[Senate Hearing 108-246]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-246
THE CONGO BASIN FOREST PARTNERSHIP
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 24, 2003
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio BARBARA BOXER, California
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BILL NELSON, Florida
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Virginia
JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee, Chairman
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire BILL NELSON, Florida
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Brown, Keith, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for
Africa, U.S. Agency for International Development.............. 16
Prepared statement........................................... 19
Fay, J. Michael, Ph.D., Conservation Biologist, Wilderness
Conservation Society........................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, opening
statement...................................................... 3
Kansteiner, Walter H., III, Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs................................................ 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Mokombo, Tony, Senior Program Officer, West and Central Africa
and Madagascar Endangered Species Program, World Wildlife Fund. 33
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Turner, John, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans,
International Environmental and Scientific Affairs............. 12
Prepared statement........................................... 14
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Statement Submitted by the Zoological Society of Milwaukee....... 3
Statement Submitted by Sally Jewell Coxe, president of the Bonobo
Conservation Initiative........................................ 6
(iii)
THE CONGO BASIN FOREST PARTNERSHIP
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Thursday, July 24, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on African Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m. in
Room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lamar
Alexander [chairman] presiding.
Present: Senators Alexander [presiding] and Feingold.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LAMAR ALEXANDER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE
Senator Alexander. Now I would like to invite the first
panel for our hearing on the Congo Basin to come forward. While
they come, I am going to begin my opening statement, and then
we will go to Senator Feingold for his opening statement. Then
we will hear from the panel. But I will introduce the witnesses
in just a moment.
The Congo Basin is home to the second largest contiguous
tropical forest in the world. Only the Amazon is larger. It
extends over 700,000 square miles, into six African countries.
It contains the most diverse grouping of plants and animals in
Africa, including rare and endangered species such as the
eastern lowland gorilla and the mountain gorilla, the
chimpanzee and the white rhino.
Today's hearing on the Congo Basin Forest Partnership will
focus on how the United States, in cooperation with other
governments and nongovernmental organizations, can help
preserve this ecological treasure in the heart of Africa and
help African countries develop institutions that they need to
grow and prosper.
Almost a year ago, in September of 2002, Secretary Powell
announced the creation of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership.
The United States also pledged $53 million over the next 3
years toward this effort. The partnership's mission is to
promote economic development, alleviate poverty, and improve
local governance through natural resource conservation
programs.
I am very excited about this mission, because it recognizes
the larger economic and social value of effective conservation
programs. By helping African nations in the Congo Basin
establish strong national parks, we can also help them build
institutions and communities around those parks. A national
park that preserves a major habitat is more than a way to
protect wildlife. It becomes a focal point for economic
development. Local communities take greater pride in their
home, and institutions are built that not only protect the park
but enhance the ability of local government to be more
effective.
I grew up hiking on the trails of the Great Smoky Mountain
National Park and live about 2 miles from its boundary, and
that has certainly been our experience in Tennessee. The park
is so important to the local economy that the Pigeon Forge
Chamber of Commerce is actively advocating for more stringent
environmental regulation to preserve air quality in the park.
They recognize that environmental preservation is critical to
creating jobs in the area.
Those of us from the Smoky Mountains take great pride in
that park. It is a part of who we are. It is my hope that
African countries, especially the communities surrounding new
national parks, will come to recognize the same thing.
The Congo Basin Forest Partnership aims to protect 11 key
landscapes spanning six countries in Central Africa. Many of
these landscapes encompass multiple national parks and
thousands of square miles. This is not a small, simple project.
It is a major undertaking. If conservation efforts in the Congo
Basin are to be done well, they will take considerable
resources, time and effort, and commitment from both the
international community and from the participating African
governments.
Gabon took a giant step forward in this regard by
designating 12 new national parks within its borders. Other
countries' national parks are also encompassed by the
landscapes designated by the partnership. I hope now that we
see a high level of commitment to follow-through by the
participating African governments.
It is not easy to maintain and preserve a national park, as
our own Park Service can tell you. The Great Smokies Park, for
example, has an annual budget of $15.3 million and that leaves
a maintenance backlog of an additional $8 million every year,
and that is just one park. If the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership succeeds, it will establish a network of 30 or more
such parks. While costs are certainly lower in Africa than in
the United States, the resources required for this effort are
substantial.
Today we will look at why this new effort at conservation
in the Congo Basin is so important, how it is proceeding so
far, and what needs to happen in the future to ensure its
success. To do this, we have an outstanding panel of experts
from bothe the administration and the environmental community.
But first, I would like to recognize my colleague from
Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, for his opening statement. I
should note that Senator Feingold has worked tirelessly to
include the Milwaukee Zoo in this hearing. They have been
involved for years in preserving bonobos--is that the way it is
pronounced? Is it ``bon-NOE-boe'' or ``bonn-a-boe.''
Senator Feingold. You are the chairman.
Senator Alexander. ``Bon-NOE-boe?'' We had a discussion on
the bonobos, a type of African ape in the Congo; it would have
provided a great perspective for the committee.
Senator Feingold.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WISCONSIN
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it is a
wonderful zoo, by the way, one of the best.
I thank the chairman for calling this hearing and thank all
the witnesses for being here today. Today this subcommittee
will focus on the Congo Basin Forest Partnership Initiative, a
multilateral effort that is slated to receive some $53 million
in U.S. Government support over the next 3 years. I know that
Chairman Alexander has a strong interest in conservation issues
and I commend him for the seriousness with which he is
approaching the subcommittee's oversight responsibilities in
this important area.
Certainly there is much to be gained, not just for Central
Africa, not just for the United States, but for humanity, in
protecting the diversity and majesty of the Congo Basin.
I also want to make plain that no one should interpret this
hearing today as some sort of statement about the totality of
the subcommittee's interest in the Central African region. I am
so pleased that Senator Alexander and I have been able to work
together in communicating this subcommittee's urgent concerns
about the crisis in Ituri to the administration. Of course,
those of us following African issues in the Congress have many
ongoing concerns about the horrific ongoing abuses in that
region and in the Kivu regions of the eastern Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC), about the precarious situation in
Burundi, and about overall regional instability and security.
Millions of lives are at stake, and these issues certainly
cannot and will not be sidelined.
As the Chairman indicated, I had hoped that the Zoological
Society of Milwaukee (ZSM) would be able to be with us today,
but due to a scheduling conflict their conservation coordinator
was not able to be here. However, ZSM has prepared written
testimony, and I ask that it be entered into the record, Mr.
Chairman.
Senator Alexander. It will be entered.
[The information referred to follows:]
Statement Submitted by the Zoological Society of Milwaukee
On behalf of the Zoological Society of Milwaukee, I gratefully
accept the invitation by Senator Feingold to provide testimony
regarding our organization's experience with and the effects of the
Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) on our work in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC). The following account is a summary of our
program and an overview of broad events that characterize our
experience with the CBFP to date. I regret not being able to deliver
testimony in person and supply any information that the Congressional
committees may find useful, but I respectfully submit this report to
the Senator's office while attending a conservation conference in
Japan.
Please let it be understood that it is our intention to acknowledge
the huge need for funding to help conserve the natural resources and
heritage of central Africa. It is without question that the CBFP has
the potential to help slow the destruction of the region's last
remaining tropical forests and the animal species that perpetuate them.
The Zoological Society of Milwaukee wishes to express its appreciation
to those who have helped to forge this partnership and make funds
available in the ultimate hope that lasting conservation is achieved.
We provide the perspective of a non-CARPE organization that has active
programs on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we
offer testimony in order to provide constructive dialogue for the
modeling of large-scale funding initiatives.
Background
The Zoological Society of Milwaukee (ZSM) began conservation work
in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997 when it formally signed an
agreement with the Congo's government authority overseeing national
parks, the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN).
Specifically, the agreement authorized ZSM to conduct conservation
research and support activities in the Salonga National Park, one of
the 11 landscapes now targeted by the CBFP. The focus of ZSM's interest
is the pygmy chimpanzee or the bonobo (Pan paniscus), a highly
endangered chimpanzee species that is endemic to the Congo. The Salonga
National Park is the only federally protected area for the bonobo, and
despite the fact that the park had been originally created to protect
this species, it was not known whether the species existed there or
occurred in sufficient numbers to be self-sustaining. The Salonga is a
vast tropical forest park, larger than the size of the state of
Maryland, but because of its remoteness, the Salonga remained virtually
unknown to the international scientific and conservation community.
ZSM's objectives were to initiate a regional survey of the bonobo and
other large mammals in the park in order to
determine their distribution and abundance and identify specific
threats to their
survival.
Thus, in November 1997 in partnership with ICCN, ZSM launched an
exploratory mission to the Salonga in search of the bonobo. The pilot
study was the first of its kind to document the bonobo's presence in
the park and to provide quantitative evidence to justify a large-scale
survey and follow-up conservation efforts for this great ape. Shortly
after this exploratory mission, ZSM began a major fund-raising campaign
to invest up to $235,000 (mostly from private sources) in a more
extensive survey that would begin in 1998 and take approximately 18
months to complete. Tragically, however, civil war broke out in Congo
in August 1998, and all fieldwork was suspended. Despite the war, ZSM
continued to raise funds in order to resume survey work as soon as
peaceful conditions returned. Moreover, ZSM maintained its presence in
the Congo during the war and continued to invest in ancillary
conservation work, such as the production of environmental educational
materials and the provision of emergency support to the Salonga park
guards.
Then in October 2000, with a cessation in combat and the help of
the UN peacekeeping forces, ZSM returned to the Salonga to resume its
survey work. While conditions were not suitable to mount a large-scale
survey (due to the lack of transport, fuel and occasional security
concerns), ZSM continued to lay the groundwork by conducting pilot
surveys in various locations throughout the park. In a span of two
years from October 2000 to October 2002, ZSM made five missions into
Salonga and explored 11 sites in order to get a broad overview of the
park and identify priority regions for survey in early 2003.
Preparations for peace and the withdrawal of foreign troops did not
begin in earnest until late 2001 to early 2002.
In addition to carrying out sites surveys, at the request of the
United Nations Foundation and UNESCO, ZSM agreed to deliver salary
funds to the park guards as part of the UNF/UNESCO program to support
World Heritage Sites in Danger (titled: Protecting World Heritage Sites
During Times of Armed Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo).
With support from USAID (Kinshasa Mission), guard payments were
combined with research excursions so that urgently needed support for
Salonga could proceed in tandem with scientific investigations.
Advent of CBFP
ZSM became aware of the CBFP in the fall of 2002 from press
releases. While attending an international meeting in Kinshasa in
October 2002 on behalf of the UNESCO program, ZSM and other
organizations heard about the CBFP initiative, but no details were
provided. The essence of the information was that the U.S. government
had awarded a grant of up to $53 million for 11 ``landscapes'' (as they
were referred to) in the Congo Basin countries. The UNESCO program was
already giving financial assistance to at least two of the landscapes
in DRC, namely, the Salonga and the Kahuzi Biega National Parks.
Additionally, the distribution of funds was to be allocated, not by
using an open granting mechanism inviting qualifying NGO's, but by
designating three organizations to administer the funds: World Wildlife
Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Conservation International. At
this point neither of these organizations had worked in Salonga.
Inquiring further at the USAID offices in Kinshasa about the program,
it was explained that the CBFP was in the process of being shaped, that
little had been decided as to how the partnership would work among the
lead organizations.
ZSM's chief concerns, since we had on-going programs in the Salonga
landscape, were: how would our work be affected, would we be
integrated, or would we find ourselves in competition? Additionally,
were there funding opportunities for us, and if so, what was the
mechanism to apply for these funds? From ZSM's perspective, there was
little information about the development of the CBFP, and ZSM had not
been asked to supply information regarding Salonga or our on-going work
in Salonga.
A meeting with USAID and potential participants was held in
Kinshasa in March 2003 to decide on the operational mechanisms and to
inform potential sub-partners. Unfortunately, however, ZSM received an
invitation only very shortly before the Kinshasa meeting took place,
and we were not permitted to send our Congolese government homologue as
it was explained that due to resource limitations to provide travel
funds, source-country government representatives could not attend.
Thus, ZSM had neither representation nor opportunity to gather
information.
One month later, in April 2003, ZSM met with officials in the USAID
office in Kinshasa and with Dr. John Flynn, the director for the CBFP
(under USAID's Central African Regional Program for the Environment--
CARPE). Dr. Flynn very kindly explained how the CBFP mechanism had
evolved to date (any mistakes in the following account are mine): That
is, that the three (in one case, four) instigating organizations would
submit proposals to USAID to request themselves as the ``lead''
administrators for the landscape. USAID would judge proposals based on
established criteria such as the applicant's knowledge of the
landscape, its ability to collaboratively develop a work plan, garner
matching funds, and line up specialized sub-contractees to implement
programs on the ground. He explained that if ZSM were to be integrated
into this program that it would have to develop a relationship with the
lead organizations. Who would be the lead for Salonga? This had yet to
be determined. Furthermore, the source of funding that ZSM had
previously received from USAID via the Kinshasa mission to help defray
costs related to delivering park guard salaries would no longer exist--
all the funds for the environment would now be channeled through the
developing CBFP mechanism. Therefore, ZSM could not simply renew an
existing grant, but we would have to reapply to the lead, non-
government CBFP organization, as yet undesignated, and with which we
may have been placed in a competitive situation.
From ZSM's perspective, there was no mechanism to respect existing
on-going work, and it appeared to be up to the ``lead'' CBFP
organization to collaborate with organizations of their choice. Unless
USAID adopted a critical review process, there would be only an
assumption that lead organizations exercise integrity, goodwill, and
fairness.
Results
ZSM has witnessed a destabilizing effect with the central
government. ICCN has recently issued a memo to members of CARPE/CBFP
and to its existing partners asking for coordination of programs
through their central authority and reminding organizations of the need
to respect the contractual procedure of ICCN before claiming to
undertake projects in DRC protected areas and the need to respect
existing ICCN contracts.
Nevertheless, the reality is that small NGO's like ZSM, whether or
not they wish to receive USAID funding, may have to either forfeit or
alter their programs to fit under a new framework that has been imposed
by the CBFP.
During the evolution of the CBFP, certain programs of ZSM's have
been assumed by contending lead organizations, such as the large mammal
survey. Consequently, ZSM will have to redirect existing resources and
develop a complementary niche rather than duplicate what will be called
for under the federally funded CBFP work plan. This point impacts
private funding that ZSM has been successful in procuring.
ZSM has sought out and developed a relationship with one of
Salonga's lead organizations. Pending USAID final approval, Salonga
might be jointly managed by two organizations: WWF and WCS. Neither of
these organizations has had a long-term presence in Salonga. However,
during the process of these two organizations working out their
respective roles, WWF has invited ZSM to state its interests in
collaboration by contributing to the USAID proposal, submitting
budgetary needs, and outlining its financial cost-share capacity.
The benefit that ZSM will derive from the CBFP is the sharing of
responsibilities with organizations that possess the administrative
capacity to build and develop the infrastructure of the park and to
support the park staff.
The benefits of the CBFP to the Congo Basin will be that the--
Simultaneous financing and cohesive planning under the CBFP
for protected area support across a region should allow for
cross fostering and resource sharing among conservation groups;
and
The leadership of the Congo Basin countries will have a
unifying and common objective.
Even though the program's initial structure may have been
inherently flawed (in that its creation was non-inclusive, and because
it provides much power and resources to a limited field), there are
just reasons for undertaking bold funding measures to preserve forest
lands in central Africa. As of May 2003, ZSM has been reassured by the
USAID Kinshasa Mission and by Ambassador Aubrey Hooks that every
measure will be taken to ensure that proper, legal and ethical
protocols will be in place to administer the CBFP award. Based on ZSM's
relationship with and respect for these two offices, we conclude that
there will ultimately be much good to come from this program. At the
very least, these landscapes need a significant infusion of
international funds if they are to survive and benefit humankind.
Recommendations for future initiatives
Acknowledge and include existing organizations and programs
much earlier in the award development.
Avoid granting sole authority to three highly expert but
highly competitive and bureaucratic organizations; create a
process of review, verification and evaluation using an
objective, diverse, non-government panel.
Develop basic criteria whereby lead organizations choose and
select credible sub-contracting organizations.
Before submission of proposals for leadership and before
selection of sub-partners, work plans should be devised with
the input and provisional approval by the host country
government authority.
Respectfully submitted, July 21, 2003,
Gay E. Reinartz, Ph.D.
Conservation Coordinator,
Zoological Society of Milwaukee
Statement Submitted by Sally Jewell Coxe, President of the Bonobo
Conservation Initiative
the congo basin forest partnership
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thank
you for the opportunity to share our views. The Congo Basin Forest
Partnership is an historic and timely initiative that has the potential
to make a lasting impact on the future of this extremely important
cradle of biodiversity on the planet. It is an honor to be involved as
an active participant in the shaping and implementation of this
important, collaborative effort.
The Bonobo Conservation Initiative is dedicated to the preservation
of the bonobo (Pan paniscus), a rare and little known species of great
ape, found only in the central Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC). Most people have not heard of bonobos, yet they are
humankind's closest primate relatives along with chimpanzees. Dubbed
the ``make love, not war'' apes, bonobos exhibit a peaceful,
matriarchal society, based on sharing and cooperation. They have great
power to serve as a flagship species, both for conservation and peace.
Bonobos are highly endangered; fewer than 5,000 may survive. There
is an urgent need for a unified conservation effort focused on this
species. Bonobos occupy some of the most important areas of
biodiversity within the Congo Basin. Three out
of the eleven ``priority landscapes'' identified by the CBFP encompass
the bonobo
habitat.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, the only home of the bonobo, is a
vast, resource-rich nation the size of western Europe, which is just
emerging from six years of civil war and foreign occupation. This war
has taken the lives of approximately 3 million people--the greatest
death toll from any war since WWII--and the primary cause of the
conflict has been competition over illegal exploitation of natural
resources.
Peace in the region is essential to the ethical and wise management
of natural resources, and by the same token, programs which promote
conservation and natural resource management are integral to promoting
and maintaining peace.
If implemented with cultural sensitivity, the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership can make a strong and positive impact for peace, stability,
and improved quality of life for the citizens of the DRC. We hope that
the U.S. government will concomitantly strengthen its support for peace
process and reconstruction in the DRC, which will influence the entire
region.
In all of our conservation programs in the DRC, the Bonobo
Conservation Initiative recognizes the inextricability of humanitarian
and livelihood concerns with conservation. We cannot successfully
address biodiversity protection without dealing with and working with
the citizens of the Congo. Conservation programs must benefit and
empower the people to manage their resources effectively, and it is for
this reason that BCI is actively developing partnerships and programs
which address health, conflict resolution, and livelihood concerns. We
are working closely with the national leadership of the DRC, as well as
on the grassroots level with local communities. Leveraging the
investment in the CBFP, by partnering with other U.S. government-
supported initiatives for health, democracy and governance, and
sustainable development will be a key to achieving real and lasting
results.
While it has been noted that the CBFP will initiate extremely
important work on the ground, both the amount of funding allocated and
the brief, 3-year duration of the program as currently envisioned, will
be insufficient to achieve the goals. Increased U.S. commitment is
needed, and further support from other nations must be encouraged and
coordinated with the partnership.
BCI has found that even with the small amount of resources that it
has been able to direct to the DR Congo in the past few years, that the
results have been profound, most noticeably in the responses of the
Congolese people with whom we have worked and spoken, and the emergence
of the broad network of allies around the world who are committed to
help in securing a sustainable future for the people of the Congo and
their land, and for the biodiversity of that critically important part
of the Earth.
With support from the Great Ape Conservation Fund administered
through the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, BCI has discovered new groups
of bonobos in two strategic areas and we are now working with the local
people to create new community-based reserves, and related sustainable
development programs. This is part of a larger goal to establish a
multi-zoned ``Bonobo Peace Forest,'' comprising a linked constellation
of community-based reserves in a landscape of sustainable development
and wise resource management. As it has with the small amount made
available to support the USFWS administered funds established by the
Great Ape Conservation Act and the African Elephant Act, the U.S.
government can achieve much of great significance and lasting value
through the CBFP.
The government of Australia is actively initiating a similar
program of financial support for in-situ great ape conservation through
the UNEP ``Great Ape Survival Program.'' Perhaps this forward momentum
can be built upon to include and strengthen Australia's participation
in the CBFP.
The U.S. government can act as a model, precedent, and catalyst for
comparable action by other Western governments, and to reinforce action
by international organizations and alliances, such as the UN and the
EU, to benefit the Congo, its forests and its people, and thus, the
world.
We have seen the disastrous results of inattention and it is time
to increase the exportation of the best that America has to offer: our
optimism, our knowledge and pragmatic approach to innovative problem
solving, our commitment to the rule of law and to government for, of,
and by the people. After suffering years of hardship, deprivation, war,
and exploitation, the Congolese people and the new transitional
government led by President Joseph Kabila are showing an honest and
transparent desire for allies and support for doing the right thing.
Well over one hundred years ago, the U.S.A. created the world's
first national park. Fifty years later, the first national park in
Africa was created in the Congo, in large part due to an American, Carl
Akeley. It is appropriate that now, in the 21st century, the U.S.A.
again take the lead in securing the resources of the Congo for the
people of the Congo, by working with them, by working to ensure that
they are given a fair hearing both locally and internationally, so that
they can be the partners they must be if the Congo Basin is to remain a
viable place both for people and the wondrous spectrum of fauna and
flora within it.
Thank you again for the opportunity to contribute our voice and
that of our Congolese partners to the record.
Senator Feingold. I believe it provides a very helpful
perspective from a small organization that was working in the
area before the partnership was launched and is now adjusting
to both the changes and the opportunities that this new
endeavor has to offer.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to learning more
about the Congo Basin Forest Partnership today. I will stay
here as long as I possibly can. I am in the role of ranking
member with regard to issues on the Judiciary Committee, where
there may be a markup. So if I leave it is only for that
reason, not out of a lack of interest in this, because I am
very interested in it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Alexander. The Judiciary Committee is--I
understand why you have to leave for that, and I will not say
anything about the Judiciary Committee.
We are delighted with the witnesses we have today. Let me
introduce the first panel. We have a second panel. I would like
to make this suggestion. We ask you to--we will certainly take
your written statement and make it a part of the record. If you
could summarize your remarks in ten minutes or less, that would
give us a little more time for questions and conversations,
especially while Senator Feingold may be here. But we want to
hear you say whatever you have to say.
The Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs is
here, Mr. Walter Kansteiner. We have met on more than one
occasion and I am grateful for that. He brought to my attention
the Congo Forest, Congo Basin Forest Partnership, shortly after
I became chairman of the subcommittee. So welcome, Walter. We
are glad you are here.
John Turner has been long active in conservation affairs in
this country. He was President and CEO of the Conservation
Fund, which is where I guess I have gotten to know him before,
and he shares my passion for national parks, except he likes
the ones in the West the way I like the ones in the East. We
like them both, I guess.
Mr. Keith Brown, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for
Africa in USAID. He is stepping in for Connie Newman, who could
not be here today. But even more important than that, he is
from Memphis, Tennessee, and we are very proud of Mr. Brown.
Thanks to the three of you for coming, and we will start
with you, Mr. Secretary, with your testimony, and then go to
Mr. Turner and Mr. Brown. Then we will go to questions.
STATEMENT OF WALTER H. KANSTEINER III, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
STATE FOR AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Kansteiner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. Growing
up in the North Shore of Chicago, I had the privilege to visit
the Milwaukee Zoo and have fond memories of it. And also,
spending my summers in western North Carolina, I too hiked the
Smoky Mountains and paddled the rivers of Pisgah National
Forest and perhaps really gained my love for the out of doors
in that Tennessee-North Carolina area.
We do have a wonderful collegial team that works together
on this thing called the Congo Basin Forest Partnership. John
Turner brings tremendous experience, and so I will keep my
remarks brief. Keith Brown has a great handle on exactly how we
are rolling this program out and how we are keeping it on
track. So I will be brief.
Senator Feingold, I heard you on the Ituri and the Kivus
and I share your concern there. You might note that the UN
Security Council will vote shortly on MONUC (United Nations
Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo) troop
mandate increase. So I think that is a very good sign. I know
we worked together on that and I appreciate your support on
that.
Senator Alexander. Thank you for that, Mr. Secretary.
Senator Feingold, thank you for saying that earlier.
Interesting to me, if I may interrupt, Ambassador Negroponte
told me in a recent visit that 60 percent of the business of
the UN Security Council is Africa today.
Mr. Kansteiner. Exactly. Thank you.
Conserving the Congo Basin Forest is a priority and a
passion that all of us on this panel have, and I am proud to
say that Secretary of State Colin Powell shares as well. He
fondly recalls often his time in Gabon in the rain forest,
where Mike Fay, who is the real expert who is going to testify
after us here, showed us through the coastal rain forest of
Gabon and all the fantastic botany and potential wildlife that
is there.
Unfortunately, as the Secretary of State reminds us, his
security detail, which included numerous helicopters, boats,
and everything else, scared every single animal away long
before we got there. So we made an effort, but he did in fact
see the fantastic environment that still remains in Gabon and
throughout the whole Congo Basin.
After we took that trek with Mike Fay, we returned to
beach-side roundtable discussions with the NGO community. John
Turner was there, and it was with great pride that Colin Powell
said, after listening to the conservationists that are working
this issue day and night, ``From this day forward, I am a
conservationist for Africa and always will be.'' So we took
that as a great success, and Secretary Powell has been a
tremendous supporter of, and advocate for, all the programs
that we pursue.
As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, the Congo Basin is the
second largest lung of the world, that is rain forest, that
provides the world the oxygen that we need. It is a global
lung, and we have to recognize it as such, and we have to work
together with our African partners to preserve it. It is a
treasure house that has tremendous biodiversity, that has
unbelievable potential, not only for the people that live
there, and that is very important. These people have to be able
to tap in to that potential in a responsible and sustainable
way.
But it also holds treasures for the world. We do not even
fully know the biodiversity that is there. So it is exciting to
protect it. Because it is a unique ecosystem, it is also
exciting to protect for the next generation and generations to
follow.
It needs good governance. It needs governance in the area
that will recognize it and prioritize it and in fact protect
it. I will never forget sitting in President Bongo's office
with Mike Fay and John Turner going through some of the
fantastic photographs that Mike Fay and his partners from
National Geographic took of the Congo Basin Forest--brilliant
animal shots, but also fantastic flora and fauna, and
unbelievable rain forests.
President Bongo was amazed looking at these photographs of
his own country. He did not realize the extent of what these
resources are and how fantastic this landscape is. I think that
was really the beginning--this was 2\1/2\ years ago--where
President Bongo realized this is a priority for him. In fact,
some months later, along with Secretary Powell, he announced
that he was setting aside 10 percent of his country's land mass
to create national parks that will in fact protect this area,
not only for the people and the wildlife, but for the world.
We are proud to be working with the likes of President
Bongo and others within the Congo Basin Forest Partnership.
There are six African countries, and it is important for us to
identify those. They are Gabon, Cameroon, Central African
Republic, the DRC--that is, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Kinshasa capital--the Congo, capital in Brazzaville, and
Equatorial Guinea. These are the six African countries that
make up our African governmental partners.
I am going to let John talk a little bit about how that
partnership actually works and some of the 11 landscapes that
in fact have been identified as the core priorities for these
six countries, for this huge area known as the Congo River
Basin. We have 11 landscapes that are the priority, that have
been identified along with the NGO community. Quite frankly,
the NGO community has been a true leader. Mike Fay and others
like him have been fantastic allies, hard workers who have
really done the difficult on-the-ground assessments.
I would like to conclude with just one story about how the
Congo River Basin Forest Partnership Initiative not only helps
preserve ecosystems but, in fact, gets the communities that
live in it on a better footing. During the war in the DRC,
border patrols between Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo had no way of
communicating. Troops were flowing in, troops were flowing out.
They were flowing through parks and reserves. In fact, mountain
gorillas' habitat was highly endangered because there was so
much troop movement coming in from all sides. It was under
direct threat.
Yet those anti-poaching units from all three of those
countries remained at their posts, stayed true to what their
mission was, that is to protect the habitat. But most
importantly, through an NGO and U.S. Government funded program,
we bought them communication gear, walkie-talkie systems, where
they could actually communicate between each other to let each
other know what was happening and how in fact that environment
was being degraded and how it was being threatened.
That national park ranger communication was the beginning
of an actual ability for these three governments to talk to
each other. It was the beginning of an ability for a peace
process to start unfolding. It was through some of these anti-
poaching units in these national parks, because the three
countries simply were not communicating with each other. It was
one of those very on-the-ground ways that protecting our
environment is also becoming conflict
resolution.
It is a good story and we want to repeat it as in fact we
unfold the Congo Basin Forest Partnership. I will conclude
there, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kansteiner follows:]
Prepared Statement of Walter H. Kansteiner III
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me
to testify here today. Conserving the Congo Basin Forests is a topic
that Secretary Powell and I are passionate about. Secretary Powell has
had the opportunity to get a first-hand feel for the region's
conservation potential and challenges when he visited Gabon last
September following President Bongo's announcement of his decision to
create a new national park network. The visit left the Secretary even
more convinced of the importance of conservation in the region even
though, as he has wryly noted, his security detail scared away all the
wildlife before his walk.
The Congo Basin Forest is a global treasure in a region of both
great challenge and great opportunity. The forest is not only a
``global lung'' but a rich store of biodiversity and a source of
livelihood for millions. The fate of Africa's forests and natural
resources is inextricably linked to questions of governance, national
and regional peace, security and economic growth. Poor conservation
practices and conflict over resource use has the potential to undermine
stability and hamper prospects for growth. Conversely, sound natural
resource management will help promote sustainable trade and economic
growth, transparency and openness, and mitigate health threats. That is
why we consider conserving Africa's irreplaceable natural resources as
one of our central priorities in Africa.
The Congo Basin Forest is the second largest area of contiguous
tropical forest in the world; the Amazon Basin is the largest. Much of
the forest remains relatively intact but pressures and threats to the
forest are growing, including from rapid urbanization, uncontrolled
timber exploitation and logging, and unsustainable commercial bushmeat
hunting. The lack of alternative economic opportunities coupled with
limited capacity and resources for enforcement leave even protected
areas vulnerable to poaching and illegal logging.
The good news is that it is not too late for the forest of the
Congo Basin, nor are we starting from scratch. The U.S. government,
largely through the Central African Regional Program for the
Environment (CARPE) and the Smithsonian Institution, the European
Union, and (NGO) advocates and activists have been active in the region
for years. They have demonstrated, with limited resources, that well-
designed programs can work.
The Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) is an exciting addition
to these efforts. The CBFP is a partnership of countries, NGOs, and
private businesses dedicated to the conservation and sustainable use
and management of the forest. It reflects the Administration's high-
level commitment to the Congo Basin Forest and a strengthened
commitment by the countries of the region to work in partnership with
the international community. The six African countries whose forests
are covered by the CBFP are Cameroon, Central African Republic,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the
Republic of Congo. Our work in the CBFP reflects a shared commitment to
forge a new, more productive and effective, way of working with each
other in true partnership. It is imperative that we use our scarce
resources wisely and not only listen to each other but hear and
understand the messages being conveyed, even if they are not always
what we think we want to hear.
Each of the six African countries of the Congo Basin Forest region
has committed to address the challenge of conserving its natural forest
heritage while providing jobs, training, and income for the people in
the region who depend on its natural resources. As economic pressures
mount to capitalize on the forest, the countries have made it clear
they recognize their important stake in the CBFP.
Just as the CBFP is building on previous international community
efforts, it is also building on previous African-led efforts. In 1999,
the Yaounde Declaration, signed by the six heads of state of the Congo
Basin, set forth strong commitments for regional cooperation to improve
resource management, create trans-border protected areas, harmonize
forest policies, combat poaching, and develop sustainable use
approaches in consultation with rural populations and economic
operators. The process launched at Yaounde led to the creation of a
Council of Ministers for Forests of Central Africa (COMIFAC), which
includes members beyond the CBFP countries. It is responsible for
coordination of forest policy among the member governments. COMIFAC has
developed a ``Plan of Convergence'' and an action plan for the region
that will serve as a reference point for CBFP activities. Other major
forest initiatives in the region have been brought under the COMIFAC
umbrella, most notably the African Timber Organization and the
Conference on Tropical Forest Ecosystems of Central Africa, which
sponsors dialogue with civil society. COMIFAC recently held a meeting
to further elaborate their action plan and consider how best to engage
and work with the CBFP. We hope that COMIFAC will continue to
strengthen its ability to catalyze regional cooperation and
implementation of sound forestry policies. Several of the international
CBFP partners are assisting COMIFAC's efforts to strengthen its
capacity and effectiveness in the region.
We should not delude ourselves into thinking that success is
assured. Many institutions in the region remain fragile and old habits
and attitudes about the use and value of the environment do not change
overnight. Nevertheless, we have seen a number of examples of progress.
At the WSSD, Gabon announced the creation of 13 national parks,
which encompass ten percent of Gabon's land area, and the Gabonese
government is cooperating closely with the U.S. government and
environmental organizations to protect its natural heritage. The
Republic of Congo is collaborating on an innovative public-private
partnership in the Kabo forest concession to control poaching and
ensure sustainable forestry. This area is part of one of the 11 key
landscapes on which the U.S. contribution to the CBFP will focus. In
the Democratic Republic of Congo, while the country was still at war,
conservation rangers on opposite sides of the lines remained
steadfastly at their posts protecting wildlife and forests and easing
communications across lines and between the sides. Cameroon continues
to build capacity in the forestry sector and civil society is actively
pressing for stronger sustainable management of the country's natural
resources. In 2001 Cameroon formally protected the Lobeke Park, which
is a crucial part of the tri-national Sangha complex, which includes
parks in the Central African Republic and Republic of Congo. Equatorial
Guinea and the Central African Republic were eager participants in the
first organizational meeting of the CBFP in Paris and have declared
their commitment to the CBFP.
In the months since the Paris meeting, the U.S. partners have been
hard at work developing programs with in-country partners. As you will
hear from our USAID colleague, project proposals are now being reviewed
and decisions should be made in the coming weeks.
As the example of the rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo
illustrates, conservation can be a win-win situation that advances
broader policy objectives and helps build trust, not simply between
warring sides but between governments and communities. Conservation is
not a people versus animals and trees debate. When wisely pursued, it
is a means to ensure that biodiversity is protected and poverty is
reduced through the creation of sustainable economic opportunities.
Well-managed protected areas and buffer zones can be sources of jobs
and generators of revenue, especially when local communities are full
partners in the development and management of the areas. The
conservation of biodiversity can produce revenue as a result of
research into natural products that could have health or other
applications (such work is being done by the Smithsonian Institution
and the National Institutes of Health in Cameroon and they would like
to replicate it elsewhere in the region). Responsible mining and forest
concessions can ensure both jobs and sustainable resource exploitation
to fuel economic growth and trade. Controlling poaching and
unsustainable commercial bushmeat trade promotes respect for the rule
of law, preserves biodiversity, and mitigates health risks. On the
other hand, unsustainable logging practices and continued reliance on
bushmeat may have negative health effects. Evidence is mounting that
recent Ebola outbreaks in Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon were triggered
when hunters and villagers came into contact with infected animals.
Conservation and sound resource management, by definition, require
transparency and inclusiveness. The complexities of protecting
biodiversity and meeting the sometimes conflicting needs of affected
communities can best be addressed through open processes. The programs
that the United States supports in the Congo Basin place a premium on
these qualities and seek to build a capacity and constituency for
conservation among the people of the region. For example, we have
supported participatory mapping exercises of the forest and provided
small grants to local NGOs to carry out work such as education and
monitoring.
Conservation programs will not immediately produce flourishing
democracies, regional cooperation, vibrant civil societies, or
accelerating economic growth but they can serve as hopeful and
empowering examples that can radiate well beyond the realm of
conservation. The process is long and far from linear, but through the
CBFP and our assistance programs, we are going to do our utmost to make
the positive vision a reality. As Secretary Powell emphasized during
his visit to Gabon, we believe our money spent on conservation in the
Congo Basin is money well-spent. The United States has a history of
investing in the environment and we are committed to continuing the
tradition. As Secretary Powell said, ``We don't see this as a one-time
shot. We are in this for the long run.''
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Turner.
STATEMENT OF JOHN TURNER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR
OCEANS, INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL AND SCIENTIFIC AFFAIRS
Mr. Turner. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Senator
Feingold. It is certainly a pleasure for me to appear with my
colleagues Walter and Keith to talk about the Congo Basin
Forest Partnership, and thank you for your personal interest.
Mr. Chairman, this exciting project has the potential of being
the largest and boldest conservation project ever attempted.
But I do want to take this opportunity this morning to
thank you for your leadership and lifetime passion for
conservation. Especially when I was at the Conservation Fund
working with Pat Noonan, your leadership, Governor Sundquist,
Gary Meyers, the effort to protect state parks and state
forests in your wonderful State of Tennessee, I think together
we did over 100,000 acres in the last few years in your great
State of Tennessee.
Mr. Chairman, as we are all aware, nearly 2 weeks ago
President Bush ended his historic trip to Africa. He found it,
as you discussed this morning, certainly a continent full of
hope and promise, yet facing enormous challenges. Accompanied
on that trip by my friend Walter, the President spoke
forthrightly about the ravaging effects of poverty, corruption,
HIV-AIDS, and the regional wars on the people of Africa.
At the same time, President Bush also addressed how we in
the United States can support Africans in achieving during this
decade rising prosperity and expanding peace. I believe the
Congo Basin Partnership is a major effort to enhance the future
of the citizens of the west central region of this great
continent.
The Congo Basin project is also, I believe, reflective of
this President's unprecedented commitment to reduce
deforestation and conserve tropical forests around the world.
In addition to the Congo Basin effort, other components of
President Bush's leadership are efforts in the Amazon,
expanding the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, utilizing our
remote sensing capacity to monitor what is going on in forests,
and the exciting initiative to combat illegal logging which
will be announced by Secretary Powell next Monday.
The Congo Basin is a global treasure and is extremely
immense, as you pointed out. This area is equivalent to the
size of our five States of California, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, and Utah combined. As was pointed out, Secretary
Powell launched the Congo Basin Partnership September of '02 at
the World Summit on Sustainability in Johannesburg. At the end
of the summit, the Secretary did travel to Gabon to review and
discuss the potential of this wonderful partnership and to
thank President Bongo and the people of Gabon for the
commitment they have made to protect their tropical landscape.
I believe this was an historic first-ever trip highlighting
forest conservation by a Secretary of State from the United
States.
Mr. Chairman, the United States believes this partnership
holds tremendous promise for this resource-rich region that has
suffered much over the decade from poverty and instability and
too often gut-wrenching violence. These forests and their
wildlife are major assets to the social, economic, and
environmental health of the Africans. The partnership is a
powerful mechanism for economic and social development as well
as advancing our environmental goals with our partners in
Central Africa, including the fight against illegal logging and
associated trade and corruption.
In broad terms, the U.S. priorities for the partnership are
to provide the people of the region a sustainable means of
livelihood through well-managed forest concessions, sustainable
agricultural practices, and an integrated ecotourism program.
These approaches will improve forest and natural resource
governance through community-based management, combating
illegal logging and bush meat trade, and enforcing anti-
poaching efforts.
The partnership will also help the Congo Basin countries
develop a network of effectively managed parks, protected
areas, and ecological corridors which encompass coverage of
over 25 million--25 million--acres.
We have taken a number of steps during the last few months
toward this end. In January, we co-hosted with the French
government an international meeting of the Congo Basin
Partnership. This brings senior level administrative folks from
the United States who traveled to the Congo Basin to assess the
critical needs for capacity-building and training. Ongoing
consultations in the region and among State, AID, and other
Federal entities, such as the Forest Service, the Fish and
Wildlife Service, the Park Service, the Department of Commerce,
NASA, USGS, and the Smithsonian Institute, and OPIC, are
developing collaborative training and capacity-building efforts
under this partnership.
The administration is committed to investing up to $53
million in the partnership to the year 2005. Working closely
with regional governments and organizations, U.S.-based
conservation NGO's such as the Wildlife Conservation Society,
World Wildlife Fund, and the World Resource Institute plan to
significantly expand their programs in nearly a dozen critical
forest landscapes. Their efforts, along with the American
Forest and Paper Association and the Society of American
Foresters, represent an essential element in this developing
partnership. However, without the strong support and commitment
of African governments and people this partnership could not
succeed.
Mr. Chairman, we feel we are on the right track and have
the right commitments from the partnership for developing the
resource base to make the Congo Basin Forest Partnership work.
Finally, let me add that this partnership gives America an
opportunity to share our insights and lessons learned since
creating and maintaining the world's first national park,
Yellowstone, in my native State of Wyoming. Setting aside wild
lands and wild critters for their own intrinsic value certainly
was one of our country's best inventions and one that we can
share with neighbors around the world.
We want to do our part the help improve the lives of the
people of west-central Africa and to build a lasting legacy for
current and future generations.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Turner follows:]
Prepared Statement of John F. Turner
Mr. Chairman and distinguished and honorable Senators, ladies and
gentlemen.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my views about the
opportunities and challenges ahead of the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership.
The Congo Basin Forest is a global treasure, the world's second
largest intact tropical forest, spanning 700,000 square miles--
equivalent to California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah
combined. It catches water from millions of acres of pristine forest,
which provide a livelihood to millions of Africans. Within these
forests is a wealth of incredible species of plants and animals, many
of which were unknown until recently. The Congo Basin Forest must be
protected and conserved for the economic and environmental good of
Africa and for the ecological heritage of
humankind.
Secretary Powell launched the Congo Basin Forest Partnership on
September 4, 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, South Africa. This partnership--of governments,
international organizations, non-governmental environmental
organizations, industry, and civil society--recognizes that creating
conditions for sustainable development is much too big a task for
governments to tackle alone. Strong public-private partnerships are
crucial to mobilizing greater interest and financial support and to
moving away from old, inefficient, ineffective ways of doing business.
A non-hierarchical relationship among partners is essential to the
partnership.
Following the launch in South Africa, Secretary Powell visited
Gabon for the inauguration of Gabon's national park system, a historic,
first-ever trip highlighting forest conservation by a Secretary of
State. The U.S. has sent high-level interagency teams into the Congo
Basin region to assess critical needs for capacity-building training.
My bureau, along with the Bureau of African Affairs and USAID, has
developed a regular interagency dialogue and has hosted exchanges with
multiple Congo Basin Forest Partnership stakeholders. The Department of
State held its first-ever symposium on ecotourism to explore ways to
develop that industry in the Congo Basin. We hope to build on the
knowledge gained from the symposium and work with the region to make
wise choices for sustainable development. Secretary Powell underscored
critical links between conservation and sustainable management of
forest resources at his Open Forum event celebrating Earth Day. One of
our Congo Basin Forest Partnership partners, Dr. Jane Goodall, was the
keynote speaker.
This September, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival will
highlight the efforts being made to conserve and sustainably manage
Central African forests. The Congo Basin Forest Partnership will
receive a conservation action award. President Bongo of Gabon will
receive an award for setting aside over 10,000 square miles to create a
system of 13 national parks. The Republic of Congo's President, Denis
Sassou-Nguesso, has also been invited to receive recognition for his
country's leadership role in the Congo Basin Forest Partnership,
notably in identifying commercial bush meat sales as a critical
conservation problem and in creating laws to address it, as well as in
setting aside more than 13 percent of Congo's forests as protected
areas.
Mr. Chairman, the United States has promoted the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership and is providing a significant contribution to it because
these forests and their wildlife are of global significance, because
they are a major factor in the social, economic, and environmental
health of our Congo Basin country partners, and because this is a
wonderful opportunity to build on existing structures of cooperation
between governments, NGOs, and the private sector in the region. I note
that without the strong support and commitment of African people and
governments, as well as civil society and private sector organizations,
this partnership could not exist. It is a powerful mechanism for
advancing our environmental goals in Central Africa, including the
fight against illegal logging and associated trade and corruption. It
is in our strategic interest to improve the ability of our African
partners to enforce their laws and sustainably manage their resources.
By promoting conservation and sustainable development in Central
Africa, we strengthen our partnerships in the region and help create
viable alternatives to fear, greed, and corruption.
In broad terms, U.S. priorities for the Partnership are to provide
people sustainable means of livelihood through well-managed forestry
concessions, sustainable agriculture, and integrated ecotourism programs;
to improve forest and natural resource governance through community-based
management, combating illegal logging, and enforcing anti-poaching laws;
and to help the Congo Basin countries develop a network of effectively
managed parks, protected areas, and ecological corridors.
The Congo Basin Forest Partnership is also intended to help people
obtain long-term sustainable forest-based employment through the
sustainable management of natural resources whether through ecotourism,
wildlife law enforcement, reduced impact logging, or park management.
This effort will improve the economy of the region, and the economic,
political, and environmental benefits will be apparent to all.
The Administration is committed to invest up to $53 million in the
Congo Basin Forest Partnership through the year 2005. The U.S.
investment has already leveraged additional support from other donors,
and has spurred on collaboration between USAID and the State Department
on developing strategic objectives for U.S. priorities in the Congo
Basin Forest Partnership. The partnership has sparked shared
coordination efforts by USDA, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife, U.S. Park Service, NASA, and others.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based conservation NGOs plan to expand
significantly their programs in the eleven Congo Basin Forest
landscapes identified as critical to biodiversity conservation in the
Congo Basin. These Congo Basin Forest Partnership stakeholders'
proposals to USAID's Central African Regional Program for the
Environment (CARPE) are presently under review by a USAID/State team in
Kinshasa. We have every confidence, given the NGOs and USAID/CARPE's
heroic efforts to get programs up and running quickly, that the
obligation of funds for these programs will be achieved by September
30, roughly one year from the launching of the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership, and nine months since its first organizational meeting.
U.S.-based NGOs have committed to matching the United States
government's financial contribution for work in these eleven
landscapes. I would like to note our particular appreciation for the
outstanding commitment of our NGO partners, whose efforts represent an
essential element in this developing partnership.
We are especially pleased that the forest industry, including the
American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA), and professional
societies such as the Society of American Foresters (SAF), are eager to
bring their technical expertise and financial resources to bear in the
Congo Basin countries.
None of these U.S. accomplishments can stand on their own without a
healthy commitment to building the international dimensions of the
Congo Basin Forest Partnership. In January we co-hosted, with the
French government, an international meeting of the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership. At that meeting, partners agreed that the United States
would be the facilitator of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership for at
least its first two years. We also committed to sponsoring an African
co-facilitator, resident in the Congo Basin, to be a Congo Basin Forest
Partnership liaison with African partners, in order to ensure that
their priorities and interests are addressed.
We note that a number of partners, European and African, have been
meeting together this past spring and summer, planning their own
contributions to our shared Congo Basin Forest Partnership objectives.
The U.S. has been invited to contribute to these meetings in the spirit
of cooperation within the Congo Basin Forest Partnership framework. An
international meeting is being considered for the region this fall. It
would improve coordination and energize cooperation. Our goal is to
consolidate these relationships, which merge the interests of
governments with agricultural, forestry, and conservation interests,
across public and private sectors, into the largest and most successful
partnership in Africa, and make it a viable forest conservation model
for the world.
We are undertaking a comprehensive inventory of forest and
wildlife-related projects and programs in the region, which will help
us coordinate our strategy and identify gaps that need to be filled. We
are constructing a web page to link the partners and their programs.
There is a great deal more we can do with your support. We are
confident that we are on the right track, have the right commitments
from partners, and are developing the resource base to make the Congo
Basin Forest Partnership work.
It is important to bear in mind, though, that we are still learning
to build this new partnership. We must reconcile the time it takes to
restructure relationships among the stakeholders and the imperative to
get real projects under way in support of our objectives. We are
learning to innovate, to rearrange public-private relationships, and to
build a Congo Basin Forest Partnership that is credible and
accountable. Here I would like to express my particular appreciation
for the work the Smithsonian Institution has done to ensure that all
the stakeholders have a voice.
We expect to see more progress over the next year, as we develop
new political and economic partnerships, and make measurable progress
in stopping forest degradation in the Congo Basin--to the economic
benefit of the region and to the ecological benefit of the planet.
Thank you very much. I would be happy to answer any questions that
you may have.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Turner.
Mr. Brown.
STATEMENT OF KEITH BROWN, SENIOR DEPUTY ASSISTANT
ADMINISTRATOR, BUREAU FOR AFRICA, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, members
of the committee: Thank you for inviting me to testify before
you at this very important hearing on the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership. I am pleased to join Assistant Secretaries
Kansteiner and Turner for this hearing. It is important to note
that the U.S. Agency for International Development and the
Department of State have been in close collaboration throughout
the development of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership. We will
continue to work together along with other U.S. Government
agencies, African governments, and U.S. and African
conservation and business groups to ensure a strong partnership
for the Congo Basin.
My colleagues have provided excellent overviews of how the
CBFP has evolved since its unveiling at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in September of 2002. USAID's Central
African Regional Program for the Environment, or CARPE, our
most prominent natural resource management program in Africa,
is the primary implementation vehicle for the U.S. contribution
to the CBFP.
With the committee's indulgence, I would like to focus
today on three main areas: CARPE as the foundation for a strong
effective partnership; a review of steps taken to date,
including those in the area of selecting implementing entities;
and an outline of the steps to come.
We have three priorities for the CBFP and CARPE. The first
is to encourage communities in the Congo forest region to
achieve a sustainable means of livelihood through well-managed
forestry concessions, sustainable agriculture, and integrated
ecotourism programs. The second is to help the people of
Central Africa develop a network of effectively managed
national parks, protected areas, and corridors. The third is to
improve forest and natural resource governance by encouraging
community-based management and economic uses of natural
resources, combating illegal logging, and enforcing anti-
poaching laws.
The CBFP represents a unique opportunity to achieve
enhanced environmental conservation in Central Africa. Mr.
Chairman, as you mentioned in your statement, Congo Basin
Forest Partnership activities will be linked to the
conservation of 11 key landscapes in 6 countries in Central
Africa. A landscape is defined as an area of land whose use is
constrained.
The CBFP landscapes are composed of three distinct areas:
national parks, buffer zones around national parks, and
corridors between the parks and buffer zones. The landscapes
approach offers a bigger picture strategy than some previous
efforts that mainly focused on national parks and protected
areas. By combining protected areas, buffer zones, and mixed
use areas into broad landscapes, a more holistic plan can be
developed that meets the particular needs of each landscape.
With the landscape approach, implementing partners should
have more leeway to address the social, economic, and political
causes of the threats to the critical resources in the region.
Only in this manner can we expect to achieve demonstrable
progress in the economic development, institutional capacity,
and conservation objectives of the CBFP.
USAID is committed to working with the CBFP partners to
closely monitor performance, and we remain prepared to assist
the partners to design implementation plans that ensure the
highest possible degree of results.
The Congo Basin Forest Partnership is a partnership based
on helping the people of Central Africa maintain their forests.
A list of illustrative activities includes: training for
African rangers and game scouts, dissemination of materials
that help provide African citizens with information to
participate in natural resource governance, support for the
development of African community enterprises linked to
landscape conservation, support for the adoption and
strengthening of legislation related to natural resource
management, including protected areas and forestry, support for
regional processes for communication, collaboration, and policy
coordination, and large-scale monitoring of forest access, land
use, and deforestation using remote sensing technologies.
Toward this end, and as you have mentioned, the U.S.
Government proposes to invest up to $53 million over 4 years,
of which approximately $48 million will be provided by USAID
through the CARPE. The combination of the CBFP facilitation
process and the field-based USAID CARPE management affords us
an excellent mechanism to ensure that U.S. Government resources
are serving the most critical needs and are efficiently and
effectively being spent on achieving results.
Another key component of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership
is the past work of the partners in CARPE. CARPE was launched
in 1995, and it has helped to fill a major void by collecting
important data on the Congo Basin. For the past 7 years, CARPE
has received annual USAID funding of $3 million to address
environmental needs in 9 countries in the region. CARPE will
continue doing work in these areas while the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership focuses on the 11 landscapes. It is essential to an
effective partnership that there be a blending of the strengths
of CARPE with the new emphases of the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership.
Furthermore, USAID is now emphasizing a transition for
CARPE, moving from learning lessons to applying these lessons
to action on the ground. In order to facilitate this change in
strategy, in January of 2003 USAID relocated CARPE management
from USAID headquarters in Washington to the Congo Basin. We
believe that this change will greatly strengthen our presence
in the basin, affording many more opportunities to interact
with all partners in assessing and addressing problems and
opportunities on the ground.
USAID has already taken important action to support those
entities which will implement conservation programs in the
Congo Basin. USAID also broadly and extensively involved the
interested U.S. Government agencies in developing detailed
criteria for the evaluation of proposals for these landscapes.
These agencies include the State Department, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park
Service, and NASA.
Taking advantage of completed agreements already in place,
USAID has requested applications from four major U.S.
environmental NGO's and is currently in the final stages with
the State Department of reviewing these applications.
Critically important in these applications will be evidence
that the NGO's have secured cooperation from the host
government in the development of field activities, as well as
evidence that other NGO's with specialized expertise can
partner in field implementation.
A portion of the funding will also support certain U.S.
Government agencies with specific strengths that complement the
conservation NGO's. Our intent is that all fiscal year 2003
funding will be put in place for our implementing partners by
September 30th of this year so that they can proceed
expeditiously.
As we look to the future, we realize that there are special
opportunities to address environmental issues in the 11
landscapes that will be the particular emphasis of U.S.
Government resources within the Congo Basin Forest Partnership.
We intend to ensure that the focus of CARPE will be on
producing identifiable results within those landscapes which
will be reported back to Congress.
In order to ensure that U.S. Government resources make a
difference, we must respect the fact that this effort depends
upon the people living in the Congo Basin to achieve a lasting
positive impact on the second largest tropical rain forest in
the world. We have every intention of making that a high
priority.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the committee for drawing
attention to this important administration initiative and I
look forward to taking your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brown follows:]
Prepared Statement of Keith Brown
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me
to testify here today at this important hearing on saving the Congo
Basin. I am pleased to join my colleagues from the Department of State.
It is important to note that the U.S. Agency for International
Development and the Department of State have been in close
collaboration throughout the development of the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership (CBFP). We will continue to work together along with other
U.S. government agencies, African governments, and U.S. and African
conservation and business groups to ensure a strong partnership for the
Congo Basin. We have great hopes for the future of the Congo Basin
because in the words of Secretary of State Colin Powell:
[those] . . . in this partnership, have agreed to work
together to help the countries of the Congo Basin create and
manage protected forest areas, such as national parks. . . .
[and] will work together to combat illegal logging and other
unsustainable practices, and . . . implement programs to
improve forest management and give people a stake in the
preservation of the forest, by providing them with sustainable
forest based livelihoods.
My colleagues have provided excellent overviews of how the CBFP has
evolved since its unveiling at the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in September 2002. The CBFP includes a number of
governments, donors, NGOs and corporate groups. USAID's Central African
Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) is the primary
implementation vehicle for the U.S. contribution to the CBFP.
With the Committee's indulgence, I would like to focus today on
three main areas: (1) CARPE as the foundation for a strong effective
partnership; (2) a review of steps taken to date including those in the
area of selecting implementing entities; and (3) an outline of the
steps to come.
The priorities of the CBFP/CARPE will be to:
Encourage communities in the Congo Forest region to achieve
a sustainable means of livelihood through well-managed forestry
concessions, sustainable agriculture and integrated ecotourism
programs;
Help African countries develop a network of effectively
managed national parks, protected areas and corridors; and
Improve forest and natural resource governance by
encouraging community-based management and economic uses of
natural resources, combating illegal logging and enforcing
anti-poaching laws.
CBFP activities will be linked to the conservation of 11 key
landscapes in 6 countries in Central Africa. Landscapes are
ecologically significant areas, some of which have been officially
designated as national parks, and the outlying area.
A list of illustrative activities includes: training for rangers
and game scouts; support for the development of community enterprises
linked to landscape conservation; support for the adoption and
strengthening of legislation related to natural resource management,
including protected areas and forestry; support for regional processes
for communication, collaboration and policy coordination; large-scale
monitoring of forest access, land use and deforestation using remote
sensing technologies; and the dissemination of materials that help
provide citizens with information to participate in natural resources
governance.
USAID will stress the importance of working with three African
regional institutions: Conference of Ministers in charge of Forests in
Central Africa (COMIFAC), the Conference of Central African Moist
Forest Ecosystems (CEFDHAC), and the American Timber Organization. The
USG, together with the partners in the CBFP, is now in a better
position to support the aspirations of the African people in the
region. Working together we can all make a big difference on the wide
range of problems threatening the environment in the Congo Basin.
The USG proposes to invest up to $53 million over four years (2002-
2005) of which approximately $48 million will be provided by USAID
through CARPE in FY 2002-2005. The combination of the CBFP facilitation
process and the field-based USAID CARPE management affords us an
excellent mechanism to ensure that the USG resources are serving the
most critical needs and are efficiently and effectively being spent on
achieving results.
I agree with my colleagues that the foundation for the future of
the Congo River Basin is the extraordinary role played by Conservation
International (CI), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the World
Wildlife Fund (WWF) in focusing both public and private sector
attention on the needs and opportunities of the environment in the
Congo Basin. These partners are proving critical to the launch of the
partnership.
Another key component of the CBFP is the past work of the partners
in CARPE, USAID's most prominent natural resource management programs
in Africa. CARPE was launched in 1995 with the initial purpose ``to
identify and begin to establish the conditions and practices required
for the conservation and sustainable use of the natural resources of
the Congo Basin, in a manner which addresses local, national, regional
and international concerns.'' In so doing, CARPE helped to fill a major
void by collecting important data on the Congo Basin. For the past
seven years, CARPE has received annual USAID funding of $3 million to
address environmental needs in nine countries in the region.
CARPE has been active at a time of intense interest in the
rainforests of the Congo Basin. At the same time, the international
community has become far more aware of the Basin's importance in a
global context, whether by providing a potential source of forest
products or absorbing carbon dioxide. Conservation efforts and
scientific studies, partially supported by funds from CARPE, have
opened a window into a part of the world previously very poorly
understood.
African governments, meanwhile, have become much more attentive to
the forest; improving laws and institutions that manage it, and at the
same time granting extensive concessions to log it. This emphasis on
logging has been a response to increasing global demand for tropical
timber. Those who live and derive their livelihoods from the forest are
faced with increasingly difficult economic times, and have relied on
the forest to deliver them more and more benefits in ways that may not
be sustainable.
CARPE emphasized four subject themes: (1) improving logging policy
and practice; (2) enhancing protected areas within a lived-in
landscape; (3) encouraging better environmental governance; and (4)
strengthening local resource management systems. These themes are in
turn supplemented by three cross-cutting principles (promoting
monitoring processes; improving training and institutional
strengthening; and ensuring donor coordination). Generally, these
themes have provided a sound framework for organizing the work of the
partners. The results of the program are summarized in a document
entitled, ``Results and lessons learned from CARPE Phase I,'' which we
would be happy to provide to the Committee.
Allow me to provide you with some examples of the activities that
CARPE partners are implementing.
Improving Logging Policy
WCS has undertaken ground-breaking work in northern Republic of
Congo (ROC) working closely with CIB (Congolaise Industrielle des
Bois), a European logging company, to improve its practices.
Collaboration between logging companies and NGOs is new in the area and
is proving to be a promising partnership.
Enhancing Protected Areas
Protected areas have been the principal domain of WWF (in Central
African Republic (CAR) and Gabon) and WCS (in ROC and Gabon).
Encouraging Better Environmental Governance
The conservation community in the Basin has found a role in causes
such as reducing bushmeat consumption, a practice that threatens
species, disturbs ecosystems and spreads disease. Community management
of local forests (once exclusive to the national government and well-
placed expatriate logging firms) has attracted a groundswell of
attention in Cameroon. These and other examples around the Congo Basin
indicate that, despite a period of significant physical insecurity in
the Basin (ROC, CAR, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)), the
people and their governments are concerned about the deterioration of
their environment and want to take action to halt this trend.
Strengthening Local Resource Management
Local resource management systems have been addressed by a number
of partners, most notably Innovative Resources Management (IRM) in its
work in Cameroon. This work has encouraged Africans to feel a sense of
``ownership'' of the forest. A number of small-grant holders have also
done interesting and useful work, though all on a modest scale.
Monitoring the forest through use of remote sensing techniques has
been carried out and has generated productive collaboration between
partners, as well as a good interchange between the U.S. and field-
based workers. It provides quantitative data capable of informing
predictions and policy decisions.
CARPE has funded some excellent regional training initiatives, as
well as funding capacity-building grants to local NGOs, which have
displayed potential. These activities have mainly been in those
countries where CARPE has a field presence.
In sum, CARPE and its partners have worked with great cost-
efficiency to deliver a complex, flexible and imaginative contribution
to forest conservation in the Congo Basin. That work has served to
assure us that this recent significant increase in funding is based on
tested methods, reliable data and experienced partners and will produce
identifiable results.
It is essential to an effective partnership that there be a
blending of the strengths of CARPE with the new emphases of CBFP. In
developing the overall design document for CARPE, USAID consulted
extensively with a broad NGO community (October 16-17, 2002) and with
interested USG agencies (December 12, 2002) and formally approved the
new CARPE Strategic Objective design document on January 17, 2003.
Furthermore, USAID is now emphasizing a transition for CARPE,
moving from ``learning lessons'' to applying these lessons to action on
the ground. In order to facilitate this change in strategy, in January
2003, USAID relocated CARPE management from USAID headquarters in
Washington to the Congo Basin (USAID/Kinshasa, DRC). We believe that
this change will greatly strengthen our presence in the Basin,
affording many more opportunities to interact with all partners in
assessing and addressing problems and opportunities on the ground.
USAID also broadly and extensively involved the interested USG
agencies in developing the detailed criteria by which each technical
proposal would be judged. These agencies include the State Department,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, the National Parks
Service and NASA. The criteria fall into four broad categories: (1)
technical criteria that are directly related to the specific results
described in the Strategic Objective document; (2) management criteria
that demonstrate strong and formal partnerships at several working
levels; (3) geographic criteria that demonstrate a balanced approach
across geographic zones and national boundaries; and (4) a clear
demonstration and commitment to mobilizing non-USG financial and
material resources that complement and match the USG financial
contribution.
USAID has already taken important action to support those entities
which will implement conservation programs in the Congo Basin. Using
the ``Leader with Associates'' cooperative agreement process to take
advantage of competed agreements already in place, USAID has requested
applications from four major U.S. environmental NGO's and is currently
in the final stages of reviewing these applications. Critically
important in these applications will be evidence that the NGOs have
secured cooperation from the host government in the development of
field activities as well as evidence that other NGOs active in selected
landscapes can partner in field implementation. A portion of the
funding will also support certain U.S. Government agencies with
specific strengths that complement the conservation NGOs. Our intent is
that all fiscal year 2003 funding will be put in place for our
implementing partners by September 30, 2003 so that they can proceed
expeditiously.
As we look to the future, we realize that there are special
opportunities to address environmental issues in the eleven landscapes
that will be the particular emphasis of USG resources within the CBFP.
We intend to ensure that the focus of CARPE will be on producing
identifiable results within those landscapes which will be reported
back to Congress.
Thank you for supporting the Administration's request and for your
continued support of the Administration's efforts to promote
conservation and sustainable resource management in the Congo Basin. In
order to ensure that the USG's resources make a difference, we must
respect the fact that this effort depends upon the people living in the
Congo Basin to achieve a lasting, positive impact on the second largest
tropical rainforest in the world. We have every intention of making
that a high
priority.
I thank the Committee for drawing attention to this important
Administration initiative and I look forward to taking your questions.
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Mr. Brown, and thanks to all of
you.
Senator Feingold hopes he can come back, but we are going
to move right ahead. I have a few questions, and then we will
move to the second panel.
Mr. Turner's comment about our National Park System, I
think, is appropriate here. One of the great contributions of
the United States of America to the rest of the world, as well
as to ourselves, was the idea of the National Park System and
what we learned about it. Our family lived in Australia for a
while and the Australians very shortly after the United
States--the Australians modeled their national park system
after the United States National Park System.
I wonder whether--Mr. Turner, you may know the answer to
this, or maybe Mr. Brown--is our National Park Service, its
planners, designers, are they involved in this effort?
Mr. Turner. Mr. Chairman, we are pleased to have the
involvement of the National Park Service. Especially we have
asked them to focus on bringing their expertise and experience
to capacity-building, i.e., training. We, with the Forest
Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Park Service, we
will do in-country training for professionals within the
ministries in Africa. We will also bring Africans to the United
States.
We have a trip planned with President Bongo and many of his
officials--and perhaps President Sassou of the Congo--coming to
the Yellowstone region this fall, where we can showcase
Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and the Forest Service programs, Fish
and Wildlife programs. So we definitely feel that our expertise
and experience with national parks is going to be important in
this capacity-building effort.
Senator Alexander. We have learned in other activities
that sometimes, even though we might have thought of it and we
are bigger and wealthier than other countries, that sometimes
it helps to have friends. The Australians are very proud of
their national park system. They have learned a lot from it. I
wonder if it would make any sense to involve the Australians in
what we are doing in the Congo Basin Forest Partnership. They
might welcome that opportunity.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Chairman, we have had discussions with the
Australians. They are interested. I might note that we do have
15 countries now involved in this partnership in addition to
the 6 Central African countries that Walter mentioned. South
Africa has helped us facilitate it, but we also have the likes
of France, Germany, the U.K., Belgium, the EU, Japan, Canada?
Senator Alexander. What are they doing, what
contributions? Are they doing specific things or are they just
formally endorsing the idea?
Mr. Turner. Everyone has made commitments. We are
coordinating those to see which country is going to meet which
needs, and that dialogue began in Paris last fall and we
continue that. So it is a wonderful partnership of countries
coming together, NGO's and the private sector. We are getting
help from companies like Shell on basic biological inventories.
I think it is important to note that we are blessed with
resources, as are other donor countries. The commitment that
the developing world has made in the last decade to national
parks is significant. And land protection, it is something I
hope we can draw attention to and look at needs as the World
Park Conference is coming up in Durbin, South Africa, in
September; and we can all gather to celebrate this great idea
and see how we can sustain it and grow it into the future.
But the developing countries, some of the poorest regions
of the world, have made the largest commitment in recent years
to protected areas.
Senator Alexander. Thank you. The premier of New South
Wales, Bob Carr, was the environmental minister for Australia
for a long time, so he would be a likely suspect to be
interested.
I have one other question before we go to the second panel.
I notice in Mr. Brown's testimony and some of the other
statements that, looking at the objectives, the priorities,
encouraging communities to achieve a sustainable means of
livelihood--that means jobs to me. Is that what that means, Mr.
Brown? Then the second one is a network of effectively managed
national parks; and the third objective is to improve the
governance.
I am wondering if there is not something a little deeper
here, and let me see if this is what you are thinking. I think
it is, but let me see. My experience in government suggests to
me that cities, counties, states, countries do best when they
identify things that make them unique and special and then
organize around those things to go forward. It gives them a
sense of confidence, a sense of who they are, and generally
contributes to progress.
When Memphis, for example, when it celebrates Beale Street
and celebrates the Mississippi River and celebrates agriculture
and celebrates its location in the center of the country as a
distribution center, then Memphis does better because those are
the things that make it different than, say--well, you do not
find Beale Street in Knoxville. You find it in Memphis, and it
celebrates those things.
So my thought about this is it is wonderful to protect
ecological treasures, but maybe the greater contribution that
your effort may make in Africa will be the byproduct, which
will be to help build, to help African countries focus on
something that is unique and special about their country they
cannot find anywhere else; number two, to build institutions
and ways of working together that will make that a success. A
byproduct of those institutions will be to solve other problems
and create a civil society and a country that is progressive.
In other words, it is not just to save the parks; it is
also to help build institutions that will create a stronger
country. I am sure that is what you have in mind, but I
wondered if any of you wanted to comment on that?
Mr. Brown. Well, let me comment on that first. I think you
are absolutely right. The goal I think of this entire effort is
to promote sustainable development and to alleviate poverty for
the benefit of the people. We must have buy-in by the people to
this process to make sure that it is successful.
As you know and understand, what is happening right now is
an unsustainable use of the forest in the basin, and to make a
sustainable use of the forest will require economic development
activities. So part of the process that we have laid out is to
work specifically with community enterprises in developing ways
in which they can use the forest in a sustainable manner and to
generate sustainable agricultural practices. This will
certainly contribute tremendously to the development of the
individuals in these particular landscapes but for the
countries as a whole.
I think you are absolutely right, and I think that
commitment is there from the governments. It needs to be
achieved with the people, the local people in the various
landscapes. I think that the proposals that are being developed
right now for work in these landscapes will have a major
element in them of working with these local communities and
groups to make sure that they have livelihood opportunities
that are sustainable.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Brown.
Mr. Secretary, do you have any comment, or Mr. Turner, on
that?
Mr. Kansteiner. Go ahead, John.
Mr. Turner. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think you are absolutely
right. While we are all interested in the conservation of the
wild resources down there, we first have to take care of
people. The people of the region are betting their future,
their economic future, their social and economic future, on
this conservation plan. So we need to think jobs. We need to
think income from tourism, from more sustainable use of forest
products, ending the slash and burn agriculture. We need to
think about fresh water availability and energy. We need to
think about health care, the malaria and the disease issues
down there.
So I think this administration, this President, has indeed
looked at projects like this that would integrate social,
economic, and environmental sustainability. So I know Secretary
Powell and this administration are interested in how we are
going to raise the wellbeing and the livelihoods and the
aspirations across the board for the people of this region.
Senator Alexander. Mr. Secretary?
Mr. Kansteiner. Just one quick last comment. All six of
these African countries have signaled and demonstrated their
eagerness and willingness to pursue this partnership. That was
not the case 3 or 4 years ago. The window is open. They are
saying, we get it, we understand it, can you help us build it?
So it is a tremendous opportunity, and we thank you and the
Congress for standing with us and supporting us.
Senator Alexander. Mr. Kansteiner, Mr. Turner, Mr. Brown,
thank you very much for your time. I hope this hearing helps
put a spotlight on what you are doing. It is very important
work. The Congress is interested in it. We admire Secretary
Powell and the President for their focus.
I will be in Africa the last 2 weeks of August with Senator
Frist. We will not get to the Congo, but maybe some time soon I
will have a chance to do it again. This will be a continuing
interest. Please keep the committee informed of what you are
doing and of what help you need to succeed.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Mr. Kansteiner. Thank you.
Senator Alexander. Thank you.
Now, if Dr. Fay and Mr. Mokombo will come forward, we will
go to the second panel. [Pause.]
Senator Alexander. I am going to introduce the witnesses.
I barely recognize Dr. Fay all dressed up like that, but Dr.
Michael Fay is an ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation
Society; but that hardly tells the story. In 2000 and 2001 he
led a 1200-mile year-long trek through the Congo Basin to
catalogue the wildlife there. We read about it in the National
Geographic in three issues. We have some copies here. I was
introduced to him through the magazine of the National
Geographic before I had the privilege of meeting him in person.
He is arguably the leading expert and conservationist on
the Congo Basin today. I want to thank him especially for
flying such a long distance to be here today from Africa so we
could have this hearing, and we look forward very much to his
testimony and using this hearing and the coming of the
administration witnesses to signal the Congress' support for
what is happening there and to get an update on it.
Dr. Tony Mokombo--thank you very much for coming--directs
the World Wildlife Fund's programs in Central America. We are
grateful for the perspective he brings. He is from the Central
African Republic. I know he has been very busy with grant
writing and program management as WWF is stepping up to the
challenge and participating in the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership, and I am grateful he took some time to meet with
us today.
So, Dr. Fay, let us begin with you. We have looked forward
to your coming, and we look forward to what you have to say.
STATEMENT OF J. MICHAEL FAY, PH.D., CONSERVATION BIOLOGIST,
WILDERNESS CONSERVATION SOCIETY
Dr. Fay. I was taking a shower last night, and I looked
down at my feet, and they had dirt from the beach in Gabon. So
I am fresh off the plane.
Senator Alexander. Did you stay in a hotel?
Dr. Fay. No, I did not.
Senator Alexander. I did not think so.
Dr. Fay. I thank you for having everyone here today to talk
about the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, and I really did
appreciate your last comments to the last panel about the
deeper meaning of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership. My
testimony is going to try to address that, because I do
believe, as you do, that that is perhaps the crux of what we
are talking about.
The first time I met you, we talked about the Smoky
Mountains National Park and how that really has set that region
apart and how it has really shifted the way people think, the
way that people act, the way people think about land use
management, resource management, and the benefits from doing
that. So I do believe that you certainly have a very close
understanding of what we are talking about.
I am a little bit jealous that you only walked 1,000 miles
on pavement and you became Governor and Senator. I walked 2,000
miles through forests, and I am still kicking around the
forests of Central Africa. But some guys have all the luck.
Senator Alexander. I think it may be you.
Dr. Fay. Parks do not just protect species. Parks change
land use patterns. They influence government and private sector
policy concerning the management of natural resources. They
form the nucleus for an ethic of resource management, is what
they really do. In fact, in most cases it is just a kind of a
modern replacement of a similar traditional system of land use
that has been lost with development and movement of people.
Certainly a few hundred years ago in Africa if you ventured
into someone else's territory and you started using resources
that were not yours, you were in big trouble. In fact, you were
probably dead. It is very important to recognize that land use
management is not something new in Africa.
I have probably logged more miles walking long distances
and learning about the forests of Central Africa than just
about anybody else, and that is not bragging; it is just fact.
Over the decades I have seen one thing that is very clear, that
the land is quickly being colonized by human beings. It is
often foreigners and they are after resources. They are after
wood, they are after minerals, they are after oil, they are
after wildlife, they are after fish, they are after arable
land.
But today exploitation is mechanized; it is powerful; it is
lightning-fast; and it is global. These processes that have
been ongoing ever since human beings have existed are just
happening at an incredibly accelerated pace nowadays.
One thing that has not changed over all that time, which is
kind of surprising, is that when frontier areas are opened for
land use there is usually little regard for the environment,
sustainability, for the local people. Waste is completely
accepted as part of doing business. Over the past 2 decades,
about 70 percent of the forests of Gabon and Congo have been
given up to logging companies, mostly Asian and European. Well
over half the wood that is cut down for lumber is abandoned or
burned. Wildlife populations are reduced, and local human
populations become impoverished.
We heard about Nigeria earlier. You go to these oil areas,
and there is unbelievable poverty in these places. Local people
do not benefit.
It is no better in the oceans. In Gabon there are currently
over 100 trawler boats operating off the coast of that country.
Some 64 of those boats come from the European Union. Under an
agreement with the European Union, those boats never dock in
Gabon. They are never seen in Gabon. Not a single one of those
fish ever reaches the country. Fish populations are being
hammered in Central Africa, because it is one of those last
frontiers, and there is almost no control.
Only about 3 days ago, I was flying over small boats off
the coast of Gabon off Loango National Park where we are
working, and they have these long boats they call barracudas.
They are usually manned by Nigerians and Beninois, mostly
because there are almost no fish left in either Nigeria or in
Benin off the coasts. What we saw on the bow of those boats was
hundreds of shark fins, hundreds drying on the bow of these
boats.
You can hardly believe your eyes, and you are flying by,
and I see the name of one of these boats plastered on the side
of it, and it says ``Fear Tomorrow.'' That is the name of the
boat, appropriately named. There is no question about that.
This kind of waste in frontier areas is understandable, but
it cannot go on for very long before it really does endanger
the future of these countries.
In 1903 Teddy Roosevelt made a trip across the United
States, and he visited Yellowstone amongst other places. He
witnessed the same kind of abuse of the landscape, people
expanding outward to exploit every natural resource they found.
If you can imagine then, it is estimated that there were only
about 200,000 whitetail deer left in the United States, the
entire continental United States, about 200,000 left. They were
virtually exterminated, whitetail deer. Today, they are in
almost every suburban garden in America.
The trip was not really about changing Roosevelt's
attitudes about nature or the outdoors. In fact, he was a
longstanding outdoorsman, and he kind of thought Muir was a
little bit, you know, certainly too far left. What it really
meant to him was that it was a crisis. He needed to do
something. He needed to act. He needed to convince the American
people that natural resource management was a national
priority. Ecosystems and indigenous populations are bowled over
in this process of resource exploitation.
During Teddy Roosevelt's tenure, he made the creation of
230 million acres of protected areas a cornerstone of his
preoccupation. That is a lot of land, 230 million acres. What
this leadership did in the case of Roosevelt was shift the
ethos of this country. It made everyone start to think about
natural resource management. It put it right on the forefront.
Teddy Roosevelt was very good about that. If he thought
something was important, he was not afraid to just put it right
out there and do it. What it really did is it launched a
national debate. That national debate continues today. I mean,
we see snowmobiles at Denali. That is something that is
reaching Congress. Logging in national forests, that has been a
major debate this year. ANWR, certainly. This is a debate that
continues every day, all day.
In the Congo Basin we have an opportunity to consolidate
what will be one of the most important national park systems in
the world, over 25 million acres, and one of the richest areas
for biodiversity on the planet. These parks will preserve, just
as Yosemite and Yellowstone, innumerable species and beautiful
landscapes.
But like Teddy Roosevelt, we have the opportunity to do
much more. We have the opportunity to shift how entire
landscapes are developed to assure that future generations can
sustain and enhance their lives. That is what we are talking
about.
The Congo Basin Forest Partnership is, in my opinion, set
up to exercise that model. It is not just about protecting
national parks; it is not just about protecting logging
concessions. It is to bring this issue to the forefront at the
national level. The way to do that is not by talking about it
in capital cities. It is not by centralizing educational
systems and putting people through university. It is by working
on the ground. It is by working in particular with local people
in developing sustainable systems that actually protect their
resources from wanton destruction by others.
We have come a very long way with the CBFP in a very short
amount of time. It was unimaginable only a few months ago that
we would get the U.S. Government to rally behind something like
this. One telling thing is that it has brought organizations
like WWF, WCS, CI, and AWF together for the first time. USAID
should get a medal for that already, because that is unheard
of.
The benefits of the CBFP have already started to accrue.
Others have already spoken about the efforts of Gabon to create
a system of 13 national parks covering 7.5 million acres. But
more importantly, what that has done in Gabon is it has
launched that national debate. It has appeared on a regular
basis in the national newspaper. It is on TV. Everybody is
talking about national parks. Everybody is talking about
forestry management. Everybody is talking about that kind of
division of that resource base, is it equitable, is it good, is
it bad?
It has created conflict between ministries now. It is
really elevating, and it is that groundwork that is percolating
up. It is not this top-down kind of thing. It is a groundswell.
One good example that I have concerning these boats is, I
have been concentrating in Loango National Park over the past
few months in coastal Gabon, and one of the big problems there
is these fishing boats. These trawlers come within hundreds of
meters of the beach. They sit at the exits, the outlets for all
the major lagoons, and they sweep up all the fish, because
these fish go into these inlets. They sit at the mouth of these
inlets, because that is where all the food is.
These guys, the limit is five kilometers; they come within
hundreds of meters literally of the beach, and they scoop up
all of these fish. Entire species do not even come in these
inlets any more. There used to be a huge dorado influx at
certain seasons in the Segala Inlet where I am working. The
local people there have not seen dorado for years. But 10 years
ago they were abundant. These people did not have to worry
about where the fish were coming from.
Just in the past few months we have been using our airplane
to fly over boats, dive bomb boats, take pictures of them, show
them in the backdrop with the coast right there, get GPS
locations of these boats. We have submitted over 30 reports to
the government in the past 3 months. Lo and behold, those
trawler boats are now gone. We do not see a single trawler. We
have not seen a single trawler boat in the past 6 weeks at one
of those inlets.
Again, this has launched a major debate at the national
level. It has been in the newspaper twice in the last 6 weeks.
It is the talk of the town. The guys that are the perpetrators
are kind of jockeying right now, but we are making real change
there very quickly.
As the CBFP unfolds and we see all those kinds of
activities unfolding on the landscapes, we will see these
things getting to the national level every single day. It is an
incredibly important project. I am not going to talk about the
details, but we are talking about 25 million acres of national
parks. We are talking about building infrastructure and
management personnel in these places. We are talking about
launching ecotourism. We are talking about managed logging
concessions, a thousand personnel, etcetera, etcetera.
The immediate benefits are obvious, but what is going to be
even more important is we are going to be bringing to the
forefront this notion that resource management is incredibly
important. This is a worldwide problem. Like Teddy Roosevelt
said, natural resource management is the problem that underlies
all other problems in the management of a nation, especially a
young nation.
Fifteen to twenty million dollars a year for the CBFP is a
good start, but we should invest more. If we are going to be
investing billions and billions in managing AIDS, we should be
spending billions and billions in natural resource management,
because ultimately they are equally important.
We have not been paying enough attention to this broader
partnership. We have not brought the Europeans in sufficiently.
We have not brought in the African nations sufficiently.
Congress and the State Department can be effective in doing
that, but we have to up that effort.
We also and most importantly have to demonstrate to African
nations that we are absolutely committed to the long haul here,
that we are committed to working on the ground and getting
these things going, not only in these 11 landscapes, but
ultimately in many, many places.
NGO's benefiting from CBFP should be required to show how
much money they are spending and where they are spending it on
the ground. Congo Basin countries benefiting from CBFP should
be trying to address a set of objective deliverables.
So in short, and I am going to finish now, this is for me a
dream come true. It was one of the main reasons why I took that
long walk through the forest, other than really enjoying that
time I spent there. But you know, when you spend that amount of
time walking through the forest you recognize the unbelievably
rich wealth that is there, and to see it being destroyed for
just careless reasons is in my opinion unacceptable, and we can
have a major impact on that.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Fay follows:]
Prepared Statement of J. Michael Fay
Thank you Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank Chairman Alexander, and
Senator Feingold for bringing us together today to talk about the Congo
Basin Forest Partnership and sustainable development in Africa. Senator
Alexander when we first spoke you told me about your 1000 mile walk
across Tennessee and the impact it had on your impressions of what was
important in your State. Then we talked about your homestead on the
edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the ways that this
park has shifted people's regard for resources and their management in
Tennessee, so I feel a bit like I am preaching to the choir.
Historically, if you look around the planet you would find that
national parks quickly become local and national treasures, if
government provides the structures that make those parks positive
forces in local sustainable development. I spent last week in Gabon
with a Belgian friend who was born in Rwanda and has worked in
conservation his entire life. I asked him about Akagera National Park,
which is a substantial chunk of Rwanda. He said while it is under
increasing pressure and has lost some ground over the decades it is
still there and it is not overrun. Rwanda has over 600 people/km sq. It
may have the highest human population density on earth for a country
that depends almost entirely on the bounty of the land for its
survival. This park is certainly a tribute to the fact that even
nations like Rwanda, that has experienced considerable turmoil over the
decades, still finds a place for protected areas. I think that most
would agree that in Rwanda the parks there have had a fundamental
impact on the policies of that nation in the way it manages natural
resources.
Parks don't just protect species. Parks change patterns of land-
use, and they influence government and private sector policy concerning
the management of natural resources. They form a nucleus for an ethic
of resource management. In fact in most cases it is just a modern
replacement of similar traditional systems of land-use that are lost
with development and movement of people.
A few weeks ago I had my 25th anniversary in Africa. In fact Tony
here has been a friend of mine since 1980. For most of that time I've
worked to set up national parks as the nuclei for land-use management.
Africa is my home and I do not regard this work as frivolous or
irrelevant to basic human needs, or poverty aleviation, quite the
opposite. In my book water, fertile soils, animals, and trees are more
fundamental needs than health care, education or roads. Senator
Feingold you come from the land of Aldo Leopold. I am sure that the
residents of Wisconsin and you would agree that natural resource
management is a fundamental for sustainable
development.
I think I have probably logged more miles walking long distances
and learning about the forests of Central Africa than just about
anybody. I recognize that I am one of the most fortunate people on the
planet to have witnessed such abundance in nature. Over the decades of
living in the Congo Basin a simple observation to make is that the land
is rapidly being colonized by human beings. When you read the history
books I can imagine that it is much like what happened in this country
in the 18th and 19th centuries: people expanding across the landscape
looking to exploit resources. It is often foreigners and the resources
they're after are wood, minerals, oil, fish and arable land. Today
though, exploitation is highly mechanized, it is powerful, it is
lightening fast and it is global. One thing that hasn't changed though,
in frontier areas opened for resource use, there is little regard for
the environment, sustainability, or for local people and waste is
accepted as part of doing business. In the past two decades over 70% of
the forest in Gabon and Congo has been given to logging companies,
mostly European and Asian. Well over \1/2\ of the wood that is cut down
for lumber is abandoned or burned, wildlife populations are very
reduced, and local human populations become impoverished. It is no
better in the oceans, in Gabon alone there are over 50 locally operated
trawler boats and some 64 other trawlers that operate directly out of
the European Union which never dock in Gabon. Fish populations are
being hammered in Central Africa because it is one of the last
frontiers. For the past six months I have been doing a lot flying over
these armies of trawlers, they often operate within spitting distance
of the beach. Only two days ago I was flying over smaller boats from
Nigeria and Benin with hundreds of shark fins drying on the bows where
tons of sharks are discarded daily. This kind of waste is
understandable for a certain amount of time but letting it go too long
is very dangerous for nations.
In 1903 Theodore Roosevelt made a trip across the United States
where he visited Yellowstone National Park and a lot of other frontier
locations. He witnessed massive abuse of the landscape, people
expanding outward to exploit every natural resource they found. If you
can imagine at this time they estimate that there were only about
200,000 white-tailed deer left in the entire continental USA. This trip
and others changed not only Roosevelt's attitudes about nature and the
outdoors, in fact he thought Muir was way too liberal; witnessing
massive waste of natural resources forced this President to act very
decisively on natural resource management when most people thought
there were more pressing development needs.
A speech Roosevelt made on Arbor day 1907 to the school children of
the United States captures his thoughts on what became policy for this
President:
We of an older generation can get along with what we have,
though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and
womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully
supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of
that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but
for what we have wasted. . . . So any nation which in its youth
lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes
without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal
whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of
life.
During his presidency Teddy Roosevelt, with the Congress, made the
creation of 230,000,000 acres of protected areas the cornerstone of
this preoccupation. More importantly, what this leadership did, was to
fully integrate natural resource stewardship into the basic principles
of our national policies and ethos. It is always a debate, but it is a
debate that has been part of land-use decision-making in this country
for a century.
In the Congo Basin today we have a historic opportunity to
consolidate what will be one of the world's most important national
park systems of over 25 million acres in one of the richest areas in
terms of biodiversity on the planet. These parks will preserve, just as
Yosemite and Yellowstone have for well over a century in this country,
innumerable species and beautiful landscapes. But, like Teddy
Roosevelt, we have the opportunity to do much more. We have an
opportunity to shift how entire landscapes are developed to assure that
future generations can sustain and enhance their lives.
The Congo Basin Forest Partnership is an opportunity for this broad
coalition of governments and NGOs to contribute substantially to
putting in place a transformative model that integrates natural
resource management into the foundation of development. The model
starts with the identification of landscapes where land-use management
systems can be put in place before the arrival of large-scale
industrial resource exploitation and human expansion. This model does
not call for the curtailment of resource use, only for well-reasoned
land-use and resource management. It requires a ground-up plan that
includes the creation and management of core national parks to protect
the ``biodiversity mother load,'' integrated with land-use management
in exploitation zones in the surrounding landscapes that maximize
benefits for local people. In my opinion in Central Africa any progress
with AIDS, Democracy, or Conflict Resolution, without resolving the
problems of resource exploitation will be fleeting. In the words of
Roosevelt ``the conservation of natural resources is the fundamental
problem that underlies all other problems.'' For me this is what the
CBFP is attempting to do to address this fundamental problem. If we
don't there is huge risk that wasteful natural resource depletion will
generate more countries that find themselves in need of direct and
constant aid for their survival. Natural resource management must lie
at the foundation of poverty alleviation, health, education, private
investment and law and order. We only have to look as far as Liberia
where rampant logging by fly by night operators has contributed
significantly to the current mess. Our efforts in that country should
be coupled with efforts to instill an ethic of natural resource
management.
I am not alone, many organizations, American and European, are
working with national governments on projects on the ground that are in
various stages of implementing this model. All of the major US
conservation organizations working on the ground in the Congo Basin
(WWF, WCS, AWF and CI) are united in the belief that these ground-up
projects provide a solid basis for sustainable development.
In my opinion the CBFP is a model that should be tried all over the
place. It would seem that USAID are applying a similar approach to the
delta of the Tigris and Euphrates and the marsh Arabs which have seen
their natural resource base destroyed by Saddam. That should make
Thessiger happy.
We have come a long with the concept of the CBFP in a short amount
of time. It shows that we can make huge shifts in our national foreign
policy vis a vis sustainable development if we wish. This policy shift
has been encouraged by Secretary of State Powell when he held a
conservation round table in the forest of Gabon in Sept. of last year.
Assistants Secretaries of State Kansteiner and Turner and Mr. Patrick
Cronin and Connie Newman in USAID are to be congratulated for their
vision.
Benefits of this policy shift are already paying off well before we
have even begun the CBFP. Over the past year a combined effort of NGOs,
the State Dept., and members of the US Congress have been working with
the Government of Gabon and President Omar Bongo to successfully create
a system of 13 national parks of over 7.5 million acres. I was visited
last week by Congressman Bill Archer in Gabon who has been to central
Africa several times since 1997. He spent four days in Loango National
Park with me and relayed his support to the President for his bold
initiative of creating 13 parks. No doubt this move has launched a
debate in Gabon about natural resource management, sustainability and
benefits for local people. President Sassou and other Presidents in the
region are also strong advocates for the CBFP and are gearing up for
fundamental shifts in policy as well. We hope to be seeing President
Bongo and President Sassou in Yellowstone in September to follow a bit
in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt.
In the past two months we have been shaking up the fishing industry
in Gabon. We dive bomb the boats with an airplane and take photos of
the vessel and the surf, we get their names and GPS locations. We are
collaborating with the officials in charge to enforce the law and are
in the process of signing a collaborative agreement for fisheries law
enforcement. We are pushing trawlers back to legal limits. These guys
are getting called in and curiously we have seen a huge reduction in
illegal fishing where I am working in the Loango National Park. Local
people are seeing dorado come into the inlet for the first time in a
few years, they are joining forces in the effort. This has launched a
national debate, some people are losing out but many more are
benefiting. Yeah there are behind the scenes counter efforts on going.
But we are being strongly encouraged by local people right up to the
presidency. The nation is abuzz with talk of the abuses of these boats.
Pictures of illegal boats have appeared in the papers twice in past 2
months. The President is encouraging this effort because many are
starting to realize the relationship between the vital importance of
this resource to the nation and diminishing stocks. They don't have a
choice if they want to have fish in ten years. The creation of the
national parks has created a similar stir in the logging industry and
oil industry and most applaud the action while a few have been hurt.
Local people are starting to recognize the importance of forests for
themselves. We had our first local consultation a couple of weeks ago
in SE Gabon for the Plateau Bateke National Park. It is launching a
debate about conservation locally. The results of those meetings were
in the national news. Just in the past 6 months CBFP actions have been
in the headlines in the national newspaper many many times. It is the
talk of the town.
What is important to realize is that the work has just begun. The
United States govt. has sent several trips to the region in the past
year to demonstrate their diplomatic support of these policies. Now we
absolutely cannot fail in our commitment to help Gabon, the Congos, and
the other countries in the region to build infrastructure and capacity
for management, help shift land-use and resource management practices,
and increase benefits for local people. This is going to take
significant resources, it is going to take lots of people working close
to the ground with local people, it is going to take single-minded
tenacity that is determined to get the job done despite the pitfalls
and hurdles.
So what can we can expect as deliverables from the Congo Basin
Forest Partnership over the next ten years?
over 25 million acres of permanent national parks in six
Congo Basin countries,
over 20 functional national parks with infrastructure,
management personnel and a permanent place in the national
landscape.
over 50 million acres of managed logging concessions and
other lands (including coastal waters) surrounding protected
areas,
over 1000 personnel working in natural resource management
in the Basin,
over 300 villages in and around the landscapes participating
actively in and benefiting from resource management,
increased sustainability for parks from tourism and other
revenue streams, and national government participation,
$60 million dollars in private funds as a match to U.S.
Government investment, and
significantly increased management in domains like fisheries
and forestry management.
The fundamental benefits of this project will be:
creation of viable and operational national reserve systems,
reduced rates of deforestation and biodiversity loss,
reductions of illegal and abusive logging practices,
reductions in illegal trade,
increased civil society participation in decision making,
increased U.S. influence in the Congo Basin,
better governance and transparency,
increased security over large areas, and
sustainable development based on renewable outputs.
What I ask of Congress today is to assure the following: 15, 20
million dollars a year is a good start but I think we could easily
invest 50 million a year in the Congo Basin alone and it would be a
great investment. Even at 50 million it would be approximately 1000
times less than we are currently spending in Iraq. I urge you to press
for funding in full for a substantial authorization. If it is paying
off but we need to maintain the momentum and give this effort legs. I
would encourage Congress to increase this kind of investment on a scale
on par with what we are to spend on HIV/AIDs, I believe that its
importance is similar in magnitude. Let's see where we are in a couple
of years and then kick it up to 50 million. Liberia has cost billions
over the past 15 years.
My perspective is that we have not paid enough attention to
building a strong and coherent broader Partnership. This is absolutely
essential if we are to succeed. We need to rally our European allies to
be leaders in this effort. My impression is that they are not buying in
as we hoped. This is going to require strong leadership and effort from
the Dept. of State.
We need to demonstrate to African nations that we are absolutely
committed to a long term process of assistance to bring our plans to
fruition. This is going require a rigorous, nose to the grindstone
dirty boot approach. Nothing can replace that. U.S. Government funding
should be restricted to on-the-ground conservation that directly
supports protected area and land (sea)-use management projects in the
11 designated landscapes. This needs to include construction of
infrastructure, which we are told will not be allowed under the current
agreement for bureaucratic reasons. We can not allow ourselves to drift
into the notion that spending the money on studies, meetings and
centralized higher education will produce the desired result.
NGOs benefiting to receive funding under CBFP should be required to
show exactly how much money they get to the ground which needs to
include a substantial matching contribution.
Congo Basin Countries benefiting from the CBFP should agree to
address a number of objective deliverables. Funding should be dependent
on progress such that countries that take risks to enact such a process
also reap the maximum benefits.
I don't think that Teddy Roosevelt could have ever imagined that
over 300 million people would enter the national parks in the United
States in 2003. This is a tribute to his vision. I believe that, if we
get it right, the CBFP will be one of the most successful programs ever
undertaken by USAID in our search for a model of sustainable
development. Land-use and resource management must be at the core.
Please help to put the weight of the U.S. Government behind this
effort.
Thank you
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Dr. Fay.
Mr. Mokombo, thank you for coming.
STATEMENT OF TONY MOKOMBO, SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER, WEST AND
CENTRAL AFRICA AND MADAGASCAR ENDANGERED SPECIES PROGRAM, WORLD
WILDLIFE FUND
Mr. Mokombo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much
for inviting me to this table here. This is another learning
set for me. I have stepped in here in the United States, and I
am seeing how things are going around, how you are dealing with
this issue. The business and the leadership that the World
Wildlife Fund has is the reflection of what the United States
is doing worldwide.
I would like to thank the Zoological Society of Milwaukee
that is here actually presently. We have been working with them
in the conservation initiative also, we have been working with
them.
As you introduced me, that was a great honor to elevate me
to that position. I am the Senior Program Officer for West and
Central Africa, and I am from Central African Republic, and it
is a great honor for me to say that the conservation project
started in my country, the Central African Republic, in the
southwestern part of the country, has expanded to become a
model for the entire
region.
Before further development of my testimony, I would like to
seize this opportunity to thank the United States of America's
government for its commitment and efforts to assist my fellow
Central Africans and I to better conserve and save the wealth
of biodiversity for the present and future generations through
its governmental agencies, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, the U.S. Forest Service, State Department, and the
USAID.
This said, Mr. Chairman, the charge for this subcommittee
hearing is to answer the questions, why is the Congo Basin
Partnership needed, what is World Wildlife Fund's role in this
partnership, and how will the grant be implemented? About the
first question, Mr. Chairman, there is a saying in the Bantu
language which is: One finger cannot pick up lice from the
head, inside of the hair. This means that one organization
alone within this huge mass of forested area in Central Africa
would not be able to achieve the goal of conservation there.
So this partnership represents a defining moment for the
Congo Basin. The stars are aligned and it is vital that we
seize this historic opportunity to save the Congo Basin Forest.
This is a unique opportunity for all of us to match the Congo
Basin political will as expressed in the Yaounde Declaration
with the U.S. political will to support the conservation of the
biodiversity in the region. The United States' timely show of
financial and moral commitment helped tilt the balance in favor
of conservation.
For many years, conservation organizations such as World
Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, just to name
these two, have struggled, not always successfully, to involve
politicians, stakeholders, elites, and the local populations
into the region's conservation efforts. Unfortunately, each
time they took one step forward, two steps are taken back.
This partnership not only reinforces the will and
commitment of the Central African governments to conserve the
rich biodiversity of the region, but has consolidated the
collaboration among conservation organizations in the Congo
Basin. The NGO's, the World Wildlife Fund, the Wildlife
Conservation Society, and Conservation International, combined
their strength to develop the Congo Basin Partnership, whereas
previously they were competitors, they were fighting.
About the value of the Congo Basin, I do not think that I
will have to go back to this because you know more of my
country than I do, you introduced it so very well. But what I
wanted to say is that this tremendous forested area has been
threatened by illegal logging, agriculture, bush meat trade,
and the economic crisis that the region has gone through
lately. The good thing is it is not too late. There are two
good opportunities that we have to make the difference.
The Yaounde Summit. The Yaounde Summit created a unique
opportunity for the governments of the Congo Basin countries to
make commitments to forest conservation. This summit has
elevated forest conservation and management to one of the most
important issues in the sub-region and as such has marked a
turn-
ing point in political commitment to forest conservation in
Central
Africa.
Since the Yaounde Summit, 70,000 square kilometers of new
protected areas have been created, attesting to the seriousness
of these commitments. The ministers in charge of forests in
Central Africa, charged with the implementation of the Yaounde
Declaration, in a collaborative body known as COMIFAC, which
stands for the Conference of Ministers in charge of Forests in
Central Africa, which is the council in charge of the forest in
Central Africa, adopted the World Wildlife Fund-facilitated
biodiversity vision for the Congo Basin Forest as the blueprint
for conservation in the region and committed themselves to:
conserve 10 percent of forested areas as a protected area;
trans-border initiatives; the request for donors to address
bush meat trades.
Gabon, for example, has set aside, in light of all the
outcomes of Mike's trip, field trip, mega-transect, has set
aside 13 national parks, and all this is under this structure.
They have called to partnership with all stakeholders for
sustainable management of the resources.
The Congo Basin Forest Partnership is the second
opportunity. This partnership will promote economic
development, alleviate poverty, improve governance and natural
resource conservation in the Congo Basin, it is the most
strategic relationship to have in order to achieve conservation
goals in the region. It has also brought together donors,
governments, public and private organizations to work and save
the Congo Basin.
Since the Congo Basin is not only the lungs of the world,
but supports globally significant biodiversity and maintains
the global climate regime, hence mitigating global warming,
there is a need for the world to invest in conserving this
forested area. Due to the complexity of the conservation, a 3-
to 5-year investment will only begin the process, and we
Central Africans urge that Congo Basin Forest Partnership has a
much longer term horizon.
This joint effort to conserve these fantastic 11 landscapes
that have been mentioned earlier, backed by a longer term
investment, will create employment for park guards, tourist
guides, and tourism development, and community-based
conservation development. The sustainable forest management
will lead to economic development. With a proper investment,
Mr. Chairman, we can create a conservation-based economy to
replace the current exploitation-based economy that is
devastating my country's natural resources.
What is the World Wildlife Fund's role in this partnership?
Mr. Chairman, the World Wildlife Fund has played an
unprecedented role in the region, influencing the political
agenda to ensure that forest conservation is seen as a key
policy issue for the governments of Central Africa. During the
Yaounde Summit, World Wildlife Fund had called upon the Central
African governments to collaborate across boundaries and work
in partnership with international aid agencies so that the
forest protection is implemented on the ground.
Mr. Chairman, it took World Wildlife Fund years of
perseverance and constant presence in the field to convince the
Central Africans to join in protecting their heritage. If World
Wildlife Fund had not been in my own home country, in light of
all the political and social disturbances, I am sure that no
elephants or gorillas would have been left in Central African
Republic.
World Wildlife Fund's long-term commitment has gained the
confidence of its regional and national partners. World
Wildlife Fund has been there in the good and bad times to help
my fellow Central Africans and I become aware of the importance
of conserving the biodiversity.
After the Yaounde Summit, the six countries of the Congo
Basin came back to this organization to assist them in
facilitating the implementation of their commitments. World
Wildlife Fund helped develop the conservation plan for the
Congo Basin Forest by bringing together over 200 scientists
from the region and elsewhere who defined areas of biological
importance for different species groups. The 11 priority forest
landscapes that have formed the basis of the Congo Basin Forest
Partnership were identified in this process.
These landscapes cover species, habitat, and ecological
process values of the Congo Basin such that effective
conservation in these areas will ensure that these values will
persist over the long term.
In my prepared testimony I give a brief overview of the
World Wildlife Fund's program, global program in the document,
so I will not extend on that. But I would like to give a quick,
brief history of World Wildlife Fund in the region.
Senator Alexander. Mr. Mokombo, we are going to have to
wind the hearing up in a few minutes. So if you could bring
your testimony--if you could summarize what you are saying. I
have a few questions I wanted to ask both you and Dr. Fay
before we end.
Mr. Mokombo. What I just wanted to give an example of how
World Wildlife Fund operated in my country. World Wildlife Fund
started working, went in the field, on the ground, and working
in parallel at the governmental level. So the collaboration
went all the way through from the bottom all the way to the
top. While we were working on the ground field, the government
through its Minister of Water and Forest started talking to his
fellow ministers of Cameroon and Congo (Brazzaville) in order
to join efforts to conserve what has become the Dzanga Tri-
National Park in the region, which is the backbone of this
landscapes strategy.
About the grant implementation. First, World Wildlife Fund
and Wildlife Conservation Society, African Wildlife Foundation,
and Conservation International have carefully worked out a team
arrangement over the last few months through a series of
meetings here in the United States and in the region. The teams
are based on competitive advantage and real experience.
So the teams are going to work. The World Wildlife Fund
will issue a subcontract with other U.S.-based NGO's, such as
the Zoological Society of Milwaukee, the Bonobo Conservation,
Innovation Resource Management, and also we hope to work with
the United States Government agencies in the same landscapes,
such as the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Forest Service,
and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Second, World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation
Society have administered in Cameroon, Central African
Republic, and the Congo NGO action grants with funding support
from CARPE and the MacArthur Foundation. They subcontracted and
provided selected and motivated local African NGO's with
resources to test and develop their capacity.
Let me assure you and the members of the subcommittee that
the grant implementation will be very smooth. The USAID funding
mechanism already in place is a great machine to disburse
grants to partners of the Congo Basin.
Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee on African
Affairs, and guests of honor, the last 3 years have seen a
dramatic change in Central Africans' perception of the
importance of biodiversity conservation. This is an
unprecedented moment for the Congo Basin. While the stars are
aligned, and along the United States Government's will to
foster this partnership and bring in other partners, it is
vital that we seize this opportunity to save the Congo Basin
Forest.
The only concern that I have is as follows: Is the 3-year
program enough to achieve the goals of the CBFP? When I
consider the socioeconomic problems that have hampered Central
Africa and the greater number of people who still live in
abject poverty, I say to myself, if only potential partners
will extend this program over a period of 10 years with new and
increased resources that will be very much appreciated by me
and my peers.
On the behalf of my country, and the forest people of the
Congo Basin, and as well the World Wildlife Fund, Mr. Chairman,
members of the subcommittee, NGO's represented here, guests of
honor, thank you very much for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mokombo follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tony Mokombo
SAVING THE CONGO BASIN FORESTS
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, what a privilege for
``the Tallest pygmy'' to testify before you today. I am Tony Mokombo,
Senior Program Officer for the West and Central Africa and Madagascar
Endangered Spaces Program at the World Wildlife Fund. I am from Central
African Republic located in the heart of central Africa between the
Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad.
We are here to discuss the Congo Basin Partnership and hence the
future of the people in Central Africa and particularly those of the
Congo Basin. Before further development of the subject I would like
first to seize this opportunity to thank the United States of America's
government for its constant effort to assist my fellow Central Africans
and I to better conserve and save our wealth of biodiversity for the
present and future generations through its governmental agencies such
as the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the United
States Forest Service (USFS), and the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID).
This said, Mr. Chairman, the charge for this Subcommittee hearing
is to answer the questions, ``Why is the Congo Basin Partnership
needed? What is WWF's role in the partnership? And How will the grant
be implemented?''
WHY IS THE CONGO BASIN FOREST PARTNERSHIP NEEDED?
Mr. Chairman, this partnership represents a defining moment for the
Congo Basin. The stars are aligned and it's vital that we seize this
historic opportunity to save the Congo Basin Forests. This is a unique
opportunity for all of us to match the Congo Basin Political will with
the U.S. political will to support the conservation of the biodiversity
in the region. The U.S.'s timely show of financial and moral commitment
helped tilt the balance in favor of conservation. For many years,
conservation organizations, such as World Wildlife Fund, World
Conservation Society, have struggled--not always successfully--to
involve politicians, stakeholders, elite and the local populations into
the region's conservation efforts. Unfortunately each time they take
one step forward, two steps are taken back.
OVERVIEW OF THE CONGO BASIN: ITS VALUES, THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES
The Congo Basin is the second largest tropical forest block in the
world and contains some of the richest biodiversity in Africa. The
biodiversity of the Central Africa region is immensely wealthy, richly
endowed with species, habitats and landscapes.
In terms of vertebrate species diversity, the Congo Basin is
rivaled only by South America and South East Asia, and is justly famous
for its assemblage of savanna animal species and their predators. The
forest bloc of Central Africa is a treasure house of over 10,000 unique plants; 1,000 birds and 400 mammals, among which we have 3,000 endemic
plants, 42 endemic birds and 29 mammals. Many these endemic species are
concentrated in the lowland forests and associated low hills at the
eastern and western edges of the Basin. The Congo Basin Forests possess
the most diverse assemblages of primates in Africa, including four
species of Great Apes (two species of gorilla, bonobo and chimpanzee).
The region's marine, freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity has the
potential to provide significant--and sustainably managed--
inexhaustible benefits for its people, the vast majority of whom still
rely directly on natural resources.
What is the Current Situation?
Mr. Chairman, I had to leave my home-country to get a better
understanding of what is happening under the canopy of our forested
areas. In early 1990s, the international debate on global environmental
problems led to the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment and
Development. As the debate was defined by traditional North-South
dynamics, we, Developing Countries suspected that the North was using
the environment to impose further conditions on the terms of their
economic development. We argued that much of the global environmental
degradation was linked to Northern consumption patterns and the
Northern countries had a historical responsibility to pay for
mitigating environmentally destructive practices. Whereas the Developed
countries believed that we in the South were interested in sustainable
development only to leverage resource transfers from the developed
world.
Even though we had committed ourselves at that period of time to
contribute to the environment and development of our region, much of
the requested funds from people of good faith from the North were used
to address other economic issues rather than tackling the root causes
of the biodiversity loss of our heritage. We did not have a clue of
what the consequences of biodiversity loss could be. We did not
understand the problem and respond to the underlying socioeconomic root
causes of such loss.
Since the colonial era, which lasted for over 60 years, Central
Africa has been principally a supplier of raw materials to other
countries, in particular in forms of oil, minerals, timber and
agricultural products. These resources that are fundamental to the
future prospects for development within the region face a number of
significant threats. Among the multitude of forces that had and have
been driving biodiversity loss are:
unsustainable mining, mineral exploitation, and logging
practices;
clearing of forested land for subsistence agriculture and
hunting resulting from increased access provided by roads for
logging and mining;
and macroeconomic policies which may reinforce and
perpetuate unsustainable practices.
Added to these threats are:
the poorly managed protected areas;
ineffective community based natural resource use;
weak processes and institutions: Ministries with
responsibility for planning, forest conservation and
management, wildlife and protected areas are often different,
poorly coordinated and their decisions may be over-ridden by
hierarchically superior authorities and institutions; and
regional institutions are even weaker with poor cooperation
between countries, a situation that is exploited by elements in
the logging industry and those who regard wildlife as a
commodity, such as ivory hunters and bush meat traders.
what are the current opportunities in the region?
The Yaounde Summit
The Yaounde Summit created a unique opportunity for the governments
of the Congo Basin countries to make commitments to forest
conservation. This Summit has elevated forest conservation and
management to one of the most important issues in the sub-region and,
as such, has marked a turning point in political commitment to forest
conservation in Central Africa.
On March 17, 1999, the Heads of State of six Central African
countries, (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial
Guinea and Gabon) met to discuss, at the highest political level, the
problems of forest exploitation and protection in the region. This
groundbreaking Yaounde Summit was hosted and chaired by the President
of the Republic of Cameroon and co-chaired by his Royal Highness,
Prince Phillip, President Emeritus of WWF. At the conclusion of the
summit, they signed the Yaounde Declaration, which contains twelve
specific commitments to forest conservation in the region. At the core
of the Declaration is the recognition that protecting the region's
forests requires a regional approach, coordinated policies and
harmonized procedures, practices and legislation. The Democratic
Republic of Congo subsequently ratified the Yaounde Declaration in June
2002.
The Yaounde Declaration was recognized by the United Nations 54th
General Assembly (Resolution 54/214) as a mechanism to achieve
sustainable forest management and conservation in Central Africa. The
UN Resolution commends the Yaounde Declaration as a framework for
ensuring forest conservation and sustainable management for
implementation both by the countries of the region and also by the
international community.
CONGO BASIN FOREST PARTNERSHIP
Another opportunity is the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP),
which we are discussing today, launched by the United States and South
Africa along with 27 public and private partners at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in September 2002. To
this Congo Basin Forest Partnership, the US through its USAID-Central
Africa Regional Program for Environment will make a substantial
contribution.
The goal of this partnership is to promote economic development,
poverty alleviation, improved governance, and natural resources
conservation in Congo Basin through support for a network of national
parks and protected areas, well-managed forestry concessions, and
assistance to communities who depend on the conservation of the
outstanding forest and wildlife resources.
Developing a coherent conservation strategy for such a huge part of
the African continent, inhabited by such diversity of people, cultures,
traditions and political systems, is a challenge in itself. The
challenge becomes even greater as we consider the socio-economic
problems that plague Central Africa. A great number of people still
live in abject poverty and, in some countries, wars, civil unrest and
political instability have or continue to hinder economic progress. It
is a very crowded place--24 million people--and these factors, together
with unfavorable trade and macro-economic policies, result in great
pressures on the sub-region's forests, savannas, wetlands and marine
ecosystems.
Successful conservation in the Congo Basin therefore still presents
enormous challenges. There is, however, still time in many places to
take a different development path that integrates economic growth and
conservation of special places and respect for traditional cultures.
These places are the 11 landscapes that are the focus of the
partners of the Congo Basin Forests, covering approximately 668,000 km2
and containing 38 protected areas. Among the forests of Central Africa
we can name the richly forested (but highly threatened) lands of Gabon,
the unique sanctuary-like bai for elephants in Dzanga-Sangha (CAR), or
the dramatically endemic forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Since the Congo Basin is not only the lungs of the world but supports
globally significant biodiversity and maintains the global climate
regime, hence mitigating global warming, there is a need for the world
to invest in conserving this forested area.
The joint efforts to conserve these 11 landscapes will create
employment for park guards, tourism guides hence tourism development,
community based conservation development. The sustainable forest
management will lead to economic development.
WHAT IS WWF'S ROLE WITHIN THIS REGION AND PARTICULARLY
IN CONGO THE BASIN PARTNERSHIP?
Mr. Chairman, the World Wildlife Fund played an unprecedented role
in the region, influencing the political agenda to ensure that forest
conservation is seen as a key policy issue for the governments of the
Central Africa. During the Yaounde Summit, WWF called upon the Central
African Governments to collaborate across boundaries and work in
partnership with international aid agencies so that forest protection
is implemented on the ground.
WWF has facilitated the Yaounde process by developing a plan for
the conservation of the Congo Basin Forest, starting at a biodiversity
workshop in Libreville in March 2000. This workshop brought together
over 200 scientists from the region and elsewhere, who defined areas of
biological importance for different species groups. By a process of
amalgamation and comparison with existing protected areas and intact
forest habitats, 11 priority forest landscapes were identified that
form the basis of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership. These landscapes
aim to cover the species, habitats and ecological process values of the
Congo Basin, such that effective conservation in these areas will
ensure that these values persisted over the long term.
The main process for operationalizing the biodiversity vision and
the conservation of the 11 landscapes has been the Conference of
Ministers in charge of Forests in Central Africa (COMIFAC). The first
of these (COMIFAC I) was held in Yaounde in December 2000 and the
second (COMIFAC II) in the same location in June 2002. At COMIFAC I,
the Ministers adopted the WWF facilitated Biodiversity Vision for the
Guinea-Congolian forests as the blueprint for conservation in the
region; by this same act they committed themselves to the conservation
of 10% of the forest habitat in protected areas. These commitments are
expressed in the Conservation Convergence Plan, which outlines a need
to achieve the following:
Gazettement of 10% of the territories as protected areas;
Transborder initiatives;
Request for donor support to address bushmeat trade;
Call to partnership with all stakeholders for sustainable
management of the
resources.
Overview of WWF and its Global Program
Since its inception in 1961, WWF, as the largest privately
supported international conservation network in the world, has invested
in over 13,100 projects in 157 countries. WWF directs its conservation
efforts toward three global goals: protecting endangered spaces, saving
endangered species and addressing global threats. From working to save
the giant panda, tiger, and rhino to helping establish and manage parks
and reserves worldwide, WWF has been a conservation leader for 40
years.
In all, the WWF Network has offices and partners in over 40
countries around the world, working as a team toward an overall goal:
``to halt and reverse the destruction of our natural environment.''
WWF's Global Program
WWF's primary objective is to conserve globally important
terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats and their plant and animal
communities. However, conservation resources are limited, and we cannot
hope to save everything, everywhere. So we must set priorities while
trying to ensure that examples of all the world's diverse ecosystems
are conserved. These examples include areas especially rich in overall
species diversity, areas with species found nowhere else, and areas
that contain unique assemblages of animals and plants.
WWF has identified around two hundred priorities of these important
regions across the globe. They are called the ``Global 200
Ecoregions.'' Ecologists consider that almost half of terrestrial
ecoregions are endangered, some critically so, while a further 29% are
vulnerable. More than 40 of the Global 200 ecoregions occur in Africa
and around its shores. The WWF Africa & Madagascar Program (AMP) has
for many years focused its attention on four broad habitat types:
forests, savannas, freshwater wetlands, and coastal and marine
habitats. As we enter the new millennium, the AMP is `fine-tuning' its
habitat conservation efforts to those ecoregions where action is most
urgently needed. WWF has identified the Western Congo Basin Moist
Forest and Congo Basin Forest ecoregions as conservation priorities.
WWF History in Central Africa
For more than 20 years, WWF has been supporting the creation,
development and management of conservation programs within Central
Africa especially in Central African Republic (CAR), Gabon, Cameroon
and DRC. WWF has signed a country agreement with the Governments of
each of those countries, most recently in DRC in 2001, where we are in
the process of reinforcing our presence.
WWF has worked in the forests of Central Africa with a focus on the
Sangha Tri-National area of contiguous forests including northern
Congo-Brazzaville, southwest CAR, and southeast Cameroon. WWF has
supported the creation, development, and management of the Dzanga-
Sangha Dense Forest Special Reserve and the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park
in the CAR, and of the Lobeke National park in southeastern Cameroon.
WWF has a strong national program in Gabon focusing on Protected Areas
Management and has worked with the Government on Gabon on the Minkebe
Reserve in northeastern Gabon and the Gamba Complex for over 15 years.
WWF has led the process of developing a trans-border landscape program
centered on the Minkebe National Park, linking it to Dja, Boumba Bek
and Nki Reserves in Cameroon and Odzala National Park in Congo (see
Table 1: WWF's Presence in Landscapes). The WWF Ecoregion Program has
collaborated with WCS to carry out the background surveys and studies
that have led to the 13 new National Parks recently announced by the
President of Gabon. WWF was instrumental in the development of the
Central Africa World Heritage Forest Initiative (CAWHFI), supported by
the United Nations Foundation and UNESCO, which seeks to increase the
management effectiveness within three landscapes in the Congo Basin.
These three landscapes, overlapping with CARPE/CBFP landscapes, are the
Sangha Tri-National, the Gamba-Conckouati, and the Minkebe-Dja-Odzala
landscapes. WWF, WCS, CI and the Jane Goodall Institute will jointly
implement this program. Finally, WWF has played an instrumental role in
the process leading to the adoption of the Plan de Convergence adopted
by COMIFAC in December 2000, which includes a series of actions to be
undertake to achieve the Yaounde Declaration.
Current WWF Presence in Central Africa
WWF has a Central Africa Regional Program Office (CARPO) in
Yaounde, Cameroon, an Ecoregional and Program Office in Libreville,
Gabon, and Program Offices in DRC and in the CAR, reporting to WWF-
International in Switzerland. WWF-U.S. initiated the program in Central
Africa and provides the principal technical and financial support to
it, including all initiatives involving support from the United States,
in particular, USAID. WWF Network funding for the region also comes
from WWF-Netherlands, WWF-Belgium, WWF-International, WWF-UK, WWF-
Denmark and WWF-Germany.
The WWF program for CARPE II is firmly rooting in the institutional
context of the countries where it will operate. As such WWF has
traditionally placed emphasis on working within the relevant
institutional structures and on understanding their mechanisms of
operation and weaknesses.
Mr. Chairman, there is a saying in our Bantu language that says:
``One finger can not pick up lice inside the hair,'' which means here
that one organization alone can not achieve the goal of conservation in
Central Africa.
WWF's widespread partners and program activities in Central Africa
are a reflection of this saying, along with the U.S. government
commitment to the conservation of Congo Basin Forest. Over 20 years,
WWF has established a network of regional program, and project offices
in Gabon, Cameroon, and CAR to address conservation issues from the
field. Such a field presence has allowed us to raise awareness of the
important biodiversity in the Congo Basin, promote sustainable forest
management and independent timber certification, and work towards
establishing a network of protected areas which effectively protect
forests as well as the people and animals which depend upon them. WWF's
partners in these initiatives include governments, NGOs, local
communities, international aid agencies and foundations, and the
private sector.
Despite all the scaling-up of the conservation approaches and
central African governments' commitment, biodiversity loss is still
increasing. If we want to win the race against biodiversity loss we
need a new approach that more effectively not only integrates
socioeconomic policies with environmental concerns but a partnership
among the Conservation communities and northern and southern
governments.
Conservation is a truly complex undertaking that requires a wide
range of people and organizations working together to achieve common
goals.
The most strategic relationship to have in order to achieve
conservation is this consortium (which includes WWF, CI and WCS) built
up on what USAID has set up through its CARPE program in the Central
Africa region.
GRANT PROCEEDING IMPLEMENTATION
The question that one would ask is how are these conservation
organizations going to administer the grants and sub-contract with this
complex partnership within a complex region?
Firstly team arrangements have been carefully worked out over the
last few months through a series of meetings in the U.S.A., and in the
region (see Table 2: CBFP Overall Teaming and Sub-Contract Arrangements
in Landscapes). The teams are based on competitive advantage and real
field experience. These arrangements represent the best way to direct
the functioning of the landscape conservation approach in these
different landscapes. Close coordination will be needed to ensure that
parallel methodologies are being used for the different parts of the
program, and to allow reporting on the progress of the implementation
of the programs at different landscapes. In all cases a landscape
structure will be created to deliver components of the program in a way
that they relate to the entire landscape and also to deliver the
required reports to USAID. At a number of landscapes, WWF will issue
sub-contracts to other USA-based NGOs such as Zoological Society of
Milwaukee, Bonobo Conservation initiative, Innovation Resources
Management. WWF also hopes to work with U.S. government agencies in the
same landscapes, such as the Smithsonian Institution, USFWS, or USFS.
These collaborators will complete specialist studies, such as surveys,
measuring the area of remaining forest cover, etc, which are needed to
deliver the different aspects of the program. Memorandum of
Understanding will be written between WWF and the various agencies.
Secondly, making grants to partners is not something new to the
International NGOs that are the backbones of this Congo Basin
Partnership. WWF and WCS have administered in Cameroon, Central African
Republic and the Republic of Congo, NGO Action Grants with funding
support from CARPE and the MacArthur Foundation. They sub-contracted
and provided selected and motivated NGOs with resources to test and
develop their capacity in field conservation. In each country selection
criteria was established and a committee of local conservation and
development experts was formed to review proposals and award grants.
WWF is a founding member of the African Forest Action Network
(AFAN), a multi-country network of African NGOs created in 1994. AFAN's
purpose is to promote the conservation of forests and the sustainable
use of forest resources, particularly for the well-being of the people.
The network's activities focus on information exchange, advocacy,
training, and facilitating cooperation among member NGOs. The MacArthur
Foundation provided funding to support AFAN to develop and disseminate
a quarterly newsletter and to provide training and technical assistance
to its NGO members in advocacy and organizational development matters.
Together, AFAN and the NGO Action Grants program contributed to the
foundation necessary to develop NGOs as a relevant force in local and
regional conservation in Central Africa. These programs also provide a
vehicle through which to identify potential partners for WWF
initiatives.
Mr. Chairman, guests of honor, the last three years have seen years
of dramatic change in Central African's perception of the importance of
biodiversity conservation. With the technical assistance of
conservation organizations such as WWF, WCS, CI and AWF, just to name
these few, the countries in Central Africa have come up with a
conservation strategy for this huge part of the African continent,
inhabited by such diversity of people, cultures, traditions and
political systems.
This is an unprecedented moment for the Congo Basin. While the
stars are aligned and along the US government's will to foster this
partnership and bring in other partners, it is vital that we seize this
opportunity to save the Congo Basin Forest. The Congo Basin Forest
Partnership and the United States contribution came in at the right
time, supporting the Central African governments' conservation strategy
and their convergence plan. I believe that funds should be in support
of all the countries across the entire region. This will keep all the
countries encouraged to work together for the good cause of the
biodiversity conservation.
The only concern that I have, and I have been asking myself, is as
follows: Is the three-year program enough to achieve the goals of the
CBFP? When I consider the socio-economic problems that have hampered
Central Africa and the greater number of people who still live in
abject poverty, I say to myself if only potential partners could extend
this program over a period of ten years, this will be very much
appreciated. Since this is another education process that we are
embarking on to bring the entire community to change their way of
living and thinking, and adopt a new behavior.
Mr. Chairman, NGO representatives and guests of honor, thank you
very much for your attention.
Table 1.--WWF Presence in Landscapes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Landscape Name Current Activities and Presence
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gamba-Conkouati WWF has an established field presence at this landscape for over 15 years. This is an established and mature program and considerable further progress can be expected during the coming 3 years
Dja-Minkebe-Odzala (TRIDOM) WWF has an established field presence in Minkebe and Dja, built up over a number of years. For the past 2 years WWF has also been working with GEF, ECOFAC and COMIFAC on cross-border issues. Considerable landscape work can be
expected in this area over the coming 3 years, including the development of a shared management structure across national borders
Sangha Tri-National (TNS) WWF has maintained a strong field presence in Cameroon and CAR for more than two decades and first conceived this trans-border program. For the past 2-3 years, WWF has been working with WCS in Congo to implement a shared
management structure for the entire area and considerable landscape level progress can be expected during the coming 3 years
Lac Tele-Lac Tumba WWF will establish a program at this site and will work with Bonobo Conservation Initiative and Innovative Resources Management to deliver aspects of the proposed work. WWF will carry out community based fisheries and fish
surveys in this landscape, and will also assist WCS with the overall landscape measurement components of the program
Salonga-Lukenie-Sankur WWF will work with WCS to operationalize a large program at this important landscape, building on past work and field reconnaissance over the past months. Parts of the program will also be implemented by the Zoological Society
of Milwaukee, who is present in the field, partially supported by WWF. WWF will collaborate with the UNESCO World Heritage Program
Monte Alen-Mont de Cristal Mont de Cristal is close to the Minkebe Forest and WWF will reinforce its current operation in the area, in particular for bushmeat control and anti-poaching
Maringa-Lopori-Wamba WWF supported bonobo research and conservation in this area for many years and will re-launch this effort partnering with Zoological Society of Milwaukee to deliver the proposed work at the Lomako landscape component
Maiko-Lutunguru Tayna-Kahuzi Biega Building on the past work that it has conducted in the area, WWF will collaborate with GTZ and UNESCO/WHP to deliver the Kahuzi Biega landscape component
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 2.--Partnership Overall Teaming and Sub-Contract Arrangements in the Landscapes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lead
Organization Secondary/ WWF Sub-
Landscape Lead Countries in Landscape in Terciary Contracts
Organization Landscape Component Landscape Involvement with
Component
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Monte Alen-Mont de CI
Cristal Inselbergs
Equatorial Monte CI
Guinea Alen
Gabon Mont de WCS WWF/CI
Cristal
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 Gamba-Conckouati WWF
Gabon Gamba-May WWF WCS/CI
omba
Congo Conckouat WCS
i
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 Lope-Chaillu-Louesse WCS
Gabon Lope WCS
Chaillu
Congo Louesse WCS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 Dja-Minkebe-Odzala Tri- WWF
National
Cameroon Dja WWF
Congo Odzala WCS WWF/CI
Gabon Minkebe WWF
Gabon Mwagne WWF
Gabon Ivindo WCS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5 Sangha Tri-National WWF
Cameroon Lobeke WWF
CAR Dzanga WWF WCS
Sangha
Congo Nouabale WCS
Ndoki
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 Bateke Plateau WCS
Gabon Bateke WCS
Congo Lefini WCS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7 Lac Tele-Lac Tumba WWF
Congo Lac Tele WCS
DRC Lac Tumba WWF BCI, IRM
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 Salonga-Lukenie-Sankur WWF
DRC Salonga WWF WCS ZSM
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9 Maringa/Lopori-Wamba AWF
DRC Maringa/ AWF CI
Lopori
DRC Wamba AWF
DRC Lomako WWF ZSM
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 Maiko-Lutunguru Tayna- CI
Kahuzi Biega
DRC Itwombe CI WCS
DRC Maiko CI WCS
DRC Kahuzi WWF WCS
Biega
DRC Taina ............
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11 Ituru-Epulu-Aru WCS
DRC Ituri WCS
Epulu Aru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes: ZSM = Zoological Society of Milwaukee, BCI = Bonobo Conservation Initiative; IRM = Innovative Resources
Management
Senator Alexander. Thank you very much, Mr. Mokombo.
Mr. Mokombo. Sorry to be so long.
Senator Alexander. Let me ask this general question. Dr.
Fay, you have as broad a view of all this as anybody. As you
look ahead the next couple of years, what are the two or three
most important things that you would like to see accomplished
in the next 2 or 3 years?
Dr. Fay. We need to consolidate this partnership. I think
that is extremely important.
Senator Alexander. How do you mean? How do you mean that?
Dr. Fay. The resources that are being brought to bear by
the U.S. Government are going to be insufficient to do what we
have set out to do, and that is why this partnership was
created. But this contribution from other nations, especially
the EU and their member states, some of the Asian nations,
Japan, somebody mentioned Australia, Canada, various other
nations around the world, have to be brought in and, like the
NGO's have done on the U.S. side, figure out exactly what role
they play and what piece of the puzzle they can help with.
We have to use this partnership to figure that out on a
more general basis.
Senator Alexander. Is there any other--do one or two other
nations stick out as more interested than others right now?
Dr. Fay. Well, certainly the EU is extremely active in the
area and has been collaborating with all the partners for a
long time. But there is not yet a coherent kind of strategy
that is a unified one; that is very, very important, not only
for the action on the ground but for that kind of groundswell,
sending a clear message that is a unified one.
We need to reinforce the notion in Central African
countries that this is going to be a nuts and bolts operation;
this is not going to be more fluff. A lot of conservation is
about fluff; a lot of African nations accept it, but they think
it is more fluff. This is an effort, and it has been right from
the beginning, to say, no guys, this is a ground-based, ground-
up nuts and bolts operation. Let us get the job done on the
ground. It will trickle up every day of the week all day.
People on the ground are going to start saying that this is
what we are talking about. One of the ministers in Paris said
something about not wanting budget-devouring projects, which
means projects that just eat budgets, and we have seen a lot of
those. I think it is extremely important, and the CBFP has been
good about making the focus remain on the landscapes. But I
think we just have to keep beating that thing and say we really
do need to keep it on the ground.
We have to remain focused on building infrastructure, on
training management personnel, and integrating local people.
That is the key. If we do that we can create a new ethos in
these countries. Even a country as vast and as varied as the
DRC, will experience a very telling impact.
People are talking about Ituri, for instance, and we have
seen all the warfare going on out there, the chaos. It is all
about resources. People from Rwanda and Burundi and eastern DRC
are moving west. Why are they doing it? It is not because they
hate those people. It is not because they like to be at war. It
is because they are looking for resources.
When you think about a ground-up resource management
project working out there with resources that they need, that
whole scenario could shift very quickly, and I really believe
that. I do not think that is pie in the sky. I really think it
is reality.
In northern Congo, when we had a major civil war in 1997,
like Tony says, we stuck it out, and we absolutely had a major
impact on stability in that area, over a vast area. We calmed
people down. We got people to think about getting back to the
villages and carrying on with their lives, and that is what
happened. It is a far-reaching thing.
One thing I would like to mention that I forgot is there is
some kind of restriction over at USAID that is saying that we
are not going to be allowed to build infrastructure with the
CBFP funding. I am not sure if that sticks today, but that is
something--I have been in the wilds of Gabon for the last
several months, so I have not really gotten the details.
Senator Alexander. What kind of infrastructure?
Dr. Fay. Park headquarters, out camps, training centers,
things like that are desperately needed in the field. Part of
what we do, a very important part of what we do, is providing
infrastructure for national parks and for management in these
areas. If we cannot do that, I think it takes a lot of the wind
out of the sails. Something that is very important in Africa is
brick and mortar. If they see the brick and mortar, they think,
okay, these guys are serious. And if we come in there and say,
sorry guys, we cannot do that, that is going to be a major
impediment. I do not think it would be that difficult to get
that restriction lifted.
Senator Alexander. Well, we will work on that. What else
can we do to be helpful? What else could the committee do right
now to help you or Mr. Mokombo?
Dr. Fay. Making sure that these resources do not get--do
not leak into grandiose research programs and programs that are
going to give us some kind of diffuse impact that we talk
about. Again, we have got to just keep it on the ground and
just make sure that what we have promised ourselves,
landscapes, national parks, personnel, local people, keep
hammering at that.
That is a relatively easy thing to do, to make sure that
happens. If we do not make sure that it happens, we are going
to be talking about A to Z, we are going to be talking about
from ground all the way up to outer space, and we are going to
be thinking mostly about outer space. I think that the ground
is extremely important. We need to keep that focus.
Senator Alexander. What kind of resources? We heard Mr.
Mokombo talk a little bit about the Central African Republic
and the effect this has had in his country. What kind of
resources are the government of Gabon putting into the effort?
Dr. Fay. Tony, myself, and Richard Carroll, who is sitting
in the back, all started 20-some years ago working in the place
that Tony is talking about, Dzanga-Sangha. WWF has been there
all day every day for the past 15 years and it has made a
dramatic impact on the way forest resources in southwestern
Central African Republic have unfolded.
The governments have been contributing as much as they
contribute and probably a lot more than they do in many other
domains. So for instance, right now, where I am working in
Gabon, Loango National Park, the government has a significant
number of personnel working on the ground. Those personnel are
not necessarily effective. They do not necessarily use the
means that they have at their disposal effectively. They do not
necessarily have the training or especially the skills that
they need to really get down and just get the job done in these
protected areas.
They have got the theoretical training, most of them. But
when you get right down to the level of, okay, what do we need
to do, guys, there is a fishing boat out there, how are we
going to get those guys back to the legal limit. Over time
these governments are putting more and more in, but I really do
not believe that we are going to be able to convince them to
take over this program in 3 years. There is no way.
WWF, WCS, all these organizations, are not really even
thinking about leaving this area. I mean, it would be like
saying the Sierra Club in the United States is going to wrap up
operations in the next 3 years, because local governments and
national government are going to take care of it. That is not
our mentality. Our mentality is stick to it forever. What is
wrong with that?
Whatever happens, U.S. Government investment in this domain
will pay off handsomely. If you look at Liberia, which was
another subject we talked about earlier today, and you look at
the turmoil that has unfolded there in the last 10, 15 years,
in my domain what did we talk about there?
We talked about the logging companies that evolved into
money-laundering operations from the Middle East in Liberia. I
will not point my finger at anyone, but there has been a lot of
talk about using Liberia as a base much like Afghanistan was
being used, not so much for training or whatever, but as a
center for moving money, for instance, and various other
things.
If we had brought transparency and had worked with the
Liberian government in the logging domain over the past 15
years and invested even hundreds of millions of dollars in that
domain, we may have saved billions in peacekeeping. I don't
know, but I think that these investments, we cannot regard them
as short-term where the governments are going to take over. We
have to look at these as long-term investments that will save
the West large amounts of money in the medium term.
Senator Alexander. Well, we are grateful for what you, Dr.
Fay, and you, Mr. Mokombo, have done over the years. The
purpose of this hearing today, as I mentioned earlier, is to
put a spotlight on that work and to provide you an opportunity
to submit, both through your testimony and through any
additional statements you would like to get in within the next
few days, ways that the United States Congress can be helpful
to the State Department and the USAID as we move forward with
this.
Our subcommittee will continue to have an interest in the
basin and this partnership, and we will be looking for ways to
help it
succeed.
Mr. Mokombo, did you have any other comment you would like
to make?
Mr. Mokombo. I just wanted to add that we are actually
embarking on an education process for my peers in the region,
to bring them or the entire community to change their ways of
living and thinking and adopting new behavior. This is going to
take time there, time and persistence. So your having a long-
term horizon vision will be very much appreciated.
Senator Alexander. We will look forward to additional
hearings on this subject and visits in Africa to try to see
that the United States' participation is as effective as it can
be.
I want to thank you, Mr. Mokombo, for being here. Dr. Fay,
thank you for coming such a long distance.
Dr. Fay. Thanks for having me.
Senator Alexander. And thank you for your work.
Mr. Mokombo. Thank you, too, and you have my invitation to
visit Gamba. There is a beach in Gamba where all the animals
come for sunshine. It is awesome. So you have got my invitation
for that. The members are also invited.
Senator Alexander. Thank you very much.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:09 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]