Guest opinion: Want an earth-friendly Congo? Then pay up. Otherwise, we must drill
Junior Boweya wrote the commentary below with my help, but the opinions are strictly his. I myself am anti-drilling. But he makes many excellent points often ignored by US politicians and media. See my thoughts at the end. - David Rothman
An environmentalist? Yes, I am one. For years I’ve dreamed of starting an e-bike rental service here in Kinshasa – not just to make money but because the air here stinks of fumes from thousands of gas-powered autos and buses. I also would like to see the Congo preserved as the second “green lung of the earth,” right up there in importance after the Amazon. Those are just two issues I care about. Among the others is the destructive extraction of some of the very minerals used in “green” electric bikes and automobiles.
Why, then, under the present circumstances, would an environmentalist like me agree with Congolese President Félix Antoine Tshisekedi’s decision to authorize more oil leases?
The answer is simple - the war in Ukraine has jacked up oil prices, and we need the money.
We aren’t just green lungs of the earth. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is also among the poorest countries on the planet, with a life expectancy of just 60 years and never-ending bloodshed over scarce resources for ordinary Congolese. Gross national income per capita was just $550 as of 2020, compared to $64,530 for the United States and $116,440 for the Alpine nation of Liechtenstein in 2021. A quarter of our 90 million people suffer from food insecurity, and several million children are badly malnourished. Half of us lack power lines. Too often, telephone service is a laugh or nonexistent, especially for the poor. People die from a scarcity of good doctors and hospitals. For every 10,000 Congolese, we have just .28 doctors and 1.19 nurses and midwives. Imagine - less than a third of a doctor, whatever that means! Although some 80 percent of Congolese can read, too many of us lack the advanced skills needed to create and sustain a modern industrial economy.
No longer do Belgian savages cut off the hands of enslaved Congolese who don’t extract enough rubber, but the harm from colonialization lingers. Now-rich countries developed an industrial base. Our past role was simply to provide natural resources, and we are still catching up. And today we have the extra burden of shoring up our infrastructure to deal with the climate change we didn’t cause. Why must we sacrifice our economic development for others, especially when the Cop27 climate summit didn’t result in promises from the biggest polluters to cut emissions sufficiently?
Of course, I’d prefer that the oil drilling not be needed. Central Congo peatlands “store 29 billion tonnes of carbon in the peat, equivalent to three years’ global emissions from fossil fuels,” says CongoPeat’s international team of scientists. The DRC is home to two-thirds of the peatland. Exploited, similar peatlands “have become a major source of carbon.” More details are here. Even drilling in just selected parts of the Central Congo’s peatlands would cause too much harm, according to scientists, despite Congolese claims to the contrary.
But what if rich countries pay up sufficiently for Kinshasa to keep the drillers at bay? This would be a far rosier scenario environmentally.
The cash could come from a promised international fund intended to help developing countries cope with losses and damage from climate change. By all means, countries like ours need a larger fund than now expected after the Cop27 summit, and let’s also expand the fund’s mission or come up with a separate fund, too.
Even after the conference, wealthy nations are a long way from the $100 billion in climate aid pledged by 2020. A report in the November 19 New York Times still applies. Rich countries “are still falling short by tens of billions of dollars annually, and very little aid so far has gone toward measures to help poorer countries cope with the hazards of a hotter planet, such as sea walls or early warning systems for floods and droughts.” The Times also says, in an article the next day: “Last year, the Biden administration sought $2.5 billion in climate finance but secured just $1 billion, and that was when Democrats controlled both chambers. With Republicans set to take over the House in January, the prospects of Congress approving an entirely new pot of money for loss and damage appear dim.” So here I’m not writing about ample money that I expect the DRC and other developing nations to have in hand. Rather, I mean what should happen here and in similar countries. Hardly a certainty!
Our share of the hoped-for money ideally could be spent in an open, honest way, beyond environmental matters alone, to help transform the DRC into a safer, more livable country. International monitors could make certain that the promised funds - more details here - would be used as expected. A sufficient percentage of the money could go to adapt our shoreline cities for climate change. Likewise spend on solar power and other sustainable sources of energy. In the short term, maybe some additional oil leasing would still happen - just as the U.S. and other rich nations are exploiting their domestic sources. Congolese oil could help Europe, the United States and other countries deal with scarcities created by the war in Ukraine, and long term, it could pay for more earth-friendly sources of energy.
Just a tiny fraction of our oil resources are now exploited, but potentially their value could reach $32 billion a year going by May 2022 prices, according to Didier Budimbu, the DRC’s hydrocarbon minister. That’s most of our current gross domestic product of some $54 billion. Imagine all the hospitals and doctors the resultant tax revenue could pay for, whether or not his estimate is precisely on target. Many thousands of saved Congolese lives! And more food for our malnourished, growth-stunted children, if farmers can more easily ship.
If the world doesn’t want any more drilling in the Congo, we need enough environmental funds to compensate. The issue isn’t merely our poverty or weak nations vs. strong ones. The word “reparations” - not just for the DRC but other developing countries - also should come to mind.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary includes the following definition, among others, for “reparations”: “The act of making amends, offering expiation, or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury.” Wikipedia has a few more words. Did Congolese fishermen, farmers, or basket weavers invent the steam engine or the motors for automobiles and spew uncountable millions of tons of filth into the atmosphere? Granted, the United States and others have crafted the environmental-coping agreement so they are not legally liable for past damage. But they are still morally blamable. If even the “clean” people don’t care enough about the planet, who should sacrifice for humanity? Are our lives and happiness less valuable than those in the richer countries? Within the United States, didn’t President Biden back off from his promised ban on drilling on public lands, given all the economic and political pressures? So, then, in that respect, why should we Congolese be different - especially since our needs are far more urgent than those of SUV-driving Americans? Even amid the Covid epidemic, the average American will live 79 years or almost two decades longer than we do.
In countless ways, the Congolese people have gotten the short end of the stick, and the havoc from global warming won’t help. Consider some striking statistics from a 2020 report from the Carbon Project: “Africa accounts for the smallest share of global greenhouse gas emissions, at just 3.8%, in contrast to 23% in China, 19% in the US, and 13% in the European Union. Yet the continent is particularly vulnerable to climate change, with extreme heat, precipitation changes, aridity, sea level rise affecting water resources, agricultural production, ocean and savannah ecosystems, with coastal populations and infrastructure highly vulnerable.” If we went all the way back to the steam age, then the disparities would be even more noticeable; the Congolese produced virtually no pollution in the 1800s beyond, say, the smoke from fires for cooking.
Notice the reference to Africa’s special vulnerability to climate change resulting from rich, industrialized nations’ greenhouse gases? That is particularly true along the banks of the Congo River and other waterways. Landslides from flooding killed 39 people in Kinshasa.
You pollute and exploit, we suffer. All too often we’ve been a “solutions county” to the detriment of the actual Congolese and the benefit of others:
Our rubber enriched Leopold II – costing not just hands but as many as ten million Congolese lives.
Congolese miners provided the USA with uranium used in atomic bombs, at the risk of workers’ health.
Our coltan and cassiterite ended up in Sony PlayStations and other computer products.
Congolese cobalt (60% of world reserves) has helped make electric vehicles possible. Tesla scored a cobalt sourcing deal with the Swiss firm Glencore, a notorious polluter, despite human rights associated with the related mining.
Thousands of us have died in mine collapses while searching for gold and diamonds for First World jewelry.
The United States, European Union countries, and their close friends have hardly been the only ones profiting at our expense. China today is a major exploiter of cobalt in the DRC while badly mistreating Congolese workers. Our government must regularly raid the Chinese exploration sites and formally cite those companies for poor work conditions.
Now I’ll return to the question on everyone's lips, the recent announcement of the marketing of oil and gas blocks by the government of the DRC. I’ll be the first to say I have a potential stake in this matter, in economic terms. It’s just hard to say what will hurt or help me ultimately.
If we enjoy the extra billions from the lease deal and our leaders spend the resultant public revenue properly, then more money just might be available for the environmentally friendly transportation projects that I and others dream of.
If instead the money can come in a sufficient amount from a global fund, then wonderful. My preference in the end. But what’s the chance of that happening?
The operative word in both cases is “If.” I’m not a global-level policymaker, and I don’t run the Kinshasa government. I can’t predict what it will do or not do with its share of revenue from the leases.
But I can say more money for earth-friendly projects in the DRC would help. Remember I told you about my dream of an e-bike rental service in Kinshasa? Well, right after studying the question, and following previous experience with a taxi-hailing app back in 2018, my colleagues and I concluded that Kinshasa commuters are not ready. And we’d need to pay not just for the bikes but also for 24 or more charging stations throughout the city. Now add in the expenses for security and power, and the math falls apart.
Still, we Congolese are a resourceful bunch. My colleagues and I are now thinking about using an Indian supplier to make solar-electric boats, perhaps a solution for some commuters along the Congo River. Perhaps even build the boats ourselves someday or other kinds of solar craft? Or maybe, in the end, we can work with various organizations and companies toward electric buses to replace Kinshasa’s smelly, gas-guzzling variety. Or perhaps that electric bike company will be doable after all when the infrastructure is there. So much is possible with the right business and technical guidance – and with enough transparency and honesty from Kinshasa, so bad people can’t siphon off the money. Tech-enabled audits and international monitors could go a long way.
Of course, we still must obtain the funds, to begin with. Green transportation projects require capital, just as do medicine, agriculture, and countless other basics.
Money from oil-related taxes or from a sufficiently large international environmental fund - which will it be?
The opinions above are Junior Boweya’s, as noted, although he and I worked together on this. I myself worry about global warming and the damage from stepped-up drilling in the Congo and elsewhere. Still, the DRC and other developing countries make a powerful case, based on their needs and on past and current global warming numbers. Perhaps one compromise in the Congo would be a mix of very limited drilling and massive global financing of green projects aimed at improving Congolese lives and reducing emissions in the long run. But really, I’d rather not see any more drilling jeopardize the environment. My dream solution would be no more oil leases in the Congo and, in return, much tougher measures in richer countries against global warming.
I invite well-informed people to weigh in with their own opinions, as long they are respectful toward Junior and avoid personal attacks. Use the comment area or email me at davidrothman@pobox.com. - David H. Rothman
