The Republic of Congo wants agriculture to be at the heart of its economic development. The EU Deforestation Regulation can limit the dangers this poses to communities and nature
14 octubre 2024
Agricultural expansion drives almost 90% of global deforestation.
The EU’s attempt to tackle it through the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) could now be delayed by 12 months because of opposition from various quarters – among them, many vested interests.
Earlier this year we set about understanding the law’s potential impact in the Republic of Congo (RoC).
This task had particular urgency because of our government’s ambition to elevate agricultural production into the heart of our economy.
Our study relied on both desk and field research, including interviews with government officials, focus groups with 30 small-scale cocoa producers in the Makoua and Owando districts of the country, and visits to a cocoa plantation in Mvoula. All of these places are situated in the central Cuvette area, which is home to an important carbon sink and the world’s largest tropical peatland.
Our aim was to raise small-scale producers’ awareness of the EUDR, to gather their perceptions, identify the potential impact of the EUDR on them and to understand the issues involved in marketing commodities such as cocoa.
Transforming the agricultural sector
Less than 2% of the RoC’s 10 million hectares of arable land is currently farmed. But the government wants to transform the agricultural sector into a major pillar of the economy.
To achieve this, they have undertaken various measures to promote crops which carry a high deforestation risk, such as coffee, cocoa, oil palm and rubber.
A stark indicator of how much increased production this would mean can be seen in Congo’s ambition to join the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO): membership requires an annual production of at least 80,000 tonnes of cocoa beans – far above Congo’s current cocoa bean production, estimated at 10,000 tonnes for the 2022-2023 marketing year.
Increasing agricultural production on such a grand scale could fundamentally affect nature and people’s rights.
In particular, converting other wooded land – specifically peatlands and savannahs in the administrative districts of Pool, Cuvette, Cuvette Ouest, Plateaux, Sangha and Likouala – into agricultural areas for cocoa and oil palm crops, is likely to put the Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) there, as well as nature, under severe pressure.
The RoC’s savannahs and peat bogs play an important role in the environment and in the wellbeing of the IPLCs who live around these areas and rely on agricultural and pastoral activities, as well as hunting and gathering, for their survival. Alongside the forests, which account for 69% of the national territory, the Congolese savannahs are home to a rich and varied biodiversity. Savannahs and peatlands also play an essential role in the global climate balance and represent around 31% of our national territory.
Heightening the concern that agricultural expansion will intensify pressure on these precious ecosystems is the worry that an elitist minority or private companies accumulating land for large-scale palm plantations will increase inequalities by depriving small-scale producers and local communities of access to land. These local communities are already hampered by difficulty accessing land title deeds.
It is crucial, therefore, to strike a balance between economic development and nature conservation.
Moratorium
The EUDR, when it is finally implemented, could be an important tool against such dangers, and could achieve even more if its scope was extended to other key ecosystems, such as savannahs and peatlands – though this seems unlikely at present.
The EU should support the implementation of a national traceability system for commodities covered by the EUDR that are at risk of deforestation. Such a system should respect the criteria defined in our report, published jointly with other civil society organisations in May 2024.
Our Congolese government should put in place a moratorium on the large-scale conversion of other wooded lands into agricultural areas. It should also promote, through training, sustainable agricultural practices such as agroforestry and conservation agriculture, which reconcile agricultural production and environmental protection.
In addition, civil society should effectively monitor RoC’s commitments to natural resource management, in particular by acting as an independent observer and using the EUDR complaints mechanisms.
Phons Louis Ntoumbou is the Natural Resources Governance Programme Manager at the Forum for Governance and Human Rights (FGDH). He carried out his study/research with the coordination of Maixent Fortunin Agnimbat Emeka, Director at FGDH.
Image: Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace
Categorías: News, Forest Watch, Partner Voices, EU Regulation on deforestation-free products, The Democratic Republic of Congo