Congo DR

The Twa were the first inhabitants of the equatorial forests of the Great Lakes region. Originally a high-altitude forest people, inhabiting the mountains of the Albertine Rift Area in Central Africa, they specialized in hunting and gathering. At present, the Twa of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa live in Burundi, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and southwest Uganda.

On February 12, more than 100 environment, development and human rights groups in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have formed a unique alliance to oppose the “development” of the country’s rainforests, which could include a vast increase in industrial logging.

The Twa are the indigenous people of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, inhabiting Burundi, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. Their population is estimated at less than 100,000 in the region. Originally the Twa were forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers living in the mountainous areas around Lakes Tanganyika, Kivu and Albert, but over time the forests were encroached by incoming farming and herding peoples and taken over for commercial development projects and protected areas. Nowadays, few Twa are still able to lead a forest-based way of life.

In a continent still ravaged by more than 20 armed conflicts backed by foreign interests and financed through pillage of the continent’s natural resources --oil, diamonds, gold, timber, copper, cobalt and coltan--, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD, comes as a question mark for some.

In 1925 King Albert 1st of Belgium created a Protected Volcano Zone covering present Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and this later became Albert National Park. In 1960 Albert Park was split into the Virunga Park, and the Parc des Volcans in northwest Rwanda. Both are important ecotourism sites due to their populations of endangered mountain gorillas.

Recently, a joint venture company between Heritage Oil & Gas --a subsidiary of the Canadian-based Heritage Oil Corp-- and South Africa's Energy Africa have announced the preliminary results from trial drilling. The exploration for oil has been going on for some time now near the country's western border and the results point to billions of barrels' worth of oil deposits along the western arm of the East African Rift Valley in the Semliki.

Some years ago, wildlife photographer and bushmeat activist Karl Ammann had presented World Bank's President Wolfensohn with evidence linking industrial logging with the commercialisation of the bush meat trade throughout most of Central Africa. Wolfensohn replied that "preventing the types of abuses you describe is a clear responsibility of the industry, as well as the government authorities concerned."

The total number of hunter-gatherer Mbuti 'Pygmies' who live in the Ituri tropical forest is not known, although it has been estimated at 30,000 occupying 50% of the 37,860 sq km of Mambasa. Their existence is already extremely fragile: their land rights are not recognised either in law or in the customary rights systems of neighbouring peoples, and the authorities of the 13,000 sq km Okapi Wildlife Reserve no longer permit them to hunt large game. Instead, they survive by hunting small animals and bartering labour, firewood and game with the surrounding Bantu in exchange for food.

The Democratic Republic of Congo contains over 50 percent of Africa’s remaining tropical forests; of its 2.3 million square kilometres, nearly half is forestland. Only Brazil and Indonesia have larger areas of tropical rainforest. Although natural resource exploitation did not cease during the war, many foreign logging operations halted their activities. The Malaysian company Innovest, for example, has sold assets in DRC due to financial losses incurred.

Six Central African countries --Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), Cameroon and the Central African Republic-- share the rainforest ecosystem of the Congo Basin, which is home to one of the world’s largest contiguous blocks of tropical rainforest, only second to that of the Amazon Basin in South America in terms of not fragmented forest areas.

The Congo Basin contains the second largest area of tropical rainforest in the world after the Amazon Basin. Renowned for its high biodiversity, this forest is also home to culturally diverse peoples who depend on forest resources for their livelihoods. The Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville) is one of the countries situated in the Congo Basin, with approximately 21.5 million hectares of forest.

Located in the heart of the African continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 2.3 million square kilometres territory covers most of the Congo River basin and has a narrow outlet into the Atlantic. The center and northern regions are covered with rainforests (1.1 million square kilometres in 1993) which, although sparsely populated, are the major livelihood for many of the country’s 48 million people who depend on the forests for non-timber forest products such as food, building materials and medicines.