- How the timber industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control...
GREENPEACE wrote: It's a forest we can ill-afford to lose: 40 million people depend on the forest in one way or another. It is also critical for the survival of our closest animal relatives, including gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, and like all large intact forests, it's crucially important for regulating the local and global climate.
Read the full article and watch the short animation film about this on the GREENPEACE website...GREENPEACE wrote: Unfulfilled promises
In short, our report shows how, in spite of a moratorium on new logging that has been in place since 2002, over 15 million hectares of rainforest have been granted to the logging industry - that's an area five times the size of Belgium, and much of this is in areas that are vital for protecting biodiversity.
Taxes paid by the companies for the rights to log the forest should be going to local forest communities to provide essential services that those of us in developed nations take for granted like education and healthcare. But even the World Bank admits that over the last three years, not a single penny paid by the logging companies has reached local communities. This leaves these people not only without the forest that provided their food, shelter and medicine, but without the benefits they had been promised.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/fo ... N=95905180