Background In 2005, Congolese Pygmy communities who felt they were being harmed by forest reforms supported by the World Bank under the Emergency Recovery Support Project and the Transitional Support Economic Recovery Operation requested an Inspection Panel investigation into these projects. More specifically, these communities claimed that forest sector reforms were taking place without adequate consultation and that they would lead to violations of the Pygmies’ rights to occupy, manage and use their ancestral lands according to their traditional practices. The work of the Inspection Panel ended on January 10, 2008, when the Board concluded that the Bank had failed to comply with its policies on Environmental Assessment and Indigenous Peoples, and approved an Action Plan designed jointly by the Africa Region and the Inspection Panel. This Action Plan emphasized that the Bank should remain engaged in the DRC forest sector, continue monitoring a moratorium on future logging concessions, support the legal review on remaining logging contracts, integrate forest-dependent communities more widely into the Bank’s activities in DRC, and support critical activities such as capacity building, participatory zoning, customary rights, law enforcement and independent monitoring in forthcoming forest-related operations. Download (the full set of documents related to this inspection panel case, in English and in French, can be found here) Significant Progress All measures recommended in the Action Plan have progressed well since January 2008. Below are short updates of selected actions taken in the aftermath of the Action Plan. The Legal Review was completed on January 19, 2009 after 37 months of work by a national Technical Working Group (TWG), assisted by a Consultant (World Resources Institute/Agreco) that played the dual role of technical assistant and independent observer. The TWG analyzed requests to convert 156 logging permits, totaling 22.4 million hectares into long-term forest concession contracts. After reviewing the recommendations of the Interministerial Committee (IC) and the outcome of the many appeals filed, the Minister announced that only 65 out of 156 logging contracts would be eligible for conversion into long-term concessions. Companies holding eligible contracts were invited to negotiate social and environmental responsibility agreements with local and indigenous populations. Assuming that negotiations will be successful for all companies and that all companies will prepare sustainable forest management plans in a timely fashion, the area devoted for long term timber production would now be 9.7 million hectares, a dramatic decline from the 43.5 million hectares prior to the 2002 forest reform and the 22.4 million hectares prior to the Legal Review. As follow-up to the legal review, a Consensus Workshop was held in Kinshasa on March 4 and 5, 2009, with representatives of the Forest Authority, donors, civil society and national and international non-governmental organizations to make concrete proposals on how to implement reforms in the forest sector. [Communiqué in English] [Commuiqué en français] All documentation related to the legal review and the conversion process can be found at this site: http://www.rdc-conversiontitresforestiers.org/index.php Maintenance of the moratorium. No cases of breach of the moratorium were observed by the Bank during the period between January 2008 and January 2009. On October 6, 2008, Congo's Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Tourism (MECNT) reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to maintaining the moratorium. Adoption of regulations to implement the forest code: Of the forty-two regulations deemed necessary to implement the 2002 Forest Code, twenty-five have been published and nine are under various stages of development. Of the remaining eight, four require additional studies, one was found outside the field of competence of the MECNT, and three depend on future policy developments. The MECNT has also prepared a new Framework Law on Nature Conservation and a new Environmental Law. Adoption of both is expected to take place at the next parliamentary session in March 2009. Enhancing local communities and indigenous people’s participation in deliberations. Of 21 permanent members of the Legal Review’s IC, two represented indigenous peoples. In addition, the IC included one representative of local and Pygmy populations for each forest title being considered. A total of 153 representatives were chosen by the communities with the aid of a national NGO, of whom 133 (116 from the local populations and 17 from the indigenous peoples) were able to come to Kinshasa. Taking a broader view of forest indigenous people With Bank support, the Government decided to focus on longer term efforts that would address indigenous people issues in a more systematic and institutionally sustainable way. To this end, on June 27-28, 2008, it organized a consultation with Pygmy-led NGOs, donors and international observers to start listing key areas of interest and concerns of indigenous people. The following were identified among others: i) citizenship and registration; ii) access to health services, education, potable water and sanitation; iii) access to land, agriculture and livestock; iv) environmental protection and forest zoning; v) Pygmy leadership capacity; vi) improvement of housing and quality of life; and vii) sensitization of the public authorities (nationally, regionally and locally) to Pygmy-related issues. These topics will be further analyzed in a study currently being prepared by the Bank and reflected in future Bank-financed interventions. Continuing Efforts To continue to secure continued progress on implementing the actions identified in the Action Plan, the Bank feels that the Forest and Nature Conservation Project currently being developed will serve to monitoring progress over an extended period of time. For more information see the tab called “New Lending” on this page. |
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