By RFIPosted on 19-08-2019Today on 19-08-2019 at 19:29

A gigantic conference on the preservation of wild fauna and flora is being held in Geneva. Several thousand participants are gathered. One of the most endangered plants is rosewood, a very popular wood in China where the price of this tropical wood reaches very high prices. Forests in West Africa and in particular Ghana are being looted. However, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is also concerned by this phenomenon, according to a report published by the American NGO Environmental Information Agency.

Since last April and, theoretically, until next October, exports of mukala, a variant of traditional rosewood, from the Katanga plateaux in the DRC, are allowed. They are destined for China via Zambia then the South African port of Durban.

This path was reopened after negotiations between Kinshasa and Lusaka, report the specialists of the American NGO. Under this agreement, the DRC undertakes to export a maximum of 3,400 mukula containers with strict control over the quantities concerned and to remunerate Zambia. But according to information obtained by the investigators of the Environmental Information Agency, the " untouchables ", a group of officers of the Congolese army, undertook, as they had already done in 2017, to export logs of mukula on their own.

These " untouchables " have obtained special authorizations that go well beyond the previously established legal framework, using mechanisms already used in 2017, before Zambia closed its borders. At the time, when the Congolese authorities had authorized the production of a thousand cubic meters of rosewood, the " untouchables " had been able to get out five to ten times more, with harmful consequences for the ecosystem.

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Madagascar: an inquiry illuminates the roads of the traffic of rosewood

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