Publication - June 25, 2010
In 2002, under pressure from the World Bank, the DRC government had introduced a new Forest Law and issued a moratorium suspending the allocation of new logging titles. However, as the World Bank pointed out as early as 2003, the moratorium and the new Forest Code were immediately violated. To date, over 100 logging titles covering 15 million hectares have been allocated illegally.
October 2008: In April 2007, Greenpeace published "Carving Up the Congo," an investigative report exposing the social chaos and environmental destruction caused by the logging industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The report was published midway through the government's legal review of 156 logging titles against criteria set out in a Presidential Decree in October 2005. In 2002, under pressure from the World Bank, the DRC government had introduced a new Forest Law and issued a moratorium suspending the allocation of new logging titles. However, as the World Bank pointed out as early as 2003, the moratorium and the new Forest Code were immediately violated. To date, over 100 logging titles covering 15 million hectares have been allocated illegally.
After a delay of two years, the legal review has finally come to a close. An Inter-Ministerial Commission, which has been evaluating the reviews of companies carried out by a government-appointed Technical Working Group, has decided which logging titles will be converted into long-term concessions. Last August, the Technical Working Group published the recommendations it made in 2006: it gave the go-ahead to 29 out of 156 titles.
Astonishingly, 16 of these approved titles were illegal - allocated after the 2002 suspension of new allocations.
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