Congo timber ship blocked
For the past couple of days, a group of Greenpeace climbers have been perched on top of a set of cranes in the port of La Rochelle on the French Atlantic coast. As well as admiring a no-doubt magnificent view, they're also preventing a ship unloading its cargo of timber which has come from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The company logging the timber, Lebanese-owned Trans-M (another snappy corporate name!), has been given titles spanning 746,000 hectares of the DRC forest but this is in breach of the logging moratorium set up in 2002. Supposedly, no new contracts are to be issued and existing ones aren't to be renewed or extended, but somehow Trans-M have managed to set up shop and ship rainforest timber back to Europe.
This blockade is only the latest action our continental offices have taken to prevent Congolese timber coming into the EU. Over the past few weeks, imports of DRC timber were stopped in by volunteers in both Antwerp in Belgium (the link isn't in English, but there is a subtitled video and a great slideshow) and Salerno in Italy - it's demand for tropical timber in Europe and around the world drive the destruction of the forest in Africa.
As for those climbers, they managed 45 hours on top of the crane before being forced down. I'm not sure if it's a record, but it's a pretty impressive stint.
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Comments
great action, folks ! I like so much those public activities with a blockade, showing authorities that something is going wrong there. The French government should forbid any import of African wood with such a poor record of lack of forest management. Congratulations to all who stood there in the fierce wind, including our recently-retired good friend Alain
Posted by: francois | July 6, 2007 10:03 PM
Nice! The world needs carbon dioxide generated from the industrialised countries removed from the Eco-system. African forest lands have to be protected by not providing a market and making certification so expensive that no African land owner can afford. The African cannot sale their timber. The farmers or forest land owners cannot sale the carbon credits LIKE their counterparts in Europe, the Americas, Australia. They do not need to trade - their government have to go bowl in hand to get aid!
You want a green earth, pay for it fairly!
Posted by: David | September 24, 2007 1:03 AM
Sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick from your comment, but it's not that the land and resources should, through certification or carbon trading, be priced out of the reach of those who need it, ie the local communities (logging companies are already denying them their traditional rights as it is).
Those communities still need the forest to survive, and they know how to use its resources without destroying it, unlike said loggers. We need to close the market for stolen timber, but alongside that we need proper management plans which involve the locals.
Posted by: Jamie | September 28, 2007 3:31 PM