Congo

In the heart of central Africa, current deforestation practices are impacting the local indigenous peoples. They are not only losing access to traditional bush meat, but also to other traditionally used resources.

In the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba river basins in the DRC where the bonobos live, humans have it very rough – we couldn’t say if they have it better or worse than the bonobos. However, we can say that the human women have it worse than the human men in the DRC. In the United States, women are free to get jobs, go to school and live by themselves – you may think it’s strange that we’re even mentioning those things because we are so used to these freedoms!

Back in April, at the World Bank's spring meeting, there was much talk about the plight of the Congo rainforest. Greenpeace had just published a big report detailing how in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) logging titles were being granted in breach of a moratorium that the bank had been instrumental in establishing. The report launch was so high profile, Greenpeace were able to force DRC's rainforest high onto the agenda of the World Bank meeting and have also managed to secure another session at the upcoming autumn meeting.

An expedition to a remote forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo has uncovered six new animal species.

Conservationists discovered one new bat species, a new rat and two new species each of shrews and frogs.