, 10%, and his cousin, a certain Meize Mompongo, 20%,\u201d states Greenpeace Africa.<\/p>\n\n

Prof. Bwangoy told Greenpeace he had asked Ms. Mompongo \u201cto represent the communities<\/em>\u201d living near the SORFA concessions.  He failed to specify how she could do so, without an apparent conflict of interest, when she is a member of the company director’s family.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cBut which concessions was he referring to?  During last December\u2019s legislative elections, Ms. Mompongo was first deputy<\/a> for a candidate not in Tshopo Province but in Bikoro (Equateur Province). As for the uncle of Prof. Bwangoy, the latter asserts that \u2018the two SORFA concessions<\/em>\u2019 are \u2018exactly located in his community,<\/em>\u2019\u201d continues Greenpeace Africa.<\/p>\n\n

SORFA clearly inspires great confidence in the Ministry.  The company applied for legal registration on March 16, 2023: Mrs. Bazaiba had signed its concession contracts almost two weeks earlier. <\/p>\n\n

The other two WWC subsidiaries that received concessions on March 4, 2023 are Ecosystem Restoration Associates Congo (ERA Congo) (188,835 ha, Basankusu territory (Equateur Province)) and WWC Congo (299,995 ha, Businga territory (Nord Ubangi Province)).<\/p>\n\n

Each of the four WWC contracts comes with the same little bonus: \u201cThe concessionaire is exempt from the provisions of article 82 of the Forestry Code relating to bank guarantees or security deposits<\/em>.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n

\u201cOther concessions may have been awarded to WWC.  In violation of the agreement the DRC signed in 2021 with the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) at COP26 in Glasgow \u2013 a deal worth $500 million \u2013 the Ministry of the Environment has still not published \u2018all […] conservation […] concession contracts […] on a publicly available internet site.\u2019  The DRC pledged<\/a> to do so \u2018by the end of 2022,\u2019\u201d recalls Greenpeace Africa. <\/p>\n\n

In an interview<\/a> on March 5, the Minister recounted an incident in which she was forced to refuse to sign a conservation concession contract with a foreign company because the area requested exceeded the legal limit.  <\/p>\n\n

\u201cAccording to the Minister, the company was seeking to acquire \u2018500 million hectares.\u2019<\/em>  A surprising claim when one considers that the total surface area of the DRC is only 234 million hectares,\u201d concludes Greenpeace Africa. <\/p>\n\n

END<\/p>\n\n

For further information, please contact: Rapha\u00ebl Mavambu<\/strong>, Media and Communications, Greenpeace Africa, rmavambu@greenpeace.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a time when the DRC is buzzing with wild rumors about Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba\u2019s possible role in a new government, Greenpeace Africa is calling on her to explain her award last year of hundreds of thousands of hectares of so-called \u201cconservation\u201d concessions in excess of the legal limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":55312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-africa-stateless\/2024\/04\/d3b5e4fb-gp0str4px_low_res.jpg","p4_og_image_id":"55309","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[24,47],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-55297","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\/55297","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\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55297"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55314,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55297\/revisions\/55314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55297"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=55297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}