On 16 March 2021, Complete – the French firm ranked seventh globally for manufacturing of oil – introduced plans to plant a “40,000 hectare forest” within the Republic of Congo, the purpose of which is to “sequester greater than 10 million tons of CO2 over 20 years”. The corporate acknowledged that it was dedicated to “the event of pure carbon sinks in Africa”. The tree-planting on the savannah-lands of the Bateke Plateau would “create a forest setting that can in the end assist broaden the ecosystems’ biodiversity”, claimed the corporate. However, in actuality, the undertaking is an egregious try and greenwash Complete’s main contribution to local weather change, and conceals probably severe native ecological and social injury. Behind it lies an internet of shady offers, geopolitical manoeuvring and worldwide company dissembling.
Masking up a probably devastating oil improvement
Complete’s announcement follows its creation of a Nature Primarily based Options (NBS) unit in June 2019 to develop ‘pure carbon sinks’ to “sequester CO2 from its operations”. It’s certainly one of a number of oil firms, together with Shell, Eni, and Equinor, which might be backing NBS to keep away from decreasing their emissions. However Complete’s announcement was lengthy anticipated. In 2019, it had acquired a extremely controversial new oil exploration allow in a close-by a part of the Congo. The 1.5-million-hectare concession (see map beneath) lies beneath what has not too long ago been revealed to be the most important pure peat deposit within the tropics and is believed to be probably the most carbon-dense ecosystems anyplace.
Exploring and exploiting this concession wouldn’t solely trigger rising carbon emissions from any oil found there, however probably additionally disturb and destroy not less than a few of the peat deposits, and probably the wildlife too. In 2019, Complete began taking a look at potentialities for some form of greenwashing scheme to distract from this new triple-whammy for the setting. It was rumoured to be contemplating shopping for up previous logging concessions within the Democratic Republic of Congo to run as offset areas.
By 2019, Complete’s place within the Republic of Congo had turn into a bit sophisticated. Its predecessor Elf oil has benefited vastly from concessions off the coast of Congo for practically fifty years. However official maps present that by 2018 it had acquired two of ten new oil exploration blocks onshore, which collectively cowl the a lot of the north and east of the nation (see map). These areas are totally swathed in a patchwork of dense tropical rainforest, wetland, peatbog and pure savannahs. They’re residence to not solely a few of the final remaining really conventional Aka Indigenous ‘Pygmies’, but additionally many hundreds of Bantu farmers residing within the forest and plains.
Sadly, this pure patchwork has already been nearly totally carved up into logging concessions and strictly protected areas from which hundreds of individuals have been evicted. Palm oil plantations, diamond and gold mines, and new roads are including to the strain. The brand new oil concessions equivalent to Complete’s, superimposed onto what’s already a extremely conflictual area may probably function the death-knell for this globally vital habitat for folks and wildlife.
Complete’s ‘Koli’ concession within the far northwest was notably alarming for conservationists, and was probably problematic for Complete, because it totally covers the 4,000-square-kilometre Nouabale-Ndoki Nationwide Park, which is managed by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
The second of the Complete exploration blocks, known as Mokelé-Mbembé (the identify comes from the legendary monster that supposedly lives in Lake Tele, positioned throughout the concession) was awarded to Complete by Congo’s hydrocarbon ministry in July 2019. This concession coincides with intensive peatlands which UK-based scientists say could possibly be as much as practically six metres deep and comprise a whole lot of tons of carbon per hectare. It additionally covers a part of the Lake Tele Group Reserve, additionally run by WCS, which the conservationists declare has the best inhabitants density of lowland gorillas anyplace. The Mokelé-Mbembé concession, although, nonetheless required ‘ratification’ by the Congolese parliament.
Step in, Emmanuel Macron
Concurrently the Congolese authorities was making ready handy out large elements of its territory to Complete and different oil firms in mid-2019, the French and Norwegian governments had been taking a look at the right way to give it cash for supposedly defending the nation’s setting. Below the Central Africa Forests Initiative (CAFI), a number of hundred million {dollars} of largely Norwegian and a few French assist cash had already been pledged to different nations within the Congo Basin area, largely for questionable initiatives and infrequently in a lot controversy.
On 3 September 2019, it was immediately revealed that an settlement was to be signed between CAFI and the Republic of Congo throughout a gathering in Paris between President Macron and Congo’s long-term dictator, Denis Sassou-Nguesso.
In line with CAFI, US$65 million was to be made obtainable for “the safety and sustainable administration of peatlands within the Republic of Congo . . . these peatlands are of important significance within the battle towards local weather change, as they might comprise practically three years of worldwide greenhouse fuel emissions.” The cash would additionally fund initiatives to “outline the modalities of planning, exploration and exploitation of mining and hydrocarbon actions after they happen in forest or peatland area, in order to cut back the affect”. Greenpeace dismissed the deal as principally ‘greenlighting’ drilling of oil in the course of Congo’s forests and peatlands.
Curiously, no point out was made on the time by CAFI, France or Norway that Complete oil was at the exact same time negotiating to safe lastly an oil concession that will trigger exactly the issues CAFI’s cash ostensibly aimed to keep away from. Patrick Pouyanné, the top of Complete, met with Sassou-Nguesso the day after the CAFI settlement had been signed, and President Macron and Pouyanné met the day after that. Approval of an oil production-sharing settlement with Complete was formally permitted by the Congolese authorities in December, 4 months after the US$65 million CAFI ‘assist’ package deal had been permitted.
Chronology
5 April 2019:
Central Africa Forests Initiative (CAFI) publicizes intention to offer US$65 million in funding to Congo
17 July 2019:
Authorities of Congo indicators settlement with Complete for Mokelé-Mbembé oil exploration block, topic to ratification
3 September 2019:
President Macron meets with Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, and indicators settlement on behalf of CAFI for US$65 million ‘inexperienced assist’ package deal to Congo
4 September 2019:
CEO of Complete oil, Patrick Pouyanné meets Congolese President Sassou-Nguesso
5 September 2019:
President Macron meets CEO of Complete oil, Patrick Pouyanné
31 December 2019:
Congo ratifies oil manufacturing sharing settlement with Complete
1 October 2020:
Congo’s Official Journal publicizes that President Sassou had granted a 70,089-hectare concession to ‘Forest Impartial Congo’
3 November 2020:
Congolese authorities publicizes formation of ‘public-private partnership’ with ‘ForestNeutral Congo’, owned by Forêt Ressources Administration group chief, Bernard Cassagne
12 March 2021:
Complete and ‘ForestNeutral Congo’ signal cope with Congolese authorities
16 March 2021:
Complete publicizes plantations’ offset scheme
21 March 2021:
President Sassou-Nguesso ‘wins’ one other rigged election
Turning a savannah right into a ‘inexperienced desert’?
So by the top of 2019, Complete had acquired its most popular oil concession, and Congo had acquired US$65 million in worldwide funding together with the status and credibility that went with it. While Complete didn’t must face the unattainable activity of justifying drilling beneath the Nouabale-Ndoki Nationwide Park, probably the most prestigious protected areas in Africa, it nonetheless had the issue that its newly-acquired concession was lined in pristine forest, wetlands and peatlands.
Complete initially began discussions on the right way to greenwash its operations with the main French institute CIRAD, the Centre for Agricultural Analysis for Growth, however not less than one distinguished researcher there felt that Complete ought to merely not drill for oil in delicate locations in Congo within the first place. Complete evidently then turned to a brand new company for assist with implementation, CIRAD’s longtime accomplice Forêt Ressources Administration, a consultancy with shut hyperlinks to the French authorities and a really lengthy historical past of supporting the forest-wrecking logging business in Africa.
As with nature-based options elsewhere, it was evidently assumed that the destruction of non-forest ecosystems equivalent to savannahs for carbon-absorbing plantations could be a lot simpler to decorate up as environmentally useful. Complete claimed in its announcement of the Bateke scheme that “Planting two forms of acacias on sandy plateaus, uncovered to recurrent bush fires, will in the end improve the biodiversity of this ecosystem”. Actually a 2018 paper in BioTropica described the Bateke Plateau within the Republic of Congo as “one of many final frontiers for ecology, with little identified about its floristics and physiognomy. Regardless of occupying 89,800 km2 and its significance for native livelihoods, its ecology and ecosystem features are poorly understood.”
What does the undertaking really encompass, and who controls what?
Particulars of the undertaking, together with who’s liable for what, and even how massive and the place precisely the scheme is and what it is going to encompass, is mired in conflicting and obscure data – not helped by the truth that little or no of the important thing documentation, equivalent to contracts or plans, has been made publicly obtainable.
Complete’s announcement on 16 March 2021 states that Complete and Forêt Ressources Administration (FRM) “have signed a partnership settlement with the Republic of the Congo” for its 40,000-hectare undertaking. Nevertheless, 4 days earlier, it had been reported within the Congolese media, full with an image of a signing ceremony, that ‘Complete nature primarily based options (TNBS)’ and an organization known as ‘Forest Impartial Congo’ had signed an settlement with the ministry for a 70,000-hectare ‘land reserve’ in Lefini, on the Bateke Plateau. The signatory on behalf of ‘Forest Impartial Congo’ was Bernard Cassagne, the Founder and CEO of FRM. In line with Congo’s Official Journal of 1 October 2020, a 70,089 hectare concession had been granted to the beforehand unknown ‘Forest Impartial Congo’ by President Sassou already in August 2020. A ‘public-private partnership’ between the Congolese authorities and ‘Forest Impartial Congo’ was introduced in November 2020, which claimed that the corporate would develop 50,000 hectares. The exact and full possession construction of ‘Forest Impartial Congo’ will not be identified, and particulars of it usually are not obtainable publicly.
In addition to differing from Complete’s personal announcement about which entities the scheme includes, the 12 March 2021 information report included data not included in Complete’s “new forest” press launch three days later: the scheme would come with a sawmill and log veneer peeling manufacturing unit to “provide Brazzaville with 32,000 cubic metres of plywood 40,000 cubic metres of sawn timber” per yr. There may even be a 2.5 MW ‘cogeneration’ electrical energy plant, presumably run on any wooden that was not became planks or plywood.
The fast-growing acacia species that Complete intends to plant usually are not native to the Congo, and even anyplace in Africa, however to Australia and Southeast Asia. These that aren’t processed into wooden might be burned to provide electrical energy, presumably to run the noticed and plywood mill. (Native folks is perhaps fortunate to be thrown some waste wooden to cook dinner their dinners on). Briefly, while Complete and its PR brokers openly described their enterprise as making a 40,000-hectare “forest”, they are going to in actual fact be destroying a part of a largely unknown pure savannah ecosystem with the intention to create a 40,000-hectare intensive wooden farm of non-native species with related timber processing amenities.
Even when the plantations survive the “recurrent bush fires” that are a characteristic of the Bateke Plateau, their eventual conversion into boards or fuelwood implies that any carbon sequestration advantages are, in fact, very short-term, negligible, and even detrimental. Native vegetation must be cleared to make method for the plantations, and any carbon held within the soil is prone to be disturbed by cyclical harvesting of the bushes, most likely by heavy equipment. However, Complete claims that the undertaking will generate “carbon credit, licensed by unbiased organizations, which can allow it to cut back its internet CO2 emissions.”
It’s serving to Africans, in fact . . .
The corporate claims that “an area improvement fund will help well being, dietary and academic initiatives to profit neighboring villages”. The truth that there are ‘neighbouring villages’ means that the land is at present utilized by these villages. A undertaking by the Rainforest Basis UK a couple of years in the past on the north-eastern fringe of the Bateke Plateau discovered, as nearly all over the place else within the Congo Basin, that customary neighborhood lands there are basically contiguous. It appears probably that your entire space for the undertaking is claimed beneath customary tenure, and used for accumulating, searching and probably rotational subsistence farming. As well as, maps present that many areas throughout the Bateke Plateau are inhabited by Indigenous ‘Pygmy’ folks.
Aside from Complete’s obscure point out of “neighbouring communities”, nothing has been stated about the place any such communities are, how many individuals stay there, whether or not they rely upon the land or, most significantly, whether or not they have even been instructed something in regards to the undertaking. Even when native occupants use and declare customary rights to the land, there isn’t a proper in Congolese legislation to truly uphold such tenure. All land is technically ‘owned’ by the state. If Complete or one other undertaking accomplice has been granted a ‘concession’ by the Congolese state, any inhabitants may merely be evicted. There was no report that Complete plans to seek the advice of or have interaction with native folks, or respect their land rights.
The Silence of the Conservationists
Curiously, the Wildlife Conservation Society – the main conservation business presence within the Republic of Congo – has stated nothing publically about both Complete’s oil concession that threatens its Lac Tele Group Reserve, or the corporate’s offset scheme within the savannah. WCS says in regards to the Bateke Plateau that it’s a “distinctive panorama for central Africa. Dominated by an enormous historic sand dune system, the land is roofed by giant grass and wooded savanna patches separated by advantageous traces of dense gallery forest, and several other turquoise blue river valleys…residence to an attention-grabbing biodiversity discovered nowhere else within the Congo Basin”.
Maybe WCS has realized from previous expertise that it’s greatest to not problem something the despotic Congolese authorities does. As a substitute of standing up for the now threatened wildlife in each Complete’s oil concession and the offset website, a WCS web site explains that “we’re at present serving to the Authorities of Congo to map the [Bateke Plateau’s] biodiversity, with the eventual aim of making a nationwide park”. The proposed new Bambama-Lekana park, which WCS want to cowl 5,300 sq. kilometres of savannah west of Lefini, may maybe turn into a WCS ‘offset’ for Complete’s ‘offset’. In fact this is able to imply that Bateke’s human inhabitants can sit up for being evicted from much more of their land, as WCS has completed in different nationwide parks it has helped to determine within the Congo.
Non-natural non-solutions
The Complete undertaking in Congo’s Bateke Plateau highlights lots of the severe issues which might be prone to happen within the identify of so-called ‘Nature-Primarily based Options’ – the notion that supposedly ‘pure techniques’ can absorb atmosphere-changing carbon dioxide emitted elsewhere. It’s prone to be an environmental and probably a social catastrophe, and have little or no optimistic affect on local weather change. It can cowl up Complete’s continued huge emissions of greenhouse gases, and its probably extremely damaging oil concession close by within the Congo.
However the entire idea of Nature-Primarily based Options was initially concocted by the conservation business – together with the Wildlife Conservation Society – as a way of having the ability to promote carbon credit from protected areas, and thus producing funds to create much more protected areas. The concept a lot appeals to main polluters like oil firms, in addition to wealthy world governments desirous to keep away from the onerous political selections wanted to quickly scale back fossil gasoline consumption. Within the state of affairs created in 2017 by The Nature Conservancy of nature-based options accounting for 37% of local weather mitigation by 2030 – a declare a lot repeated by the conservation business and a few decision-makers – round twenty thousand plantation initiatives much like Complete’s must be established nearly instantly, masking round 800 million hectares of land.
Complete’s undertaking within the Congo is perhaps horrible, but it surely’ll definitely not be the final of the monstrous offspring spawned by the conservation and fossil gasoline industries’ marriage of frequent self-interest.
Simon Counsell is the previous director of Rainforest Basis UK, is at present adviser to Survival Worldwide, and researches and writes on nature-based options and colonial conservation.
Initially printed in REDD-Monitor, sixteenth April 2021
