Rebuked by internal investigation, World Bank plans to do more in DRC forest sector, but will it do better?
16 January 2008
An Inspection Panel report on the World Bank’s safeguard policy violations in its Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) forest sector operations prompts discussion on new approach and greater role for Pygmies in decision-making about the future of the world’s second-largest rainforest.
Last Thursday, January 10, the World Bank’s Board of Directors discussed the findings of an Inspection Panel investigation into the Bank’s failure to comply with its own safeguard policies in its support for forest sector reforms in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Although the Board itself issued no formal statement following the meeting, reports indicate that the Executive Directors approved Bank Management’s action plan in response to the Panel’s conclusions, while noting the need for greater specificity regarding lessons learned and next steps, and expressed their support for three new projects worth $64 million currently under preparation. The Board also requested a progress report on implementation of Management’s action plan in one year.
The lesson Bank staff seem to have taken away from the Panel’s investigation is “do more,” but the question is, will they “do better”? Press releases issued by Bank Management following last Thursday’s discussion highlight broad consensus on the need for the Bank to remain engaged in the country’s forest sector, but neglect to mention specifics about what the Bank learned from the oversights and failures documented in the Panel report. Such public relations efforts have been a central component in the Bank’s proactive communication strategy over the past several years, stepped up in response to mounting public concern about its role in the management of DRC’s forests. A closer look at recent press on the case reveals some continued massaging of the facts and suggests a need for a more inclusive dialogue about the Bank’s plans going forward.
Background
The investigation by the Bank’s internal watchdog garnered considerable attention over its two year span, but the public was kept in the dark about when the Panel’s conclusions would be presented to the Bank’s Board of Directors. The monthly Board calendar for January, posted on the Bank’s external website, did not indicate the date for the discussion of the DRC case, limiting opportunities for interested parties to convey concerns or questions to their representatives on the Board in advance. According to the Inspection Panel’s procedures, neither the Panel’s report nor Management’s response is officially disclosed to the public – or even to the complainants themselves – until after the Board discussion. Although the Panel’s findings were summarized in several press accounts in October of last year, after a copy of the report was apparently leaked to journalists, neither the report nor the action plan prepared by Management was made available to the Congolese requestors before being finalized. Neither document is yet available in French.
Twelve Congolese pygmy groups filed the complaint to the Inspection Panel in 2005, concerned about exclusion of indigenous peoples from forest sector reforms supported by the Bank, and about the adverse impacts of increased commercial logging in the vast country, absent a prior participatory land use planning process. The Panel found that the Bank had failed to respect its safeguard policies, including those protecting the rights of indigenous peoples. It also found that the Bank had overestimated the revenues that the Congolese government could earn from timber exports, thereby encouraging logging of the world’s second largest rainforest. In addition to supporting the livelihood of 40 million of the country’s 60+ million people, DRC’s forests hold between 25 and 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide (8% of global carbon stores, according to Greenpeace) – the equivalent of about four years of global emissions.
Shifting rhetoric and approach?
Marjory-Anne Bromhead, a manager for environment and natural resources management at the World Bank, quoted in several press articles after last week’s Board meeting presented a selective account of the Panel’s findings and the actions the Bank plans to take in response. According to those articles and the Bank’s own press releases, the Bank is planning to scale up its involvement in the DRC forest sector, with an emphasis on government capacity-building, law enforcement and land use planning. The shift in the Bank’s rhetoric and more frequent references to involvement of indigenous peoples and other local communities in forest sector reforms and management seem to suggest that years of civil society advocacy may be beginning to bear fruit. However, questions remain as to just how profound the shift in approach may be and how these planned activities will be sequenced with other logging and infrastructure developments.
The recent press articles failed to mention that, in addition to the three new forestry projects discussed at the Board, the Bank is also supporting a large road rehabilitation project that may pose new risks to forests and forest-dependent peoples. The Pro-Routes project, scheduled for Board approval in March of this year, would help re-open roads in three of the country’s most heavily forested provinces. There is no doubt that the DRC needs infrastructure; the question is what kind of infrastructure, and where and when it should be developed? Care must be taken to ensure infrastructure development serves the interests of the local population and protects, rather than endangers, the environment, which is so critical both to local livelihoods and global health.
A question of funds or a matter of priorities?
Although the Bank has provided nearly $3 billion in support to the DRC since it reengaged in the country in 2001 and approved more than 20 projects since supporting the adoption of the new forest code in 2002, Bromhead insists that the Bank “[hasn’t] had the resources yet to help the government implement improved forest management on the ground." One of the chief concerns raised by local and international civil society groups is precisely that over the past six years, the Bank has not directed its funding to enforcement or capacity building to implement reforms, focusing instead on crafting policy language and facilitating a legal review of logging titles designed to streamline the industrial logging sector and allow increased activity in the future.
In its recent communiqués, the Bank has also been quick to highlight the fact that the forest code includes “the principles of community-based forestry and management planning and revenue-sharing with local communities…and protects traditional rights of local communities (including Pygmies).” However, the legal measures necessary to put these provisions into practice still have not been adopted. Revenue-sharing does not occur in reality and the legal decrees pertaining to the protection of indigenous rights and community forest management are not finalized, having taken a back-seat to those focused on restarting the timber industry. The Bank itself has acknowledged that, “without the decrees, the Code cannot be truly implemented as it is too general.”
Of words and action
It is encouraging to read in press accounts of the Board discussion that the Bank and the DRC government both support the maintenance of the moratorium on the allocation of new logging concessions, which is critical to the future of the forests. However, this commitment needs to be concretized in law, and actively enforced – at least until such a time as there is a participatory process for deciding upon zoning of forest lands. As it stands, presidential decrees only require the maintenance of the moratorium until the completion of the forest title review (which many government officials are hoping will conclude shortly, despite significant concerns about the integrity of the process) and the development of a schedule and plan for the allocation of new logging titles. Although the Bank claims it is not encouraging industrial logging in the DRC, its statements do not rule out the possibility that it may do so in the future, once it deems that satisfactory governance conditions and enforcement capacity are in place.
Bank statements place great weight on the role of an independent NGO in improving forest law enforcement. However, the findings of a Bank-supported scoping study on the feasibility of independent forest monitoring in the DRC suggest that such external surveillance is unlikely to be viable today, given the situation of anarchy prevailing in the forest sector, widespread failure to implement or adhere to forest laws and company violations of social responsibility commitments. The report, conducted by Global Witness, recommends “a full moratorium on all industrial-scale logging is necessary as an interim measure whilst forest land use zoning, a comprehensive legal framework, development of meaningful regulatory capacity, and measures to strengthen community rights and participation are completed.”
In response to recent criticism, the Bank often repeats the statistic that 25 million hectares of illegal logging concessions were cancelled in 2002. However, it is important to note that many of these concessions have not been “cancelled” as such, but have in fact entered into a process of “legal review” and “conversion” to new-style concessions. Furthermore, some 15 million hectares have been allocated in new concessions since 2002, in breach of the moratorium declared that year. According to a Bank-supported report issued in 2007, “Forests in Post-Conflict Democratic Republic of Congo: Analysis of a Priority Agenda,” “the net difference between the total [forest] area under contract in 2002 and 2005 appears to be 2.4 million hectares,” and despite the moratorium, “the total number of contracts appears to have increased by 19.”
Within a day of the Board discussion, the Bank posted a new “Frequently Asked Questions” document about its forest sector work on its website (see link below). Curiously, among the major threats to the DRC rainforest, the Bank does not list commercial logging. Instead, it names poverty and artisanal logging as the primary causes of rainforest destruction in the DRC, seemingly ignoring the impact of illegal industrial exploitation and the role that logging companies play in purchasing timber from small-scale suppliers. The description of the challenges in the forest sector appears to vilify the very people who live in and depend on the forests of the DRC, while failing to acknowledge the role of multinational companies and international actors in financing or facilitating their activities.
Picking your fights…and your friends?
Finally, the Bank’s insistence on “engaging directly with Pygmies,” without working through intermediaries, is a not-so-veiled reference to avoiding some of the international organizations that have been heavily involved in advocating for changes in the management of DRC’s forests and the inclusion of Pygmy peoples in decision-making about the future of the forests and their own livelihoods. It is critically important that Pygmy peoples and other local communities be directly involved in decisions that affect them. At the same time, the Bank’s determination to sideline international groups committed to ongoing work in the DRC should raise questions about the Bank’s motivations and the impact of this exclusivity on the diversity of feedback that the Bank will receive from civil society about its forest operations going forward.
If future forest sector operations are to be more successful than past efforts in addressing government capacity to manage the sector and in ensuring participatory land use planning, then the Bank must be willing to engage openly with actors critical of its performance to date, and to be transparent about its plans. As the track record of the Bank’s nearly $3 billion portfolio in the DRC would suggest, throwing money at the problems of state capacity-building and law enforcement is not the answer. Given the nature and number of forest sector operations in the DRC to date, some Executive Directors have questioned how strategic the Bank’s approach has been. To ensure that the Bank doesn’t just do more, but better in the future, decision-making about its forest sector operations must not be confined to closed-door Board meetings.
Additional Resources
- World Bank aims to scale up in Congo forest sector, by Lesley Wroughton, January 11, 2008. (Reuters website)
- World Bank pledges to do more for DR Congo rainforest, Agence-France Presse, January 11, 2008 (AFP website)
- World Bank Committed to Staying Engaged in Improving Management of Congolese Forests, January 15, 2008 (World Bank website)
- Frequently Asked Questions: Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, January 10, 2008. (World Bank website)
- Inspection Panel Report and Management Response (Inspection Panel website)