OpEdNews - Page 5 of Article: Kong Six: Mapping the Road to Tayna

And they gave out nineteen pigs in the DFGF-I “Pigs for Profit” program.

But the mapping continued and the socioeconomic data was stored, analyzed, assimilated, and summarized in a 2004 document summary written specifically for CARPE “partners” and “work plans” in the Tayna-Kahuzi landscape projects. What is telling is that the document has been removed from the CARPE website since the beginnings of our investigation became public. However, we have hard copies of the 2004 summaries found through this Google search, which has also vanished from the web . We do know that data was collected for gorilla and chimp distribution, and GPS coordinates for villages were charted and stored. GPS data points described “anthropogenic disturbances” and “socioeconomic baseline data” on population centers, demography, resource use, and “illegal extraction” using “IRM participatory mapping techniques.” (25) The “participatory mapping” of IRM, as we already pointed out, is a scandal of intellectual property theft.

Again, this now occult report came out in 2004 at the same time that the Mwami of our series charged through correspondence after correspondence that the Mbingi orphans were not being fed, and that there was no money to pay staff at the university, and that promises made to villagers were not kept.

In July 2004, Mwami wrote a letter directly to Clare Richardson of DFGF-I.

“RGT (Tayna) is currently in a structural crisis as a result of the management methods practiced by DFGF-I here in Congo. The member associations have lost respect for the structures of UGADEC (26) as a result of DFGF-I’s activities, which include diverting funds, suffocating innovations and encouraging elitism… there is a tribal bias to the development projects undertaken by DFGF-I, to the detriment of those areas rich in primate species. The true chiefs and landowners have been excluded from the management of the project, and not one has been placed on the office staff.”

And the mapping went on and on, and GIS data was flowing into the databanks under the heading of “socio-economic” data. The “pictures, aerial photographs, demarcation reports, and GPS points of positions” were duly reported in 2004, but the Mwami was ignored, and finally he was driven from his village by the henchmen of Pierre Kakule.

What Comes Around Comes Back Around

The Annex of the Weidemann Report is more fodder for understanding the predatory competitions at play as the BINGOs and DINGOs fought for their share of the conservation kill in the CARPE landscapes.

The African Wildlife Fund (AWF) took “exception” with the Weidemann Report suggestion that “None of the implementing partners are reporting on indicators 1.3 and 1.4,” which are intermediate benchmark indicators of progress on project goals.

“It is true that only in year three have we been in a position to adequately address these intermediate results, but we are now achieving results for these (intermediate reports) and will be reporting on these in the FY06 annual report.” (27) AWF turned its homework in very late.
Conservation International attacked AWF, miffed that it was not singled out for praise in the disposition and distribution of sub-grants. “(With regard to) the assessment that only AWF has had success with sub grants to NGOS, we would like to call to your attention the fact that CI has provided significant sub grants to local NGOs such as TCCB Tayna, the community organizations under UGADEC and Vie Sauvage a conservation DINGO using international implementing NGO partners such as DFGF-I as technical and administrative hubs on the ground.”

CI was very unhappy with the assertion that CI was “virtually not present in the region.” Their sputtering winded response is almost indecipherable, but seems to confirm that “what (criticism) comes around comes back around.”

“On several occasions we explained that CI’s approach to limit its staffing growth is the result of a global institutional strategy that primes the work with partners and the building of local capacities through significant funding transfers rather than the unsustainable expansion of its own operative structures. This approach is consistent with addressing the concerns stated elsewhere in the report about limited capacity building for local institutions, as well as their financial and institutional sustainability.” (28)

CI soon enough stated huffily that “the landscape approach has limited local buy-in and fits awkwardly with existing local management structures.”

And there it is again: “the landscape approach has limited local buy-in.”

This is a massive understatement for so-called “conservation” programs involved in a war-torn landscape rife with extreme poverty, unspeakable crimes against women, resource plunder, and death.

Perhaps this explains why frustrated staff at the ‘university” handed us a plastic bag which contained a stinking, greasy, decaying gorilla hand and a patch of fur from a poached Okapi.

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