Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an environmental conflict of international importance. Most of the deforestation takes place in the Congo Basin, which has the second largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon. Roughly half the remaining rainforest in the Congo Basin is in the DRC.
There are compounding causes underlying deforestation in the DRC. Trees are slashed and burned for agriculture in the country. Illegal logging, road development and city expansion are also among some of the causes for deforestation.
Deforestation in the DRC leads to biodiversity loss, soil erosion and contributes to climate change. The DRC is one of 17 megadiverse countries, with a significant wildlife that is harmed by habitat loss. For example, 60% of the forest elephant population drop is due to the loss of shelter caused by illegal logging.
From 1990 to 2015, the rate of deforestation in the DRC remained constant at 0.2%, that is 311,000 hectares, or roughly 1,200 square miles, annually. Three reasons have been suggested as to why deforestation rates remained relatively low: 1) the road network within the country has been gradually in decline making access to more remote areas more difficult; 2) political and regulatory changes have disincentivized investment in the country; and 3) agriculture has expanded outside of forest areas.
While the rates of deforestation remained constant, wood removal continues to increase annually. Industrialized roundwood increased from 3.05 million cubic meters in 1990 to 4.45 million cubic meters in 2010, and fuelwood increased from 44.2 million cubic meters to 75.44 million cubic meters annually in the same period.
From 2015 to 2019 the rate of tree-felling in the Democratic Republic of Congo doubled.
Causes of deforestation
The direct causes of deforestation within the DRC are well understood and have been identified consistently by many sources. The direct causes are as follows: 1) road infrastructure development, 2) slashing and burning the forests to transform forest land into agricultural land, 3) the collection of fuelwood and charcoal, and lastly 4) unregulated artisanal and small-scale logging. The United Nations Environment Programme has identified the priority in which the causes should be addressed as slash and burn agriculture first, the collection of fuelwood second, unregulated artisanal and logging third, and road infrastructure development fourth.Road construction
Both mining and logging create similar secondary deforestation through road construction. Specifically, logging companies construct new roads into previously inaccessible forest areas which facilitates the conversion of logged forests into agricultural land. This has led to the immigration of landless farmers, in particular from eastern savanna regions, into primary forest areas through logging roads.Incoming farmers cause extensive land degradation in converting the natural forest into farmlands. Further, it has been suggested that increases in returns can lead to substantial increase in farm sizes and shortening of the fallow period, which in turn eventually leads to large-scale and severe natural forest area destruction.
Transformation into agricultural land
The United Nations Environment Programme has identified slash and burn agriculture which produces reduced fallow periods, as the most pressing issue related to the deforestation of the DRC. This is the process of clearing land for agricultural use through burning the forest. This problem has deep roots, as much of the DRC's population is dependent on this sort of slash and burn rain-fed agriculture for their sustenance. Practicing this style of intensive agriculture with short periods of soil rest leads to soil degradation and desertification. This has resulted in more food insecurity, and as much as 70% of the population of the DRC is estimated to be malnourished, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and World Food Programme.File:Changing land use in the Masisi - Julien Harneis - May 2 2007 - 4.jpg|thumb|Deforested land in Masisi. The competition for land between herders and farmers is one of the factors feeding the instability in North Kivu.
As the soil degrades and desertification occurs, farmers are forced to continually move farther out to find new land to farm which repeats the process all over again; thereby, farmers are exacerbating the clearing of natural forests. Furthermore, current farming practices are inefficient and unsustainable. When farmers move farther out to workable land, they are further from markets where they can sell their produce. With almost no facilities for refrigeration, post-harvest crop losses can reach up to 80%.
The DRC is heavily reliant on imported food, which further places pressure on the forest lands to be cleared for agricultural purposes. In 2010, the DRC's top import from the United States was meat, while they exported oil resources.
Fuelwood and charcoal collection
and charcoal collection is a key cause of deforestation, as it supplies 95% the population's energy needs. People's dependence on fuelwood for energy creates rings of fragmented forest around urban areas, which in turn calls for longer and longer forest excursions to collect fuelwood. The United Nations Environment Programme's Post-conflict Environmental Assessment Synthesis for Policy Makers reported that approximately 89 hectares of forest was lost each day due to illegal fuelwood harvesting during the peak of the post-Second Congo War conflict. It is estimated that 72 million m3 of fuelwood and charcoal are "produced" annually.Charcoal, or makala, is inefficient to produce but is a preferred source of energy in the DRC. While it is virtually free to use fuelwood as a source of energy, charcoal increases in popularity as an energy source due to several advantages over fuelwood. Charcoal has higher calorific value per unit weight compared to fuelwood ; and charcoal is smaller and easier to store.
Charcoal is also mostly smokeless, and is not damaged by fungi or insects like fuelwood. With these benefits, charcoal is particularly popular in cities. However, even in rural areas in Goma, North Kivu for example, charcoal is also widely used. On average, each person uses 1 to 1.6 cubic meter of fuelwood and 80 to 95 kg of charcoal annually.
Regardless of the purposes, commercial or personal, fuelwood and charcoal are mostly collected by women and children in most regions in Africa. Charcoal costs more in cities, especially large ones such as Kinshasa, because vast amounts of forest are deforested close to the city so transport costs are higher.
Artisanal and industrial logging
Artisanal
Logging without a concession from the national government is called artisanal logging. Unregulated artisanal and small-scale logging is estimated to supply 75% of timber exports from the DRC, and happens at a rate 5 to 8 times greater than industrial logging. However, this is still dwarfed by the amount of wood being gathered for fuelwood and charcoal production, which is 30 times greater than artisanal logging. There are three types of forest codes in the DRC—public institutions, private, and community forests. Artisanal logging takes place in community forests.Community forests are owned by community chiefs or landlords, who have the power to grant small-scale logging concessions that are not regulated by the national government. Many of these community owned forests with artisanal logging are in the northeast. Artisanal logging is profitable, but it is also largely illegal. However, corruption in the local government allows the logging to continue.
To perform artisanal logging, the logger needs to obtain permit from the local government. With approval by the community chief, loggers can obtain a permit; yet, they have to report the harvest to local forestry technicians. These local forestry offices are considered the appropriate entity for approving the logging permits while they do not have the capacity to conduct forest inventory and forest mapping. Since the forest code does not have comprehensive mechanism to stop such logging activities, loggers continue to purchase logging rights from the local community. Depending on the scale of the logging, the community would demand different types of payment from loggers. One community in the North Kivu area, they demanded the logger to give them a 4x4 truck and upgrade the public infrastructures, which are not well provided for by the local government. Although the logger did not accept the request, this illustrates why locals want artisanal logging.
Although artisanal logging provides some income for the community in the short-run, it ultimately does not improve local living conditions. In the end, the communities receive payments which are not large enough to cover the loss of their natural resources. Since there is no monitoring mechanism, the loggers report less logging to pay less tax to the local government. Some loggers cut one tree within the woods and leave the rest intact to mimic natural disturbance. To improve the situation, the DRC government needs better monitoring and better forest code to manage the logging activities.
Industrial
Relative to agricultural land transformation, fuelwood and charcoal collection, and artisanal collection logging, industrial logging has a minor direct impact on forest destruction in the DRC in recent years due to the collapse of local markets in the early 1990s. However, logging has significant indirect effects because of the roads constructed for it. The collapse of the logging industry in the 1990s changed the industry into one of selective logging, where only very large trees of high value are being extracted for export.As of 1999, 87% of the total volume of wood harvested was one of five species of African mahogany. These selective logging practices yield only 8.7 cubic meters per hectare. Thus many roads are created to move very few trees from the forest. This allows people to move in to collect fuelwood, hunt bushmeat, and start clearing the land for agriculture.
It is important to consider who is driving the demand for industrial logging operations within the DRC and the sustainability of the industry. Currently, an estimated 80% of all timber officially exported by the DRC is brought to the European market. The majority of the exports are shipped to Portugal, Germany, and France. Thus, it is not surprising to see that historically the largest forest concession owner in the DRC had been a German company, Danzer, which held 2.1 million hectares of the active concessions which total 8.2 million hectare.
When looking at the sustainable practices of the large logging companies in the DRC, they are less than sustainable. According to the Forest Stewardship Council, a leader in certification for sustainable forestry practices, GBE will not be pursuing FSC certification for their practice in the DRC. In addition to the country's major logging companies not pursuing sustainable logging practices, it is commonplace for logging to take place illegally within protected forest areas.
A report by Forests Monitor and Rainforest Foundation published in 2007 found that there is little evidence that industrial logging alleviates poverty, but instead actually contributes to it. This is mainly due to access to forest areas becoming restricted and money not filtering down to local people. "Keeping in mind that the Law only provides for conservation of 15% of the DRC's forests and that more than 40% are earmarked for commercial logging, we still do not know what percentage of Congolese forests are to be returned back to the indigenous communities to enable them to practice their cultural and socio-economic activities".
Industrial logging concessions stop indigenous people having access to their forests, which they traditionally rely on for their livelihood through NTFPs. In addition to the restricted access to these resources, there are other damaging effects caused by the damage to the water courses that logging can create, which cuts fish resources and water that could be used for crop irrigation.
Industrial logging brings a lot of people in to the area to work for the logging companies, who are often given only short-term contracts. Once these contracts are finished, they then have to find new jobs in the area. This influx of logging workers can create competition for bushmeat resources. For locals who do get jobs with the logging companies, the working conditions can be bad and the pay low, some paying only 50 US cents a day.