As you can see, the river is nothing but mud.

Yes, so it’s not possible for you to collect the water?

No, but how are you going to collect the water? Because with the quality of this mud, you can’t consume it. And the fish can’t live any better in this quality of water either.

We are in the Sangha, a department in the north of the Republic of Congo. This area, nestled on the border with Cameroon and the Central African Republic, contains 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) of forest. It is part of the Congo Basin and it’s home to many protected species. Its net annual absorption of CO2 is six times greater than that of the Amazon Rainforest. This ecosystem therefore plays a decisive role in the global fight against the effects of climate change.

now in his 50s, no longer recognizes the landscape in which he was born.

The forest is the forest. The river used to run through the forest. You can see that the landscape has been devastated, there are no longer any trees around.
According to Aristide, this is due to mining operators who arrived in 2017 and launched semi-industrial gold mining operations here.

Traditional tools such as pickaxes and sieves have been replaced by motorized equipment.

Trees are felled, the ground turned over … forests and waterways ravaged.

Once the gold has been extracted, all that remains are these holes in the forest.

These methods deprive the villagers of their means of subsistence.

In response to the villagers’ grumbling, the mining operator has built drinking water wells in the village. But nothing seems to have been done to clean up the watercourses, which have since been deserted by the fish and animals that used to come here to drink.

– – –

We head a few kilometres farther on
to an area where mining is still going on, by the same company.

In front of our cameras, these diggers are working on what was once a lush primary forest. This, is the stripping stage.

The workers then use nearby water to “wash the earth” in order to extract the gold. This stage makes the water unsafe to drink.

– – –

We decided to show these images of deforestation to Justin Chekoua, a Cameroonian scientist and environmental activist.

So you did receive the video. … Can you explain to me everything we see in it and the impact it has on biodiversity?

In this video, you can already see that we’re in an essentially forested area. You can see that a lot of land has been cleared. Access roads have been created to gain access to the exploitation zone and the plant cover has been totally, totally destroyed. There are trees there that are over a hundred years old. So it’s going to take a very long time for this forest to be reconstituted so that it can sequester the carbon it used to. There are rare and endangered species in these areas. So there are threats to their ecological habitat.
Yet in the Republic of Congo, all forms of mining activity are regulated.

The Congolese mining code stipulates that when a company applies for a mining permit, it must first carry out an environmental impact study.

In addition, a land rehabilitation or development plan must be proposed.

– – –

So why is this law not being respected in the Sangha, and why are local people living near forest sites so degraded by mining activity?

– – –

In Brazzaville, someone has noted the same breaches of the mining code.
This professor is a consultant who evaluates mining projects for international NGOs.

Normally, these sites need to be monitored. There has to be monitoring, and unfortunately, the monitoring isn’t done regularly, so the operators take advantage of it.
So for Noël Watha, there’s only one solution: target the wallet of the polluters.

Anyone who pollutes has to pay, but the tax has to be prohibitive so that eventually they are afraid to do the damage. But if someone is doing something like mining and knows that he’s going to work badly there, but he’s going to get 100 million [CFA, or $158,000] if he has to pay a 10 million [$15,800] fine, he doesn’t care. He’s going to screw up and then he pays a 10 million fine and that’s it. So we need to think carefully about this tax to protect the environment.
And yet, in the eyes of the world, the Republic of Congo has a good reputation when it comes to environmental issues. It is a signatory to major agreements and hosts an increasing number of international events.

– – –

With two-thirds of its territory covered by forest, the country has one of the lowest deforestation rates in the world and numerous natural parks. The Sangha region alone has three, covering more than 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles).

But uncontrolled gold mining could well damage all this biodiversity.

This would be the case in Bamegoard, and also (pause) a little farther afield in Messock.

– – –

This is where Copince was looking for water and food for his family of five children,
before the arrival of a Chinese mining company, like a third of those listed in the Sangha.

The forest was rich; there were animals and fish. We had enough to eat. The Chinese came and polluted it. Now to find food, you have to travel miles. As the Chinese have polluted everything, we have to travel 20-25 km (12-16 mi).
As well as hunting, Copince and Ivan, like most of the inhabitants of their village, grew cacao and manioc. Their crops are said to have been destroyed by mining companies.
Ivan: As we can see here, there used to be a cocoa field. They cut down the trees, and now there are no more fields. Everything is lost.
In exchange, they would have received derisory compensation.
Ivan: It was twenty 35 USD and alcohol. It was all wasted. Wherever we put the manioc, it was all wasted. The $35 they gave us wasn’t enough.
In the Republic of Congo, no project of this type can be carried out without the Indigenous populations being consulted before any implementation, according to a law dating from 2011. But the consultations do not seem to have been successful in Copince’s village.

Not to mention the fact that cacao farming is supported by the Congolese government. The country benefits from financial support from the World Bank through the Redd+ program, which aims to pay developing countries according to their actions to reduce deforestation.

In the Sangha region, for example, since 2020, training has been provided to farmers like Rémi, so they can grow cacao on land that has already been degraded to ensure sustainable production.

Before, you had good, virgin forest. In our parents’ day, they used to burn. Today’s new teachings forbid us to burn sometimes. All I did was clear the land. I felled the trees and waited. I waited for the trees to decompose and rot. I gathered them up and then I laid the plans. That’s the difference between what our parents did and what we’re doing now.
On the face of it, a favorable record in the fight against deforestation.

But over the last eight months, we’ve been investigating the matter and sifting through hundreds of official documents. We discovered that since the Sangha Likouala REDD+ program was set up in 2020, Congolese Minister of Mines Pierre Oba has issued nearly 80 exploration and semi-industrial gold mining permits in the Sangha. (PAUSE TO SEE THEM APPEAR)

In total, nearly 14% of this territory has been allocated to gold mining. The damage to the environment could be similar to what we have seen.

A reality that contrasts sharply with the government’s promises to preserve the environment.

What’s more, these mining licenses have been awarded to companies run by controversial figures such as:

Li Hui, a Chinese businesswoman already implicated in the award of oil licenses in a natural park, or
Yvonne Mubiligi, a close associate of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

We tried to contact various Congolese ministers, but all our requests went unanswered.

Back in Sangha, we met up with Erick Nkodia. This campaigner for an environmental NGO is not surprised by our findings.

These activities and violations take place behind closed doors because there is no internet. It’s when we sometimes come during our activities that these communities denounce, and that’s when we become aware of them. It’s a real problem, as we can see, that there are overlapping uses. There is mining in the area, logging, and there is also a project to create protected areas in the same area.
And when we ask the Sangha & Likouala project director about this same paradox, he makes no attempt to deny it.
Let’s not kid ourselves. We are still a long way from development, so we also have ambitions to develop. And development also means seeing how natural resources can contribute to the country’s development. Mining companies will be able to receive technical support to help them carry out activities known as reduced-impact mining. But if they don’t apply, we’ll make do with those who are there to work with them.
The Republic of Congo is therefore trying to preserve nature while at the same time exploiting its resources.

According to the Congolese authorities, the World Bank’s program to combat deforestation in the Sangha and Likouala regions will have stored more than 1.5 million metric tons of carbon by 2020.

In the words of the regional director of the Redd+ project, the results are “satisfactory.”

In the meantime, deforestation threatens the Sangha a little more every day.