Late every afternoon, a woman with a bag of sticks on her back spills from a brush on the freeway just south of the equator. Men hand over bikes one after another and carry a bag of charcoal. The boy is frightened with a log on his shoulder, as if he were throwing a baguette.
Deep in the trees, Debay Ipalensenda puts an ax and participates in this forest parade. This parade slowly destroys one of the most important landscapes in the world and prepares all meals.
The scene will be replayed not only on this road in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but also throughout the 1.3 million square miles of the entire Congo Basin, home to the world’s second largest primeval forest.
It is a ritual that there are tragedy everywhere. And carbon-absorbing forests, which are very important for delaying global warming, are broken down tree by tree and in several places, as well as people of the generation who have no means of preparing food other than cooking on direct fire. So the case branches off by branch for the whole planet.
The Congolese logging industry uproots valuable primeval forests for use in furniture and home construction, and contributes to forest destruction, especially if not properly regulated. Moreover, the entire forest belt is burned to make way for agriculture.
But it’s also surprisingly devastating for the general public to attack the forest in search of cookware. This is because logging and burning trees releases a reservoir of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it acts as a blanket, trapping the heat of the sun and warming the world. But in addition, cooking with wood fire and charcoal (wood that is burned to near pure carbon) affects the quality of the air from the particles emitted by the smoke.
The World Bank estimates that about 90% of Congo’s 89.5 million people use firewood and charcoal for cooking.Congo Lost more than 1.2 million acres of primeval forest in 2021According to the Global Forest Watch, it is mainly from the inhabitants to clear farmland and collect timber for fires and charcoal.
Mr. Iparensenda is part of a booming trade that is supplying an increasing population. As he chopped the trunk of the tree, the sound of his homemade ax echoed across the forest. He doesn’t want to work there in the trees that keep throwing axes for hours. He once had a bigger plan.
“My dream? Uh,” he sighed, stopped, and leaned against the ax as the yellow butterfly jumped over his face. “My dream was to be a doctor.”
Iparensenda, 33, was planning to graduate from high school and go on to college. Then his father got sick and died. Suddenly, it was up to him to financially support his family.
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“Now I’m a charcoal maker,” he said.
This work was one of the few that he could use in the scattered small communities of mudbrick houses on the edge of the forest here. After all, everyone needs a way to cook their meals.
Most of the deforestation in Congo is a matter of survival. Despite its vast lush landscape, fierce rivers and abundant gems, minerals and metals, the country is one of the poorest in the world. It is also one of the least electrified countries in the world.
The power grid is almost non-existent in this country of obvious inequality. This is true even hundreds of miles from Iparencenda, the capital of Kinshasa. Here, flashy hotels and nightclubs obscure reality. One of Africa’s largest cities, relatively few people use gas or electricity. Stove.
“I have electricity, which changed my life,” said one of the lucky ones, Israel Monga, when he was standing on the street on a sultry afternoon. However, Mr. Monga has a connection. He is an electrician working at the state-owned power company Societe National Directorisite.
The story is different for most others.
According to the report, less than 17 percent of the country has access to electricity. World Bank, And those who have electricity are accustomed to the problem. A small flame explodes regularly from a few wires stretched over Kinshasa, and power outages are common.Earlier this year More than 20 people were killed When the power line breaks and falls into a crowded market.
Bakeries that make cassava bread, a dough called baguette and huff, usually use charcoal or wood for cooking. The same goes for stalls selling chicken mayonnaise, a popular dish with a cheeky blend of onions and peppers. And countless people do so indoors, in the kitchen at home.
Most Kinshasa residents rely on branches and briquettes that are trucked to the city every day. This is a product that countless charcoal makers and timber collectors attack trees in rural areas outside the city.
In a busy market late morning, a saleswoman named Mama Rachel stood in a charcoal-filled nylon bag that sold for about $ 30 a bag. A nearby man unloaded a truck packed with 100 larger bags of briquettes (about 6 feet high) made from trees felled in the province just south of Kinshasa. The truck behind it contained twice as many similar bags.
“The government is pushing us into the woods,” said Diatumwa Lototala, one of the sellers, explaining that the lack of job creation has left him with no other kind of meaningful work.
He began screaming as the man approached our small group of journalists and before we introduced ourselves. You are writing a story about climate change. You will write it, but we are not going to profit. Not us. We are suffering here, “he said, he refused to give his name because he was angry with the general living conditions of Congo.
His frustration is widespread.
Congo It has great potential for clean energy.. Some researchers believe that the Congo River, which runs all over the country, can be used to power the entire continent. The national government has been trying to bring more hydropower facilities online for decades.
However, plans to build a dam that could bring twice the capacity of China’s Three Gorges have been stalled, partly because the project was involved in a dispute between international companies bidding on its work. Today’s existing hydropower systems are aging and poorly managed.
Meanwhile, politicians, scholars, activists, global financial institutions, and businessmen have all sought to come up with solutions on how to separate their families from charcoal. Some projects provide clean energy for patchwork in communities across the country. Some are designed to build kilns with reduced charcoal and to train residents to make eco-friendly charcoal from organic waste.
However, none of them have reached Mr. Iparensenda yet. He heads to the woods every day and meanders barefoot between the swamp trees for hours. Half of the trip goes through the thigh-high waters of a spotted forest where tree clusters have already been chopped.
“We have been taught that logging deforestation eliminates oxygen,” he said. “Of course I’m worried, but what can you do if you think the only way to support your family is to cut trees? There is no other choice.”
When I arrived at a fallen African rosewood tree in the process of being demolished, Iparensenda spoke to a colleague who was taking care of a nearby kiln. The tall, lush square kilns, about 20 yards long and 5 feet high, were completely stacked. It has a large log at the base and small branches and leaves at the top. Immediately the men set it on fire. It slowly smolders the tree and leaks thick smoke from its sides.
Charcoal making is so common here that briquettes are scattered on the ground, crushing under your feet and even deep in the forest, leading to a large kiln like bread crumbs. Gray ash piles from old kilns are as easy to find as termite hills.
A trunk with hacked branches is also on display. Local families usually collect their branches for cooking. Charcoal is often sold in the markets of the nearest city, Mbandaka, and cracked tree trunks with blood-red cores, which are highly regarded as slow burners, are also waiting for buyers.
One night in March, Edelana Bongi was sitting in a red plastic chair. Her dog curled around her paw as she fueled her cooking fire and gave her a small stick. Her neighbor Einga Ekwabe approached and soaked the stick in the fire. Bring her flames back to her home. Without saying anything, Equabe went home and set fire to a pile of trees under a black pot with her name engraved on it. Her studio house soon became full of heavy smoke.
Ask someone in the area how many trees you have cut. They can’t help laughing. Who can track it?
“Too much,” said a man with a bag filled with charcoal briquettes that he had scraped off with him as he walked.
“Thousands,” said another, with two dozen branches on his back and a machete packed in a bag.
“We will never run out of trees,” said charcoal maker Petros Mora, who expressed the view commonly seen in the region.
But the danger of deforestation for future growth is real. Logging of primeval forests releases carbon into the atmosphere, but logging small trees also removes the canopy that is essential to block the sun and can harm the entire ecosystem of plants and animals. ..
Patrick Iconga and his wife, Nana Mupzo, stood in the center of a still smoldering square, about the size of a block that had been set on fire. Small green shoots of newly planted corn were bursting through the burnt ground. Bees flocked to felled palm trees where sap was being collected for use in wine.
Like most people, couples want a different life. “It’s true,” said Iconga, who was asked if he was worried about the future of the forest. “By cutting trees, the forest begins to disappear.”
But he had to figure out how to make a living for his family. He planned to replace the towering trees in his plot he had burned by planting palm oil trees. And there was still work to be done. Iconga had to hack out the remaining burnt trunks and sell them to make charcoal.