Beneath the slopes of the Nyiragongo volcano in eastern Congo, traders in the town of Kibati traded chest-high sacks of charcoal, a byproduct of deforestation that an ongoing security crisis has pushed to unprecedented levels, the United Nations warns.
On Friday (12), motorcycles loaded with freshly sawn planks rolled along the main road in Kibati, a community that has remained under Congolese control even as a two-year insurgency by the M23 militia has advanced in conflict-torn North Kivu province, displacing more than 1.7 million people.
“In the countryside, we are starving. We decided to make charcoal so we can feed our children,” said displaced vendor Jacques Muzayi at Kibati market.
The insecurity has added pressure to the region’s once densely forested hillsides and its protected Virunga National Park, home to many of the world’s last mountain gorillas.
“The park is under attack from all sides,” said Bantu Lukambo, head of a local environmental organization, standing outside Kibati, inside the park, in what appeared to be a thicket dotted with chopped-down tree stumps.
Only a few trees around a nearby ranger station remained standing.
“It is since the beginning of the war that… fighters have been ravaging Virunga,” he said, describing how this paved the way for smaller-scale destruction.
Every morning in Kibati, crowds of locals and people displaced by the fighting enter the park’s territory in search of logs to burn and make charcoal for cooking. Others go deeper to cut down trees for planks or plant crops on newly cleared land.
Forest loss in Nyiragongo and Rutshuru, two territories in the conflict zone and partly within the national park, “has reached unprecedented levels” since 2021, when authorities declared martial law in the east in response to rising violence, a UN report from early July said.
In the areas they control in North Kivu, armed militants profit from the production or trade of wooden planks, while illegal and uncontrolled logging has led to the “destruction of significant areas of virgin forest in Virunga protected areas,” the report says.
Data from Global Forest Watch, an initiative that uses satellites to monitor deforestation, showed that annual tree cover loss in Virunga increased by more than 22% to 6,804 hectares in 2021, and another 7,255 hectares were lost in 2022 as the insurgency advanced.
For years, insecurity linked to militias has worried Virunga, whose expanses of forest and savannah make it one of the most biodiverse territories on the continent, with three types of great apes, wild elephants and the endangered Okapi – nicknamed the unicorn of Africa.
But Lukambo said the M23’s occupation of parts of Virunga had greatly limited the ability of his rangers to monitor and protect those areas.
In Kibati, a motorbike driver said he earned up to 500 Congolese francs ($0.18) for transporting a load of planks, some of which were cut from trees felled inside the park.
“I want the authorities to do everything they can to end this war,” said Christoph Lewi, another displaced man delivering planks. “It is war that drives people to destroy the environment.”
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Source: CNN Brasil
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