By Chris Lang One night in late January 2020, dozens of soldiers and eco-guards stormed into Jean-Marie Kasula’s hut and dragged him and his wife away at gun point. Four other people from the same village were taken away barefoot.
Category: DR Congo
Indigenous Batwa prisoners were arrested on their ancestral lands in the Kahuzi-Biéga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo
By Chris Lang When the Kahuzi-Biéga National Park was established in the 1970s in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, about 6,000 Indigenous Batwa people were evicted. For more than 40 years the Batwa have struggled to have their rights recognised. The Batwa communities around the park have no land, and find it difficult to earn…
Regulatory failure: The strange case of a French company called Carbon Market
By Chris Lang Carbon Market is a timber company, registered in France in May 2009. The company imports timber from Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon.
International Finance Corporation has withdrawn its REDD Climate Bonds proposal to the Green Climate Fund
By Chris Lang Last week REDD-Monitor posted an open letter to the Board of the Green Climate Fund written by the World Rainforest Movement. The open letter, which was signed by over 100 organisations, urged the board to say no to the International Finance Corporation’s funding proposal, “Climate Bonds for Forests: Scaling up Private Sector…
Employees of the Somicongo REDD+ concession in the Democratic Republic of Congo have not been paid for 15 months
The Somicongo REDD+ concession in Mai Ndombe province, in the Democratic Republic of Congo was, until early 2018, a logging concession covering an area of almost 300,000 hectares. As Global Witness pointed out in a 2015 report about the logging industry in the DRC, the contract, management plan, and social agreement for the logging concession…