Congolese farmers barred from own land for tree planting project by French oil giant Total Energies
Farmers living in the Republic of the Congo say that they have been barred from accessing their land so that the French oil giant Total Energies and the Congolese government can use it for a high-profile carbon offsetting project to plant 40 million trees in the next decade.
According to an investigation shared exclusively with Sky News by Greenpeace UK Unearthed and the SourceMaterial investigative group, the project on the Lefini land reserve in the Bateke Plateau appears to have come at a significant cost to an estimated 400 farmers and their families.
In interviews with a SourceMaterial journalist, several farmers said that since planting began in November last year, they have been blocked from their lands without consultation or payment.
“We used to go and collect Koko leaves [a Congolese vegetable], mushrooms,” Natacha Enta said.
“Now that they have forbidden us to enter, how will we cope?
“In the fields, the white man has bought the lands, and we can no longer work our fields. And the people who have sold our land now forbid us to go there.”
Clarisse Louba Parfaite said: “Now, if you are seen with your tractors, you are chased away.
“The crops that we had planted inside, in the middle of the fields, not harvested to date, they refuse to allow our tractors to come and do the work.
“It’s to kill us, to send us back to being slaves again like in the past.”
It’s left some worried about feeding their children.
Clarisse Louba Parfaite says she has been chased away from her land. Pic: SourceMaterial
‘They have taken everything’
Pulcherie Amboula said: “We were not able to go far with our studies, so we gave ourselves to agriculture.
“I was working the fields to feed my children and grandchildren as well. And one day, to my surprise, we are informed that we will no longer be doing our fields. If we see a tractor over there, we will send the tractor back.”
“I feel like these people came to kill us on our own land.”
Maixent Jourdain Adzabi said: “Today, populations are crying, and bitterly. And us, our children? We raise them based on our fields. We work, we find money to get them into school.
“Today, we don’t have space to work, they have taken everything.”
A few well-established families were paid, but not very much – the equivalent of around 80p a hectare.
And some of those who received money say there was not a great deal of choice anyway.
Olivier Calver Ngouba says he was ‘accused of having sold the ancestral lands’. Pic: SourceMaterial
Residents had little control
Olivier Calver Ngouba said: “In the village, I am accused of having sold the ancestral lands, when it is not the case. When [Forest Economy] Minister Rosalie Matondo came, she never consulted before. She arrived with her delegation saying that she came to pay us ‘a symbolic franc’.
“We told her that since the dawn of time, we never sold our land, even our ancestors did not do it. She replied that it is the state that has recovered these lands.”
Documents show that affected residents apparently had little control over what was happening to them.
By the time some had accepted money to give up their lands the government had already changed the law, more than a year earlier, to become the private owner of the Lefini reserve.
That land was then quickly subleased via a French forestry consultancy called Foret Resources Management (FRM) to Total Energies, with reassurances from the government that anyone else trying to use it would be evicted.
Total’s planting scheme. Pic: SourceMaterial
Complaints acknowledged
Other documents seen by SourceMaterial show that after Total’s planting scheme began in November 2021, the forest economy ministry acknowledged a range of problems with the project, including complaints from unpaid families, confusion over land rights and limitations and a lack of leadership.
The Congolese government declined to comment.
Total Energies and FRM defended what they described as an “ambitious” and “pioneering” partnership.
But in a statement they acknowledged issues with the scheme, telling Sky News that in the past few months they had “launched an assessment to identify the project’s potential impacts and to mitigate negative impacts that could not be reduced”.
They said: “This will establish a complete picture of those who are affected by the project in the overall project area… and will identify a remediation action plan, including livelihood restoration measures that comply with international standards. Results will be complete and made public in 2023.”
William McDonnell says local communities must be safeguarded
Example of much bigger problem
For those trying to reform the rapidly growing and poorly regulated voluntary carbon market, this is one example of a much bigger problem.
William McDonnell is the chief operating officer of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, which is trying to establish and govern a set of globally accepted standards for carbon credits.
He told Sky News: “Social impacts have increasingly over the years been seen as really central to high integrity carbon credits.
“You don’t want, in doing one good thing, to be doing another bad thing.
“Partly it’s about justice and human rights and making sure that the interests of the local communities are safeguarded.
“But actually part of it is also a virtuous cycle.
“If the local community is involved, that makes it much more likely that those climate benefits will be there in the long term.”
At least 11 people have been killed and 63 injured in an Israeli strike on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.
Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.
State-run National News Agency (NNA) said the attack “completely destroyed” an eight-storey residential building in the Basta neighbourhood early on Saturday.
Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station also showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.
The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut, where four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike
The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack – the fourth targeting the centre this week.
At least four bombs were dropped in the attack, security sources told Reuters news agency.
The blasts happened at about 4am (2am UK time).
A seperate drone strike in the southern port cuty of Tyre this morning killed one person and injured another, according to the NNA.
The blasts came after a day of bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and Tyre. The Israeli military had issued evacuation notices prior to those strikes.
Pic: AP
Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.
Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.
Read more:
No 10 indicates Netanyahu would be arrested
‘Dozens’ of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike
US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.
Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israel has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000.
It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.
World
Vladimir Putin vows to increase production of Russia’s ‘unstoppable’ missile – as NATO and Ukraine to hold talks
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of a new, hypersonic ballistic missile.
In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.
Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: “No one in the world has such weapons.
“Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Putin’s warning to the West
Russia war latest: Long-awaited US air defences arrive in Ukraine
He added: “We have this system now. And this is important.”
Detailing the missile’s alleged capabilities, Mr Putin claimed it is so powerful that using several fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with nuclear weapons.
General Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with either nuclear or conventional warheads – while Mr Putin alleged Western air defence systems will not be able to stop the missiles.
Mr Putin said of the Oreshnik: “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasise once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production.”
Read more from Sky News:
What are storm shadow missiles?
How bionic limps are helping Ukrainian troops
Testing the Oreshnik will happen “in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, the president added, stating there is “a stockpile of such systems ready for use”.
NATO and Ukraine are expected to hold emergency talks on Tuesday.
Meanwhile Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the strike on Dnipro, a central city with a population of around one million. No fatalities were reported.
EU leaders condemn Russia’s ‘heinous attacks’
Numerous EU leaders have addressed Russia’s escalation of the conflict with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the war is “entering a decisive phase [and] taking on very dramatic dimensions”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Russia’s new missile – what does it mean?
Speaking in Kyiv, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky called Moscow’s strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.
At a news conference, Mr Lipavsky gave his full support for delivering the additional air defence systems needed to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks”.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports8 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway