Articles
The Congo Basin
The Congo Basin's vast rainforest is home to forest elephants, rare antelopes and gorillas, as well as 3,300 endemic species of plants. This - the second largest rainforest on Earth - provides livelihoods for tens of millions of people and plays an increasing role in the global efforts to halt climate change.
Bonobos - considered to be humankind's closest relatives - were the last of the great apes to be discovered and live exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo
In the DRC alone, 40 million people - from farmers to fishing communities - depend on the forest for their livelihoods.
The Congo Basin rainforest also has exceptional ecological importance. It is home to forest elephants, gorillas, bonobos, rare antelopes, forest buffalo and a threatened forest giraffid, the okapi. Of the 270 species of mammals discovered there so far, 39 are found nowhere else on Earth - and of its 10,000 plant species, a staggering 3,300 are unique to the region.
This rainforest also plays a vital role in regulating the global climate. Intact forest landscapes - the last remaining large unfragmented areas of natural forests - are the most resilient to climate change and contain the biggest carbon stock of all forests. Eighty per cent of Africa’s intact forest landscapes are in the DRC - the fourth largest forest carbon reservoir of any country on Earth.
Increased international demand for commodities and natural resources has led to large scale industrial logging, which is devastating the rainforest and the people and animals that live there.
But, if development proposals based on rapid industrial expansion into rainforests are allowed to proceed, and the World Bank fails to learn the lessons from Cameroon, things are going to get worse - for the forests, its people, its wildlife and the global climate.
Greenpeace opened an office in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, to step up our work for the appropriate protection of the Congo's intact forests, as well as of the rights and livelihood of the indigenous and local peoples depending on them.
A woman from a forest dependent community gathers firewood.
Our vision is for an end to all deforestation in the Congo by 2015 and by 2020 globally. We believe that, by following an environmentally sound and socially just development model, the DRC can protect its forests, respect the rights of its forest communities and achieve economic development - while helping to protect the global climate.
In 2010, Oscar-winning French actress, Marion Cotillard, travelled with Greenpeace to the heart of the Congo to bear witness to the destruction in a series of video journals. These were her first impressions:
The latest updates
Herakles Farms and how a US agri-corporation sparked anger in Africa
Blog entry by Filip Verbelen | July 6, 2012 2 comments Palm oil is the world’s cheapest edible oil and a key ingredient in some biofuels. Global demand is booming and agri-corporations are grabbing large swathes of land to expand palm oil production in a new frontier: Africa. One of...
Herakles Farms is cutting the heart out of Cameroon’s rainforest
Blog entry by Irène Wabiwa | May 11, 2012 13 comments Within the past few weeks, rainforest destruction has begun once again in one of Africa’s most important biodiversity hotspots: the coastal rainforest of Cameroon, at the fringe of the Congo Basin region. Herakles Farms, the American...
The Mystery of McKinsey's Black Box
Blog entry by John Bowler | December 7, 2011 2 comments Hello from Durban, home of COP17, and for the past 10 days home of the Greenpeace forest team. Sometimes serendipity just waltzes right up to you. And that is what has just happened. Earlier this year a Greenpeace investigation ...
Stolen future: Conflicts and logging in Congo's rainforests - the case of Danzer
Publication | November 7, 2011 at 10:33 The logging sector in the DRC continues to make shocking headlines with its use of violence and human rights abuses to quell villagers who simply demanded that they receive what is rightfully theirs. Danzer has again been involved in a...
Aucun commentaire :
Enregistrer un commentaire