By David Lewis
Congo - Parked neatly side by side in a quiet clearing in the heart of Africa's largest rain forest, the two bright yellow bulldozers look absurdly out of place.
Yet they do not attract the slightest attention. They have been there for more than five years, abandoned since the latest in a string of wars broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and are ignored by dozens of tiny, barefoot, half-naked children.
A mechanic in blue overalls tinkers with the unused engines in the evening light, making local village head Bwenge La fear the return of the loggers who left them behind.
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| Activists say Cameroon has been unable to police its forestry laws |
"The loggers brought these here to start work but before they could go anywhere, there was the war, so they have not moved. But the people have come to repair the machines so they will soon cut the trees," he said.
"I've seen what they have done elsewhere, so I wonder what we will really get out of this. They haven't even paid me to protect these machines during the war," said La, head of Yayolo in Congo's north-west Equateur province.
As Congo tries to consolidate peace after a five-year war, the government, private companies and foreign donors are all keen to find ways of tapping into the vast resources of timber in Africa's third-largest country.
With nearly 90 million hectares of woodland, it has the world's second largest rain forest, half of Africa's total.
A new forestry code aimed at regulating the timber business to the benefit of Congo's government and people rather than just the businesses involved is in the process of being implemented.
| 'We have asked the loggers to build a school and a hospital' |
In theory, the code passed in 2002 should ensure that civil society and local populations have a say in how Congo's forests are carved up.
Logging concessions will be distributed by public auctions and 40 percent of the revenue earned by the government must be returned to the communities whose trees were felled.
The code also calls on companies to respect the rights of communities living in the forests, primarily by signing agreements on what benefits they will provide and compensating groups adversely affected by their work.
Experts who have seen forests opened up elsewhere in Africa are sceptical that the code will be followed in a country where corruption is rife and the government still has little control over its own natural resources.
"From our experiences in places like Cameroon, we have clearly proved that these things are not robust enough to beat the corrupt system," said Filip Verbelen, a forestry campaigner for the international environmental group Greenpeace.
Activists say Cameroon has been unable to police its forestry laws. Timber companies have cut down areas of forest meant to be set aside for local communities and removing more timber than agreed from their own concessions.
Verbelen believes that promises of social, environmental and economic development are seldom fulfilled - only a tiny fraction of the revenue reaches the state treasury and an even smaller amount gets back to the community.
"No one can deny the need for exploitation for development but we have to put some controls on," he said.
If controls are not imposed and strictly monitored in the next two or three years, Congo will have lost the chance to harvest its wood sustainably, he said.
Many Congolese villagers living in areas where logging companies already operate tend to agree, complaining about broken promises from the firms and corrupt local authorities.
"We have asked the loggers to build a school and a hospital. We have also asked for a mill to be put in place so our people can have some work," said Pierre Koleka, the head of the Bolongo-Busuwa community, also in Equateur province.
"But we get nothing. And the authorities don't help us. When we demonstrate, they just help the loggers. We have all this wood, but when our people die, we have to bury them in mats, rather than coffins."
Those pushing for the forestry sector to be opened up are also very aware of the challenges.
A draft World Bank commissioned report on the sector says that "forests have been the object of grabbing by national elites and international companies anxious to secure rents as the country's infrastructure and security improve".
It says that by 2002 over 65 percent of the country's forests had been divided into concessions that had been acquired at practically no cost by fake companies speculating on subcontracting to future investors.
The report credits the government with revoking some concessions and imposing a moratorium on new ones. But it also indicates the freeze was often ignored, with 3 million hectares of new logging rights granted in the year after it was imposed.
The government insists its detractors are too pessimistic and should give the new system time.
"Rather than make comparisons, we can learn lessons from places like Cameroon," said Richard Tambwe, the environment ministry's head of forest management. "If there are corrupt people, we will root them out. We need to go step by step so everyone trusts the new system."
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