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04 Oct 07
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The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log the world's second largest forest, endangering the lives of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside experts. The report by the independent inspection panel, seen by the Guardian, also accuses the bank of misleading Congo's government about the value of its forests and of breaking its own rules.
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· An area of 600,000 square kilometres (232,000 square miles) of forest was earmarked for logging companies.
· The bank failed to address critical social and environmental issues.
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It ignored between 250,000 and 600,000 Pygmies believed to be living in the Congolese forests, even though their presence was well known and documented.
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Criticism is made of the forestry reforms that the bank imposed in return for loans of more than $450m. Initially, said the panel, "the bank provided [to the government] estimates of export revenue from logging concessions that turned out to be far too high. This encouraged a focus on reform of the forestry system at the expense of pursuing sustainable uses of forests, the potential for community forests and for conservation.
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In a scathing analysis of the bank's economic reasoning, the panel said the bank had "distorted the real economic value of the country's forests" by looking solely at the tax and revenue that increased industrial logging might generate. "There seems to have been little action to support alternative uses of the forest resources," it said.
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The panel travelled deep into the forest to take evidence from the Pygmy communities, who told it they were not consulted before the bank launched its wide-ranging forestry reforms.
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