In the midst of the Glasgow 2021 Climate Change Conference, the DRC announced that it wanted to review its contracts binding it with log export companies.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is fully committed to the Blue Fund for the Congo Basin. Its president, Félix Tshisekedi, is currently in Glasgow, Scotland, to praise the importance of this initiative alongside, in particular, President Denis Sassou N'Guesso. Beyond the initiative, carried by sixteen countries of the Basin and by Morocco, it is for the DRC to clean up its territory. Because the country is, according to a Global Forest Watch report released two years ago, the second deforestation front on the planet.
The figures speak for themselves: in just fifteen years, the country has lost 6% of its forest cover. A trend that has accelerated over the past ten years, since deforestation has doubled since 2010 in the DRC. The causes of this evil are known: the flourishing trade in firewood and charcoal encourage deforestation industries to increase their activity. Not to mention the strong demand from the agro-food industry for palm oil and intensive agriculture.
« give nature time to eat ”
The 2021 Glasgow Conference on Climate Change (COP26) is therefore, for Kinshasa, an opportunity to make arrangements for the fight against deforestation which, if it continues, could cost the country dearly. The DRC has just announced the ban on the export of logs, these tree trunks intended to be delivered to sawmills. As COP26 approached, Kinshasa wanted to strike hard.
Eve Bazaïba, Congolese Minister of the Environment, reiterated the DRC's desire to limit deforestation over the next few years and thus preserve the many species living in the Congo Basin forest. But all of this will take time. It is necessary, she says, "to leave time for nature to restore itself, in particular through a reforestation program that we have organized with all our technical, financial and development partners".
Ending deforestation has become a global goal. At this COP26, this Tuesday, the leaders of more than 100 countries, which represent more than 85% of the world's forests, pledged to end deforestation by 2030. This represents, according to the Great- Brittany, "the greatest advance in the protection of the world's forests for a generation". However, the Congo Basin forest is the second largest river forest in the world, behind the Amazon. The announcement made by the DRC is therefore timely.
An advance taken by the DRC which owes a lot to the will of Félix Tshisekedi, who launched a “Reforestation and Horticulture Directorate (DRHo)” a year ago, which aims to “reconstitute the forest capital” of the Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo. By 2023, the DRC wants to plant a billion trees and plan agroforestry projects on nearly 2 hectares.
Fight against quota overruns
But how will the country be able to manage this reforestation, when it exports more than 120 cubic meters of logs each year? Large groups, like Sodefor, but also small businesses in the country, risk having the impact of this measure in the years to come and collapse, for the most precarious of them. First of all, the Congolese decision aims to regulate this activity, part of the export of logs being considered abusive, even illegal, by several studies, some companies going beyond the authorized quotas.
President Félix Tshisekedi also commissioned, last month, an audit of logging contracts between the State and companies. The Ministry of the Environment ensures that it no longer wants "contracts with partners who have come to savagely cut our forests" and says it wants to "put an end to this type of contract".
To do this, the DRC will also need to provide an appropriate legislative framework. Already in 2002, the Congo revised the rules for the allocation of new forest concessions. But the abuse continued, with Asian and European countries continuing to import illegally cut logs. The DRC will also have to find a solution to a problem that is a priori insoluble in the short term: the national energy supply, covered by wood for 90% of the Congolese urban population. Kinshasa will rely on butane.