If ever there were a story that embodied the often complex relationship between the environment, economics, and war, that story would be about central Africa - in particular in eastern Congo. I saw hints of this in a life-changing journey I took with the Co-Executive Directors of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund UK in the Spring of 1998. We traveled across the border of Uganda into Congo, and then up into the Virunga Mountains in search of mountain gorillas. I saw first-hand the economic and environmental decimation that resulted from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the subsequent movement of nearly a million refugees across the border from Rwanda into Congo. Philip Gourevitch, who also writes for The New Yorker, wrote an amazing book about this, with the very long but meaningful title : We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.
I have stayed in touch with the Fossey folks over the years and they tell of additional economic complexity: the discovery of the mineral coltan (used to make some of the electronic components in mobile phones, computers, hand-held games and pagers) within supposedly protected habitat areas along the border.
The Economist wrote about this in a July 2003 article
"With people still killing each other in horrific numbers in eastern Congo, why worry about the destruction of a national park and its few hundred gorillas? Because, according to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, one is closely tied to the other�
"In the past decade, thousands of people, both soldiers and civilians, have fled into the Kahuzi Biega National Park, a swathe of tropical forest near Congo's border with Rwanda. The refuge, a United Nations World Heritage Site, has suffered from forest clearance, charcoal burning, hunting and harvesting. Of the 350 elephants living there five years ago, all but two have been killed for meat and ivory. And although most locals have long refused to kill or eat gorillas, gun-carrying refugees have no such scruples. Poaching and the clearance of bamboo, a favourite food, have cut a population of 258 gorillas in the park five years ago to some 110 now.
"But war alone is not responsible. Or, more subtly, one of the causes of the war is also a cause of deforestation. Coltan (colombite-tantalite, to give its full name), is a valuable mineral spewed out by the local volcanoes. It is found scattered widely over the area, including in the park... [and] demand for coltan has (thus) mushroomed over the past decade. This demand lured 12,000 people to Kahuzi Biega, where they could earn a princely $80 a day with just a pick, a shovel and a sieve."
Last year European activists, who complained of "blood on their handsets", persuaded Nokia, Motorola and other users not to buy their coltan from Congo. Arthur C. Clarke, a science-fiction writer, and Leonardo DiCaprio, a film star, have thrown their weight behind the campaign.
Evin d'Souza (a mining consultant who reported on the state of the park on behalf of the Dian Fossey fund) said the miners should be helped to look for deposits of coltan outside the park, and to find ways of working that are less destructive to the forest. Food aid, micro-credit, training and gifts of farm tools and seeds could persuade them to give up digging inside the park.
Should high-tech companies who use this mineral in their components take note of this complex situation? And if so, what should they be doing? How can conservation groups who place a great deal of their focus on micro-loan and other economic base-building policies (such as the Dian Fossey UK group) work with technology companies on this issue, as this is not a simple choice of economics v. environment?
Read what Saleem Khan had to say about coltan in Ethics, Environment and War.
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