(Congo) Selling off the rainforest - a modern-day scandal - Guardian

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Selling off the rainforest - a modern-day scandal

John Vidal in Kisangani
Wednesday April 11, 2007
The Guardian

Vast tracts of the world's second-largest rainforest have been obtained by a
small group of European and American industrial logging companies in return for
minimal taxes and gifts of salt, sugar and tools, a two-year investigation will
disclose today.

More than 150 contracts covering an area of rainforest nearly the size of the
United Kingdom have been signed with 20 companies in the Democratic Republic
of Congo over the past three years. Many are believed to have been illegally
allocated in 2002 by a transition government emerging from a decade of civil
wars and are in defiance of a World Bank moratorium.

According to the report, the companies, mainly from Germany, Portugal, Belgium,
Singapore and the US, are already stripping from the 21m hectares (52m acres)
of forest, primarily to extract African teak, which sells for more than £500 a
cubic metre and is widely used for flooring, furniture and doors in Britain.

According to the 100-page study, compiled by Greenpeace International working
with Congolese ecological and human rights groups, if all the forests identified
for logging are felled, it could "release" up to 34bn tonnes of carbon - nearly as
much as Britain has emitted in 60 years.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,2054145,00.html

[Double T]

1. I am coming to the realization that there is no hope for the future of life.......

on this planet; at least NOT as we have known it. Homo sapien, the massive destroyer of all resources, is going to go to extinction and take most other living, breathing creatures with 'him'.

[GregD]

2. greed rules

[Double T]

3. ....But NEVER for long, specially in this case.