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<H1>Forest crisis in Equatorial Africa</H1>
<I><H2>by Dr Marcus Colchester,<BR>
World Rainforest Movement</H2></I>
<B><FONT COLOR="green">Marcus Colchester went on a fact-finding mission to Equatorial Africa in 1992 to gain a better understanding of the institutional framework which controlled forest management in the region. His findings are published in the book <I>Slave and Enclave: the Political Ecology of Equatorial Africa</I></FONT></B>.
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Of all the forested regions of Africa, that with the lowest rate of deforestation is Equatorial Africa made up of Gabon, the Congo and the Central African Republic (CAR). With forest loss estimated at 0.3% to 0.5% per annum and rural population levels nearly stagnant or actually in decline, the statistics suggest that here, at least, is one part of the planet we don't have to worry about.
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However, a survey of the region carried out by the World Rainforest Movement in 1992 shows how misleading statistics can be. The forests were found to be defenceless, being neither protected by the State institutions that have asserted control over them nor by the marginalised rural communities whose rights are no longer upheld and whose interests are largely ignored by the ruling elites.
The result is that the forests are being pillaged for their timber while providing minimal revenue to the countries concerned. At the same time, an ever growing trade in bushmeat is leading to a generalised decline of the mammifauna, resulting in; local extinctions and the impoverishment of rural communities.
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These problems are not only local in origin. They stem from a long history of interventions in local African affairs, dating back to the slave trade of the 16th to the 19th centuries, which have brought out the hierarchical and arbitrary aspects of Bantu society at the expense of long cherished traditions of equality and accountability.
The result today is that the political economies of these countries are dominated by urban African elites whose interests coincide with foreign mining, timber and agribusiness companies.
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The denial of local traditions of management started with the assertion of colonial control in the 1880s, when 80% of the region, 700,000 km<SU>2</SU>, was parcelled out as
private fiefdoms to some 40 European companies for the extraction of non-timber forest products - wild rubber, ivory, raffia and later palm oil, cocoa and coffee.
The local communities who resisted were crushed by force of arms and the French administration initiated a programme of forced relocation of the scattered forest groups into centralised villages under government supervision: the aim being to oblige the Africans to work in the concessions.
Rural populations plummeted as a result and are probably no higher today than they were a thousand years ago.
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Logging became a major industry in the coastal forests in the 1920s. Being nonmechanised, it relied on the administration to supply labour from the interior, thus draining yet further the vitality of forest communities. As a troubled Governor General of Gabon noted in 1937:<BR>
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"Slowly but continuously the main part of the population is making its way across the forests down to the coasts. The logging camps are great devourers of men ... Everything has been subordinated to the exploitation of the forest.
The forests have sterilised Gabon, smacking down the men and taking off the women. This is the image of Gabon: a land without roads, without social programmes, without economic organisation, the exploitation of forests having sapped all the living force from the country ... Between 1927 and 1938 nearly 2 billion francs were generated.
What of this money remains in the country? Nothing! There is not a single indigenous teacher, doctor or vet, agricultural officer or public works agent."</UL>
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Mechanisation of logging brought little reprieve. Although the demand for labour slackened, the forest communities were further neglected and the development of other enclave industries that grew up in the region after the second world war - mining for uranium, manganese, diamonds - made the rural sector less important still.
The jockeying for power around independence in 1960 was dominated by a frenchified urban elite manipulated by foreign business interests, notably loggers. The French government did not hesitate to send in the paratroops if they felt that their interests were threatened.
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The result, in these countries, is an extraordinarily weak rural sector
which is both politically marginal and economically weak and thus unable to assert control of the forests. Only 1% of the Central African Republic is under agriculture. In Gabon, the figure is 0.5% with 85% of food needs being supplied through imports and the area under cultivation in decline.
Every year 1.8% of the rural population in Gabon moves to the cities. In the Congo the situation is even more bizarre. Fully 70% of the population is urban, despite the fact that the country has almost no industrial base. In 1990, 85% of men between 25 and 29 were in two cities alone.
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Collusion between foreign business interests and the ruling urban elites has undermined good forest management. A leaked report of logging in the Congo, prepared for the World Bank, revealed that "almost all the companies in the forest sector are outside the law." "Forestry administration" the report concluded "is non-existent". As a result "the forest is left at the mercy of the loggers who do what they like without being accountable to anyone."
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Companies have taken maximum advantage of this lack of supervision. Having negotiated tax concessions in exchange for installing mills and carrying out local processing, the companies proceed to cream the forests of their timber, dodge their obligations regarding forest management and wood-processing and avoid any taxes.
Development banks have ploughed in millions of dollars to finance what the report criticises as "folies de grandeur". The largest company in the Congo, Societe Bois de Ouesso, which gained from World Bank funding and cost a total of US$63 million to set up, is now totally bankrupt. "The situation is catastrophic and no further activity within the present arrangement is possible "
The company's failure is "due quite simply to the over' valuation of the project which has allowed some vultures to enrich themselves immeasurably at the Congo's expense."
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The continuing marginalisation of agriculture has led not only to the rural exodus but also has helped to stimulate a flourishing trade in bushmeat, which, along with poaching for ivory and skins, provides one of the few sources of income available to the rural poor.
A WWF study suggests that at least 50 tons of bushmeat a year enters Libreville, Gabon's capital. Pointe Noir, the oil centre on the Congo coast, consumes some 260,000 animals a year. Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic on the edge of the forest zone, has a catchment for bushmeat with a radius of 350 km. Roads, especially those built by loggers, play a major role in the expansion of the bushmeat trade.
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Unless remedial action is taken it seems inevitable that Equatorial African forests will decline like those in West Africa. The collapse of agriculture in neighbouring countries, especially the dryland zones to the north, is already leading to cross-border migration. Rising populations will fuel this flow, turning a trickle into a flood.
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However, there are some signs of hope. The French have relinquished their insistence on keeping the hugely overvalued Central African franc tied to the French franc - a factor which had made farming hopelessly uncompetitive.
Single party rule is gradually being replaced by a new political liberalisation. In May this year (1996) an Interministerial Conference on Forests, held in Brazzaville, elicited government commitments to reform forest management. NGOs are springing up, eager for information and ready with new ideas.
Above all, there are the first signs of a groundswell of public opinion to reverse the marginalisation of the rural sector - reassert community rights to land, promote small-holder agriculture to supply domestic markets with food and shift power away from the centre.
Long submerged traditions of equality, accountability and prudent management of village commons may have a chance of reviving in this new climate of political and economic change. As one community leader told me: "Forests are gold. They are our riches to be cared for our children."
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<I>Slave and Enclave: the Political Ecology of Equatorial Africa</I> by Marcus Colchester from World Rainforest Movement, 8 Chapel Row, Chadlington, OX7 3NA. Tel: 01608 76691. Fax: 01608 76743. £6.00 plus £2 airmail postage. Also available in French.
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