UN project harms locals

– A large-scale United Nations programme to halt deforestation in the Democratic Republic of Congo – home to the world’s second-largest rainforest – is harming local communities and failing to protect forests, land rights researchers said on Wednesday.

The US-based group Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) called on the World Bank to withhold funding from 20 current or pending projects in the province of Mai-Ndombe, which has been a test case for a UN-backed conservation scheme known as REDD+.

In an area rife with land conflict, an RRI report said the forest protection projects in this western province threatened the rights and incomes of rural women and indigenous groups, including about 73 000 pygmies.

“REDD+ was created to both halt deforestation and benefit local communities – yet the current projects in Mai-Ndombe fail to address both objectives,” said Marine Gauthier, the report’s author.

A spokesperson for the UN’s REDD+ programme did not respond to requests for comment.

The World Bank was not immediately available for comment.

One of the focal cases involves US company Wildlife Works Carbon (WWC), which denied the accusations. The company obtained a large land concession in order to protect a forest from loggers, and uses a share of the money earned from selling carbon credits to benefit people living there, said president Mike Korchinsky.

“Millions of dollars of benefits have gone to the communities,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that WWC had built schools, invested in medical clinics, and provided years of agricultural support.

But Gauthier said local communities, which signed agreements with the company, were not properly consulted and claimed the project had hindered their farming and other activities. “These communities actually bear the burden of reducing deforestation,” she said.

RRI said women and minorities had been worst affected by the REDD+ projects.