World Bank aims to scale up in Congo forest sector

By Lesley Wroughton

Reuter - Fri 11 Jan 2008, 6:23 GMT

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank said on Thursday it would scale up its involvement in reorganizing Congo's forestry sector with $64 million in new funding following an independent inquiry of its work in the sector.

Marjory-Anne Bromhead, a manager for environment and natural resources management at the World Bank, told Reuters the bank's board on Thursday backed plans to step up forestry reform efforts in the West African country.

The decision comes as the world focuses on protecting tropical forests, which store huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. Congo is home to the world's second-largest tropical forests after the Amazon.

An inquiry by a World Bank inspection panel into the bank's role in Democratic Republic of Congo's forestry sector followed complaints by indigenous Pygmy forest-dwellers that accused it of encouraging commercial logging that threatened their livelihoods.

The panel said the bank's support of logging in Congo originally overestimated the export revenue to be gained from the process and discouraged sustainable forestry and conservation. It also noted it was important that the bank remain engaged in the sector in Congo.

In an interview, Bromhead said that until now the World Bank's involvement had been limited.

"We haven't really provided any investment support," she said. "We provided advice and we've on a very modest scale provided support through development policy lending, but we haven't had the resources yet to help the government implement improved forest management on the ground."

"We should be able to do more now than we've done in the past. However, we need to be realistic about what can be accomplished given that we're working in a country the size of Western Europe with infrastructure challenges."

But she said the bank would expand its work to create new strategies and pilot programs for working with communities on protecting Congo's tropical forests. It will work with regional and local authorities in overseeing forest management planning and curbing illegal logging, she added.

Funding for the bank's programs will include a forest reform grant of $50 million, a $7 million grant for protected areas from the Global Environmental Facility, and a multi-donor trust fund which has so far collected $7 million from donors.

The World Bank has sponsored a government-led legal review of 156 logging deals to reorganize forestry concessions, many of them illegally allocated during Congo's civil war.

The government has imposed a moratorium on new logging concessions and Bromhead said the government had affirmed its commitment to maintain the moratorium in letters to the bank in December and again recently on January 7.

"At present the government is committed to maintaining the moratorium and there is no date for lifting it," she added.

Bromhead said the review was expected to be completed in April or May. The bank has urged the government to cancel illegal concessions and those in breach of a new Forest Code.

She said the Bank would engage directly with Pygmy groups, without working through intermediaries, and create programs specifically for the needs of indigenous communities.

"While they have equal legal rights they do face social discrimination issues," she said.

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