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The UK Guardian newspaper reports today that the World Bank’s own internal investigation has shown serious shortcomings in its forest policy advice and lending in the Congo, which has endangered the lives of Pygmy forest communities. The bank apparently overestimated the value of timber export revenues, and pushed commercial logging at the expense of paying sufficient to alternative forest use strategies when introducing forest policy reforms.
First, I should say that I have been working as a consultant for the World Bank in Liberia since 2005, and initially my task was to help redesign the forest taxation system. So I know how difficult it can be ‘getting the numbers right’. Also, both the Congo (better known to some of us as Zaire) and Liberia are barely recovering from simply horrifying civil wars, so even basic institutions (in both senses of the word) are at best weak. Second, the good news is that the bank responded to NGOs’ concerns and the bank’s own watchdogs have admitted that there are shortcomings, which can now presumably be corrected.
In Liberia the bank is working within a coalition known as the Liberia Forest Initiative. The overall forest strategy and reform programme is continually discussed within the LFI. During 2005 I worked on forest taxation proposals. Under the Taylor regime revenues from logging were diverted to funding arms which fuelled both regional wars and the civil war, and prompted a UN log export ban. In 2006 the new government established a Forest Reform Monitoring Committee (I represented the bank) to assess all the proposed reforms for commercial, community and conservation forestry (the so-called 3Cs), and to get a new national forest reform law passed. This was completed in that year, and the accompanying regulations have been through a period of public consultation in early 2007. Read the rest of this entry »
Ghana is getting closer to finalising a deal to export timber to the EU market reports the BBC. I worked with Chris Beeko in the Forestry Commission on the original voluntary partnership proposal in 2003-04, so its great to see that coming to fruition. But the main damage to Ghana’s forest reserves has been caused by logging companies not chainsaw operators, That’s not to deny that they are not a problem, but it has been the concession holders who have blithely disregarded the forest law and regulations and run roughshod over forest communities.
