The Republic of Congo has one of the lowest deforestation rates in the world, but “uncontrolled gold mining” in recent years could harm the country’s biodiversity, especially in the Sangha region, Mongabay’s Elodie Toto reported in a video published in February.
Sangha, located in the country’s north, on the border with Cameroon and the Central African Republic, is home to 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) of forest. The forests are part of the Congo Basin that hosts many threatened species and is estimated to store more net carbon dioxide than the Amazon Rainforest, making it important in the fight against climate change, Toto reports.
In 2020, the Republic of Congo government set up the Sangha-Likouala REDD+ program, meant to reduce deforestation and forest degradation and carbon emissions. The government reported that the program had sequestered more than 1.5 million metric tons of carbon by 2020. If the claims are verified, the World Bank will buy the resulting carbon credits for $8.3 million, Toto writes in an article about the investigation.
However, since the start of the REDD+ program, Mining Minister Pierre Oba has issued 79 exploration and semi-industrial gold mining permits in Sangha, Mongabay learned over the course of an eight-month investigation. About 14% of the territory has already been allocated to gold mining.
Aristide Elong, a Sangha local, told Toto that he can no longer recognize the area where he was born due to mining operations that started in 2017. Not only were trees felled, waterways were also destroyed, and the fish and other animals have disappeared.
“The river used to run through the forest. You can see that the landscape has been devastated, there are no longer any trees around,” he said.
Mongabay was able to capture footage of mining operations at an area in Sangha that was once a primary forest. The workers could be seen using water from nearby sources to wash the soil in search for gold.
Cameroonian scientist and environmental activist Justin Chekoua, said the footage showed trees that “are over 100 years old. It will take a long time for the forest to regenerate and regain its ability to sequester the carbon it once did.”
He added the plant cover has been totally destroyed, especially since access roads had to be created to reach the mining area. “There are rare and endangered species in these areas. So there are threats to their ecological habitat,” he said.
Although national laws require mining companies to carry out environmental impact studies and submit a land rehabilitation or development plan, geoscientist and environmental consultant Noël Ndoudy told Toto, “There should be monitoring … unfortunately, inspections are not carried out regularly, so operators take advantage of it.”
Watch the documentary here. Read the investigation by Elodie Toto here.
Banner image of an excavator at a gold mining site in Sangha by Elodie Toto/Mongabay.
Credits
