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Congo pygmies appeal to World Bank over logging
Real estate news By Jeremy Lovell
Tue Oct 16, 2007 6:11pm BST
A delegation of rainforest pygmies from Democratic Republic of Congo will fly to Washington this week to complain to the World Bank about its support for wholesale logging to help rebuild the war-ravaged economy. The visit follows a leak of a report last week by the bank's Inspection Panel that criticized it for backing a number of logging projects without adequate consideration of their sociological or environmental impact.
"We are going to Washington to tell the World Bank that they must not allow any expansion of the logging industry," pygmy spokesman Adrian Sinafasi said in a statement released by the Rainforest Foundation, which is accompanying the delegation. "We have been stewards of these forests for many generations and to lose them now would be utterly devastating."
The delegation hopes to meet new World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who has said that protecting the environment and indigenous peoples will be two of his main priorities. Since the restoration of peace in most of the former Zaire after a 1998-2003 war, the World Bank has promoted logging as a way of quickly rebuilding the country's shattered economy.
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