Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB) and the Tropical Forest Trust announced Tuesday that the timber company has more than doubled the amount of certified rainforest it operates in the Congo Basin, creating the largest ever tract of contiguous certified tropical forest in the world, a total of 750,000 hectares.

To meet the standards for obtaining the approval from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), CIB drew on the expertise of staff at the Tropical Forest Trust (TFT), a Geneva-based nonprofit international charity that seeks to work with industry to transform trade in timber into a force for forest conservation. 

CIB, a subsidiary of the Danish DLH group, was awarded its most recent FSC certificate for lands the company operates in the Pokola rainforest in Congo-Brazzaville.  

This region represents the second of CIB’s four forest areas to be certified by the FSC, which first recognized the timber company in 2006, when it certified 297,000 hectares of CIB land in the Kabo rainforest.  

Together the certified area now covers almost 750,000 hectares of natural tropical forest managed by CIB in the northern part of Congo-Brazzaville, a region that is home to thousands of indigenous peoples, as well as the forest elephant and communities of gorillas and chimpanzees.

TFT was instrumental in helping CIB meet the needs of the Pygmy communities in the Congo Basin , noted Robert Hunink, Executive Vice President of the DLH Group, and President of the Supervisory Board of CIB.

“The TFT, along with other partners, provided us with technical guidance and access to new technologies, including a handheld mapping device that has made it possible for the Pygmy communities to communicate to us the specific forest resources that they hold sacred,” Hunink said.

“I think the CIB approach is a living breathing example that timber production does not have to be synonymous with the destruction of tropical forests,” said Scott Poynton, TFT’s Executive Director. 

“What we hope to demonstrate with our work in the Congo and elsewhere is that there are rewards for companies that do things the right way.  Now it is up to consumer markets to respond to this increase in availability of FSC products and chose sustainably produced wood product over those from dubious origins.”

Using icon-based, Global Positioning System (GPS) units designed for non-literate people, the semi-nomadic Pygmies living within the forest concession walk through their forest and locate resources or areas of significance.  

For instance, at a large Sapelli tree prized for its edible caterpillars, or an important collecting area for medicinal plants, they simply select the appropriate icon and the GPS records the location.  

This data forms the basis for resource maps, which bridge the communication gap between the people in the forest and the forest company and enable a fair negotiation.  

In order to ensure this trend continues, TFT is launching the Centre of Social Excellence (CSE) for the Forests of the Congo Basin – a new project within TFT’s Climate Tree initiative, designed to address issues related to deforestation and its implication for the communities of local and indigenous people who live in the world’s second largest area of contiguous tropical forest.  

The €1.6 million project has been granted key support from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.  

The CSE will offer recent graduates of central African universities, among them anthropologists, economists and sociologists, an opportunity to become experts in forest management. 

The Congo Basin is a 700,000 square mile tropical forest that sprawls across six countries and is the world’s biggest tropical forest outside of the Amazon. 

The region that contains the world’s 2nd largest (after the Amazon) contiguous expanse of tropical rainforest loses about four million hectares each year due to the effects of poverty, population increase, illegal logging, mining, poor forest management and conversion of forest land to agriculture.

Congo Basin forests support over 400 mammal species, 1,300 bird species, 336 amphibian species, 400 reptile species and 20,000 inventoried plant species of which approximately 8,000 are endemic (i.e. found nowhere else). 

The forests are the only home of many great ape species such as the Eastern and Western gorillas, the Bonobo and the Central and Eastern Chimpanzee. 

These species are being targeted by the burgeoning bush meat trade while accelerating deforestation poses a threat to the functioning of the forest ecosystem as a whole. 

The forests are also home to thousands of indigenous semi-nomadic forest dwelling people e.g. the Mbendjele Pygmy communities of northern Congo.

TFT is working in the Congo Basin (specifically in Cameroon , Republic of Congo and Gabon ) on projects covering over 2 million hectares. 

Through encouraging sustainable forest management, TFT promotes an economically viable alternative to deforestation.

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