Combating Deforestation in the Congo Basin

The Congo Basin is home to the world’s second largest tropical forest after the Amazon. It’s an incredible reserve of biodiversity, with over 400 species of mammals, 1,000 species of birds, and 10,000 species of plants. It’s also a huge carbon sink —10% of CO2 captured by the world’s plants— as well as a vital source of food for more than 60 million people.

This huge forest covering 286 million hectares is currently suffering degradation and deforestation due to expansion of agricultural land, the needs of local populations for firewood and construction, mining, and the illegal wood trade.

Authorizing exploitation for better protection

To deal with this situation, AFD and many other stakeholders (governments, donors, NGOs) are supporting responsible forest management models. These are implemented by forestry companies and monitored by certification bodies. 

Authorizing logging to protect a tropical forest may seem paradoxical. “It’s nonetheless the best way to do so today,” says Christophe du Castel, AFD’s biodiversity advisor. “Responsible forestry is a happy medium among the needs of local populations, economic development, and forest conservation.”

“The population numbers of large African mammals threatened with extinction, like gorillas or forest elephants, are sometimes higher in responsibly managed forest concessions than in neighboring national parks,” says Mathieu Auger-Schwartzenberg, project team leader at the Agriculture, Rural Development and Biodiversity Division of AFD. “Parks don’t have the same financial resources, whereas good forest managers are above all a viable economic and social model—provided they work to improve their practices.”

A binding legal framework

Sustainable forest exploitation seeks to replace traditional logging practices, which in any event have had little impact on local people. When the State is the owner of a forest area, sustainable forest exploitation consists in allocating its management to a private operator that is obliged to manage it according to a binding legal and normative framework. Within that framework, the operator is required to execute a forest management plan covering the activities that will take place on the concession.

Different activities will take place in different sectors: those dedicated to protection of local species, those dedicated to the needs of nearby communities, and also those reserved for wood exploitation. In the latter sectors, a precise inventory is carried out to identify which trees can be cut and which ones must continue to grow in order to ensure the ecosystem’s biological diversity.

Once the quota is reached in a given plot, the operator does not cut any more trees for 25 to 30 years. This rest period allows the forest and biodiversity to recover naturally. “In the Congo Basin, a forestry operator that applies the proposed standards cuts an average of 1.3 trees per hectare every 25 to 30 years,” says Christophe du Castel.

Low rate of deforestation

Supervision of forest exploitation using management plans has been successful in the region. In the Central African Republic, where all concessions are managed in this way, yearly deforestation became stable between 1990 and 2005. In Gabon, where 44% of forest territory is covered by such concessions, the rate of deforestation did not exceed 0.04% per year between 2000 and 2010, according to a study by the Central Africa Forest Observatory (Ofac).

“The Congo Basin has the lowest deforestation rate of all tropical forests,” says Mathieu Auger-Schwartzenberg. An international team of 22 researchers also showed that gross deforestation by forestry companies not subject to a forest management plan was twice as high as that of companies that followed one.

Unfortunately, the situation could get worse. Scientific models published by Ofac predict that deforestation linked to the expansion of agricultural land for crops and livestock in the Congo Basin will result in a total loss of 26 million hectares of forest between 2010 and 2030, representing 10% of regional forest cover. The countries in the area will have to choose between agricultural development and forest protection.

Biodiversity and economic development

“The Democratic Republic of Congo has recently become the number two country in terms of loss of intact tropical forests. It’s now important to anticipate the threats that will weigh on these areas, which until now have hardly been affected by large-scale agro-industrial developments,” says Mathieu Auger-Schwartzenberg.

See also: Impact evaluation study of forest management systems on the forest cover in the Congo basin

Responsible forest exploitation seeks not only to protect the environment, but also to involve local people more. The forest management plans established in countries with AFD support now put more priority on local populations, particularly in terms of socio-economic benefits.
“The forest is a place of biodiversity and economic development for the people living nearby. That’s why they must have a role in forest management plans,” says Christophe du Castel. “For example, special rules of use can be written in, such as the right to cut the wood they need for heating and cooking, the right to hunt game, and a better sharing of the benefits derived from forest exploitation.”

Benefit sharing

For Agence Française de Développement, these mechanisms for sharing benefits with the populations must be improved. Some recently funded projects are contributing to this, such as one on the forest landscape in Northern Congo: AFD has committed €6 million to ensure biodiversity conservation and a more equitable sharing of the benefits of forestry revenue.

Some forestry operators have also undertaken to build roads and to finance schools and healthcare centers to improve the daily lives of the inhabitants. And of course they also create jobs. “In the Congo Basin, forestry companies are the second biggest providers of jobs after State governments. A report by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) shows they make a mostly positive contribution to improving the living conditions of local populations when there is responsible management of plots,” says Mathieu Auger-Schwartzenberg.

Support from Agence Française de Développement has been decisive in enabling States to set up a regulatory framework adapted to companies and to make a change in their practices.  “States do not always have the means to encourage responsible foresters, monitor their practices or those of informal loggers, and curb the demand for agricultural land in these vast natural areas,” says Christophe du Castel.

Concessions on a massive scale

But it must be said in their defense that sustainably managed concessions are huge in size in the Congo Basin: it’s common for a single operator to exploit 300,000, 600,000 or even 1 million hectares—an area the size of Lebanon. 

To ensure reasonable use of forests in Cameroon, AFD has supported a project to provide the country with the capacity to monitor forest cover using satellite images. In Gabon, we have provided the Ministry of Forestry, Environment and Protection of Natural Resources with equipment and training in forest-exploitation control methods, and we assisted the ministry in setting up an independent verification mechanism for field controls. We have also financed another project there, with the goal of mobilizing civil society organizations to better monitor the practices of forest operators.

“There are now 4.5 million hectares of FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified forests in the Congo Basin. Some of this achievement is thanks to projects supported by Agence Française de Développement,” says Mathieu Auger-Schwartzenberg. “However, much remains to be done to strengthen forest governance.”

And this is true not just in the Congo Basin, but also in the tropical basin of Southeast Asia and in the Amazon, where, in Brazil, barely 1 million hectares of natural tropical forest are certified as sustainably managed. And yet, the forests there are likewise under increasing pressure from human activities.
 
The 4 pillars of a forest management plan:

1. Rules of use for each area under the plan
2. Usage rights for local populations
3. Forest-exploitation rules
4. Monitoring and control measures