Rural communities encouraged in sustainable development with small-scale industry

With more than two-thirds of Congo's landmass taken up by forest, lumber (timber) and plywood are Congo's biggest foreign exchange earners after oil. However, years of deforestation have taken their toll.

In November 2011, President Denis Sassou N'Guesso launched a major reforestation program, known as PRONAR, in a concerted effort to improve Congo's forest environment and soil quality. Financed by both the government and the private sector, the program will see the resurrection of more than a million hectares of forest over the next decade.

As well as contributing to the country's industrialization, the scheme will create more than 50,000 rural jobs.

Congo's woodlands account for a 10th of the forests in the Congo Basin, an area that has been described by the World Wildlife Fund as one of the most important wilderness areas left on Earth. Spanning 500 million acres of land and six countries, the Basin is larger than Alaska and houses one quarter of the world's tropical forests and the largest rainforest after the Amazon.

President N'Guesso, a passionate environmentalist, was delighted to have been selected by his African peers to represent the continent at the Rio +20 United Nations conference on sustainable development in June.

During an interview last year, he said: "Africa has always lived in harmony with nature and protecting the environment is at the very heart of our concerns. Congo is a member of the African Committee for Climate Change, which is represented by chiefs of state under the Ethiopian patronage.

"The African Union summit (held in January 2012 in Addis Ababa) has given me the chance to harmonize the different positions expressed by the African states and ensure a fair and efficient participation to all the negotiations about the green economy and the international measures for the environment.

He was confident Congo's voice would be heard by the greatest amount of people at the Rio Summi.

The launch of the PRONAR program is essential for the country's sustainable development, the president later stated.

"We want to increase our national forest territory, while also valuing the 10 million hectares of savannah. This initiative is part of our plan to develop carbon sequestration [the removal of carbon from the atmosphere.) The sustainable management of our forests and this reforestation program represent a significant contribution from our country to the global warming issue.

"More than a billion people depend on the forest to live," he added.

"It is an impressive figure and is an important one to remember. Our mission is to help those people in the protected zones use the natural resources in a sustainable and respectful way. We also have to develop breeding, agriculture, education and health services next to the safeguarding of the forest resources."

Around 1.2 billion XAF (Central African Francs), equivalent to $2,4 million, has been committed to the program and the president has called upon the financial support of public or private partners to help implement large-scale industrial plantations, as well as banks and sleeping partners, such as the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Central African Development Bank and the African Development Bank, to finance feasibility studies and projects submitted by government; and donations from bilateral or multilateral agreements.

Technical support from various organizations, research centers and large scale industrial companies is also being sought.

One of PRONAR's main objectives is to help small companies participate to a sustainable and responsible forest industry while providing for their village.

As the president said: "We are calling on the communities affected, through NGOs, religious groups and associations, as well as local government officials, to organize the programs falling under their jurisdiction."

He concludes: "It is unique situation here in the heart of the Congo Basin. We have extraordinary flora, fauna and biodiversity."

InFocus provided the story

(China Daily 06/28/2012 page17)