SPEAKERS       CONTENTS       INSERTS    
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40—849 CC
1997
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA'S NATURAL RESOURCES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 19, 1997

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations


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COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman
WILLIAM GOODLING, Pennsylvania
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
JAY KIM, California
STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio
MARSHALL ''MARK'' SANFORD, South Carolina
MATT SALMON, Arizona
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
TOM CAMPBELL, California
JON FOX, Pennsylvania
JOHN McHUGH, New York
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
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ROY BLUNT, Missouri
JERRY MORAN, Kansas
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
LEE HAMILTON, Indiana
SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut
TOM LANTOS, California
HOWARD BERMAN, California
GARY ACKERMAN, New York
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
PAT DANNER, Missouri
EARL HILLIARD, Alabama
WALTER CAPPS, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
STEVE ROTHMAN, New Jersey
BOB CLEMENT, Tennessee
BILL LUTHER, Minnesota
JIM DAVIS, Florida
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RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff
MICHAEL H. VAN DUSEN, Democratic Chief of Staff

Subcommittee on Africa
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio
MARSHALL ''MARK'' SANFORD, South Carolina
TOM CAMPBELL, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
JIM DAVIS, Florida
RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff
MICHAEL H. VAN DUSEN, Democratic Chief of Staff
C O N T E N T S

WITNESSES

  Hon. E. Clay Shaw, Jr., a Representative in Congress from Florida
  Mr. Michael Fay, Project Director, Noubale-Ndoki
  Dr. Brian Child, Ph.D., Consultant, Africa Resources Trust
  Mr. Thomas Fox, Vice President, World Resource Institute
  Mr. Achim Steiner, Senior Policy Advisor, IUCN World Conservation Fund
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APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
Mr. Michael Fay
Dr. Brian Child
Mr. Thomas H. Fox
Mr. Achim Steiner
Hon. Alcee L. Hastings, a Representative in Congress from Florida
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA'S NATURAL RESOURCES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1997
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
  The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:06 p.m., in room 2255, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. E. Royce, (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
  Mr. ROYCE. The Subcommittee on Africa will come to order.
  This hearing of the subcommittee will focus on the economic benefits that African nations have been able to realize from their natural resources. It is no secret that the continent is blessed with abundant natural resources. In fact, it has become something of a cliche. But nations with the natural resource base to become economic successes have instead experienced economic decline in Africa.
  Many factors have contributed to Africa's inability, as in the case of many States, to use its resources more effectively, including civil strife, government corruption, and poor economic policies.
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  Angola, for instance, has used billions of its oil revenues to finance its civil war. Zaire has seen billions from its diamonds disappear into Swiss bank accounts, while agriculture throughout the continent has suffered from State controls and land tenure systems that produce the tragedy of the commons.
  Africa's non-renewable resources must be used in a way that make the most of their development contribution. Oil has been a lucrative commodity for Nigeria but Nigeria's agricultural sector has been allowed to wither. In other African countries, too, oil has been more a curse than a blessing, allowing countries the luxury of sustaining poor economic policies which sacrifice other economic sectors.
  In other cases, non-renewable resources have been better utilized. In one case, Ghana's gold industry is booming, due in large part to privatization, which has allowed for much-needed foreign investment. This is the type of resource base development that Africa needs.
  Renewable resources, on the other hand, should be used in a way that treats them as renewable. Timber, wildlife, and agricultural lands can easily be depleted. According to some accounts, the rate of destruction of tropical forests is equal to one soccer field per second. And these forests are not being regenerated. Africa's resources must be used in a sustainable way. This means good management: replanting harvesting trees, not over-fishing, and practice sound agriculture.
  One of our witnesses makes a strong case that some renewable resources, tropical forests, are priceless and should not be treated as renewable and instead should be preserved.
  The key to many of these challenges is for Africans to have a vested interest in sound resource management. The lack of strong property rights has made this difficult. Without a stake in a resource, there is little incentive for that resource to be properly managed; for farmers to invest resources in soil conservation because they have title to land or for villagers to combat poaching because they materially benefit from tourism. These are the points that some will make today.
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  Only with strong property rights, with arrangements by which individual Africans have equity in the resources around them, will economic development and democracy progress.
  The United States has a huge stake in seeing that African natural resources are used prudently. If they are not, Africans will remain impoverished and the world will suffer the consequences of Africa's environmental degradation, including the destruction of its forests and grasslands, and the loss of the elephant, the cheetah, the mountain gorilla and other species.
  The U.S. development aid program can play a constructive role here. But again, the key is local interest. If technical aid is to help with resource development, it must take its cue from the very material, very human, self-interests of Africans.
  As much as some would like it to be, Africa cannot be one big preserve. This instinct is understandable, the resources are so magnificent. But natural resources must be the basis for viable African economies and natural resources must be used efficiently and, when possible, sustainably. But they must be used.
  This is the challenge facing all of Africa. Today's witnesses have valuable insights on these challenges and how the United States should respond. So I will open with our distinguished Member of Congress, Clay Shaw of Florida, who I will ask to introduce at this time, if you will, Mr. Shaw, introduce Michael Fay.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. ROYCE. Yes, let me allow the members to open with a statement. The ranking member, Mr. Menendez.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
  I want to thank you and our distinguished panelists for taking time to come before the subcommittee to testify, particularly our colleague, Congressman Shaw, who I understand has unique testimony based on his trip to the Congo and the Noubale and Ndoki rainforest and what he observed there. We look forward to hearing what he has to say.
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  True, the development of Africa's natural resources is an issue that should concern all of us. The sustainable development of Africa's natural resources is important, both for the protection of Africa's environment, but also to the world community. In the era of ozone depletion, climatic warming, and spreading disease, Africa's resources are important to every one of us.
  Africa's natural resources are also important because they are inextricably linked to Africa's economic growth. If Africa's resources are not developed in a sustainable manner, it will be a lose-lose scenario. The world's environment loses and the people of Africa lose.
  This may be one of the most important hearings we have on the context of looking at how the United States can promote economic growth in Africa. Certainly, if we do not consider long-term resource management as an essential part of U.S. policy, and if we do not raise it as an issue in our discussions with African governments and leaders, we will find ourselves confronted with a continent which no longer has the means to support its growing population, where famine is increasingly common and severe, where civil unrest will proliferate due to economic discontent, and with only limited possibilities to reconcile with a defeated environment.
  So as usual, an ounce of prevention here is worth a pound of cure.
  There has been increased attention by international donors and African governments on the need for programs which promote sustainable development. However, policies which address environmental degradation have been limited.
  Today the rate of forest regeneration in Africa is only about one in 32. That is for every 32 trees harvested, only one is planted. The comparable ratios for Asia and Latin America are one to two and one to six, a dramatic difference.
  The African continent contains 19 percent of the world's tropical moist rainforest. However, the rapid destruction of trees reduced Africa's forest by 23 percent from 1950 to 1983 and West Africa has lost more than 60 percent of its original rainforest.
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  These are losses which cannot be recouped and whose effects are resounding. For example, deforestation leads to soil erosion and a loss of soil nutrients. That leads to soil degradation and desertification which leads to the displacements of indigenous people that rely on the soil and forest products for their livelihood.
  These effects alone ought to make us rethink our approach to economic development. If not, consider the fact that the deforestation and desertification destroys the habitats of thousands of plant and animal species, decreasing biological diversity and, as a result, potential cures for diseases and scientific and agricultural advances.
  Economic development cannot be successful if the impact of projects on the environment is not. Desertification, deforestation, loss of groundwater, and water pollution not only mitigate the short-term benefits of economic development, they obstruct the long-term goal of sustained economic viability and independence from donor assistance, a common goal for Africans and donors.
  Perhaps the greatest challenge in this regard is in helping African governments and other donors to see why the protection and preservation of natural resources is as important as economic development.
  Let me close, Mr. Chairman, by saying there are some things that have happened, there are many things that conspire against Africa, but progress is being made in some areas. Some countries have begun to recognize that sustainable resource management can yield economic benefits. Progress in countries like Uganda, Mali, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are promising.
  Hopefully, we ourselves will join in the path to assist African countries on that path to sustainable development. We just need to make sure that we walk the path together. We look forward to listening to the testimony that is going to be elicited today.
  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Menendez. I am going to ask my colleague, Congressman Campbell.
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  Mr. CAMPBELL. Out of courtesy to our colleague, I waive an opening statement.
  Mr. ROYCE. All right. And Alcee Hastings, would you like to make an opening statement?
  Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to reserve the right to insert my statement in the record and welcome our colleagues, Mr. Shaw and Mr. Archer subsequently, and than you for holding the hearing.
  [The prepared statement of Mr. Hastings appears in the appendix.]
  Mr. ROYCE. We will insert your statement. And at this time, I am going to ask my colleague, Clay Shaw, if he would introduce Mr. Michael Fay and make your opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. E. CLAY SHAW, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

  Mr. SHAW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
  I very much appreciate the courtesy of this committee for answering to the request that Mr. Archer and I made to bring Mr. Fay here and to share our experience in the Congo with this committee, as we feel that it is very significant and very important to the environment of the entire globe.
  We first met Mr. Fay in Brazzaville, where we accompanied him--and by the way, Brazzaville is no easy place to get into. It is over 30 hours one way or the other, of either waiting in Paris and flying various airlines to get there. And then to get into Brazzaville, getting on a two-engine plane and flying for another 2 hours to a grass strip where we got into a parot, which is a dugout canoe with an outboard motor on it, and then traveled another 2 hours up the Sangha River to the base camp in Ndoki.
  Then, in order to go to where the gorillas were, deeper into the forest, it was a 2-hour truck ride from there and then into a small dugout canoe--very small, which the gunwales were about an inch above the water--and poled down this narrow little river for about 45 minutes, so we could get out and walk through another hour through the swamp, in order to get to another base camp from which we could walk another hour to get to the area to see where the actual gorillas were.
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  Mr. HASTINGS. We were on another one of those congressional junkets, I gather.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Hastings, we did have a luxury of a Pygmy carrying some of the supplies, which was more than fortunate. It made the whole thing quite possible.
  But once we arrived there, at the area where the gorillas could be viewed from, there was absolutely no electricity. Your bathing is in a small beautiful little, called a river I think, but I think here we would call it almost a creek. All the cooking, of course, is over a campfire. It really takes you back to very basic living.
  But I want to tell you about the dedication of the wonderful people who are in that area. Mr. Fay leads a USAID (AID) partially-funded program, which he will tell you more about. But it shows you the dedication of the people who really have dedicated their life to the preservation of the globe and the preservation of animals that we believe are either on the endangered list or soon will be.
  In going through this experience, we were, I think, struck and very concerned about the degree of logging that seems to be going on, that Mr. Fay will be telling you about. The new type of logging that is being done by the Asians is clearcutting, plain and simple. Mr. Menendez, you spoke about this as to how much replanting there is. In these areas, there is virtually none that I saw.
  And you have some very alarming statistics that I think really bring home to us the direction that we are going and what could very well happen to our globe if we sit back and do nothing.
  We were also, I think, very struck by the tremendous mutual respect and friendship that the indigenous population has with Mr. Fay and his companions, who are there in the jungle. We were also impressed by so many of the people naming their children after Mr. Fay, which some day people are going to wonder how that many Michaels got in one part of the world. But it does show the tremendous affection that they have for each other, and the wonderful relationships that have grown up.
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  Mr. Archer wanted to be with us here this afternoon. He is tied up. He is hopeful he can get in before this hearing. But he and I have very strong feelings that an alarm bell must be sounded and it must be sounded around the world to say that we just do not put up with this type of absolute destruction of the natural environment.
  I think our failure to do so may very well put us one day on the endangered species list. I think we definitely need to attack this problem and attack it as vigorously as we can.
  It is now my privilege to introduce to you my good friend--and believe me, when you are living in those kinds of conditions, you become good friends very quickly--Michael Fay.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Shaw, we want to thank you for bringing Mr. Fay back to captivity. And Michael, we have seen you on Prime Time Live, but it is good to have you here.
  Mr. SHAW. He was. He was very prominently on Prime Time Live, and they did a piece which we have copies of if any of the members that missed it would like to see it. Also, as politicians, we are glad that we do not make some of these news shows, but I will tell you, I think they did a beautiful piece on this and it really showed the full extent of what we were doing.
  Also, the whole project was in National Geographic about a year-and-a-half ago, in an extensive spread, which I think I have sent to each of you. I hope so. If not, I will see that you get copies of it, to see the full extent of the good work that these people are doing.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL FAY, PROJECT DIRECTOR, NOUBALE-NDOKI

  Mr. FAY. I would certainly like to thank Congressmen Shaw and Archer for arranging this hearing and thank the chairman and the subcommittee for making that possible.
  My objective here today, I feel kind of like a Beverly Hillbilly or something, coming in to the big city, but my objective is pretty simple and that is to try to underline much of what you have just suggested are major problems that are looming in not only Africa but worldwide.
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  In particular, I would like to talk about the logging of tropical forests and some of the environmental and social consequences of that logging that is currently occurring. I am going to use the example of Northern Congo which is a place that I know well, but the pattern I think is one which is pan-tropical in extent. Some of you may have seen the latest U.S. News and World Report on Central America. Reading it, it sounds exactly like what is happening in Northern Congo, in most of the other Central African countries, West Africa, now South America, and in the remaining forests in Asia. So I think that the pattern is very clear and it is unmistakable.
  In Northern Congo we have one of the largest intact blocks of tropical forest that remains in Africa. The northern part of the country contains about 8 million hectares and in the last 12 months they have attributed more than 3 million of those hectares to logging companies. So you know, I think that simple statistic is very, very telling. 36 percent of the exploitable virgin forest in Northern Congo has been attributed to logging companies in a single year, 1996, more than has ever been given to logging companies previously.
  So I think that once again, if you need to identify a problem, looking at simple statistics can tell you a lot. In the Likouala and Sangha regions, which are the northernmost and which contain the prime virgin forest remaining, and so more desirable to logging companies, the forest is about 3.5 million hectares in extent. We have seen the total surface area drop to 1.2 million hectares which is not in a logging concession currently.
  In 1996, 1.4 million hectares were attributed to five different logging companies. You are dealing with 3.5 initially, 1.4 in 1 year, 1996. Again, the problem, I think, is fairly obvious.
  The attribution of concessions does not really reflect the overall impact that you might see on the ground because a concession can remain idle and the level of exploitation can also increase. So the simple attribution of concession areas does not really tell you the whole story, but in Northern Congo in 1996, which was the year that many concessions were given to logging companies, the total surface area that was logged covered about 40,000 hectares. At this rate of exploitation, it would take about 225 years to exploit the entire virgin forest of Northern Congo.
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  But given the areas that were attributed in 1996 and looking at the increased production of those companies just in the primary species that are usually exploited, we are probably looking at something more like 150,000 hectares per year. That would reduce the time to extinction of natural forest to about 57 years.
  That is assuming that no more concessions are attributed to logging companies which, given the figures from 1996, seems pretty unlikely to me.
  So I think once again, in the Likouala and Sangha regions, which are in the northern part of the country, we have much more dramatic figures. If you look at the map, I can very easily show you which areas are still available in Northern Congo, and I will just do that very briefly.
  The entire country is blocked up into concession areas and these are made regardless of ethnic and tribal limits, regardless of ecosystems, regardless of everything except the wood resources that have been identified in those concessions.
  If you look at the map here, we have all of this area that has been blocked off. Most of the rest of the country, and you can see the outline of Congo here, is in small forest or what has been deemed unexploitable.
  If you look at this map, we have this concession and this concession which have not been attributed to logging companies and all of what we would call the prime area in Northern Congo, the Likouala region, and this area is in a national park so all of this and all of this are now in for or occupied by logging companies, including that one. So you have that, that, and that that is all remaining. So that is now in the national park. So it is pretty impressive I would say, considering what the situation was prior to 1996.
  The usual pattern of exploitation is a common one. It, I think, is practiced more or less throughout the tropics, and especially in Africa. The forest is divided into 25 or 50 hectare blocks and once again, regardless of ecosystems or traditional land limits or rights, in fact, in the absence of any management plan. There is not a single logging company in Northern Congo which has a master plan for the exploitation of its concession.
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  The trees are counted and mapped, road infrastructure is built, and the trees are removed. As Mr. Shaw mentioned, the Asian companies that are now occupying--and I will get back to that a little bit later--but the big difference there is that they are exploiting at a much higher level than traditionally the Europeans or even the Middle Eastern logging companies have been exploiting.
  There are many species which are considered species to promote, that is what they call them in the French translation. So you do not pay any forestry taxes on anything but about 15 or 20 species in Northern Congo. The rest is free. Traditionally, those have not been exploited, but these new firms coming in from Asia are definitely doing a lot of that.
  Obviously, there is a lot of collateral damage when these operations come in. A lot of the forest canopy is destroyed in building the road infrastructure. And certainly the fauna suffers very significantly. In many cases, the majority of large mammals are removed from the concession, and that includes elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, and any other mammal that is available.
  In general, infrastructural developments and social and monetary benefits from these operations locally, regionally, and nationally are very minimal. The taxes are low. In many cases, they are not paid. Almost every logging company, I would say every logging company, in Northern Congo owes significant amounts of money to the country. The forestry taxes that are paid are usually meant to be used for management of forest and more often they are used for infrastructural development, which very often includes building logging roads for logging companies built by the logging companies and billed by the logging companies to the national government. That is something that happens frequently in Africa.
  I think that the wholesaling of these forests, as you all mentioned, is going to have considerable social and ecological effects that certainly the logging companies that are coming in from Asia in particular are not going to be asked to pay for. I think that western governments will be called upon once again to pay for a lot of the improvement of living standards in Africa that certainly these logging companies will not provide, and after they have removed one of the primary resources available for development.
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  What can we do about these problems? I think that there are many, many things that we can do. One is to even up the playing field for companies who profess or actually practice sustainable--whatever that means, and there are many, many definitions of sustainable--and at least a demonstrated willingness to manage the areas that they are exploiting, and to focus on social benefits for the people that they are, in fact, exploiting.
  I think that we need to encourage countries and we need to encourage private industry to go in that direction, to accept only companies that do have some kind of management in mind and a focus more on social benefits.
  We also need to, I think, reinforce efforts to create protected areas and management systems in these concession areas. I think that there are a number of bilateral and international programs that can be initiated that will really serve to improve the current situation. I think that the model that we have built in Northern Congo in the last 6 years is one which works and it is something that has certainly changed the course of what is happening in Northern Congo permanently and without a huge amount of investment and something that has much further-reaching results or benefits than just protecting a national park.
  But in fact, what we have been able to accomplish in the last 6 years is to establish the first national park in Northern Congo. It is over 1 million acres in extent. We have been able to raise a considerable amount of local, regional and national interest in the conservation and wise management of forest areas. We have been working with the logging companies and other economic operators, indigenous people, and decisionmakers throughout the country and at all levels to have a real impact on the direction of resource management in Northern Congo.
  We have been able to establish buffer zones around the national park or we are in the process of establishing them that will encompass well over 2 million acres.
  So I think that the bottom line for me is these companies are in the process of grabbing up every available piece of land that they can find and the pattern is very similar elsewhere in Africa and elsewhere in the world. I think that grass roots--and I would call our project grass roots--projects which look at the overall picture which take into consideration national development interests and the interests of the real people on the ground really can have a substantial impact and a real one.
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  And I think that a lot of the resources that are currently spent are not really directed to on-the-ground operations. They are more directed toward studying the problem rather than solving the problem. I think that we should look more at trying to solve the problem, rather than to study it. I think the problem is obvious.
  [The prepared statement of Mr. Fay appears in the appendix.]

  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Fay. I would like to just take a moment and introduce the vice chairman of the committee, Mr. Amo Houghton.
  Mr. Fay, if I could just ask you a couple of questions. One that I am interested in is how was it possible for you to be able to convince the Congolese Government that it should reverse its logging concession commitments and establish the Ndoki Reserve, that you were able to convince them to do? Was your effort a matter of working with a few government officials or did it go beyond that? How did you achieve that?
  Mr. FAY. What we have been able to accomplish is we have been able to, I would say, integrate ourselves into Congolese society. We have become integral members of the group that makes decisions at the national, regional and local level, and that includes private industry. We are consulted widely on the exploitation of forest in Northern Congo. We are seen as advocates for local people. We are seen as advocates of regional interests. And I think that the national government also perceives a need to really act on this problem and they have a real interest in managing their forests.
  So our efforts have been accepted with open arms, I would say, in Congo. There has not been any difficulty in convincing people that this is necessary. It is just a question of bringing the resources into play, I think.
  Mr. ROYCE. Let me ask you how well the buffer zone or transitional zone that abuts the area, permits logging and subsistence hunting and trophy hunting and tourism is working. Are economic and conservation objectives being met in the buffer zone?
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  Mr. FAY. We are transitioning into what we are calling our second phase, and we are currently setting up the legislative backdrop for the establishment of those buffer zones. The government has accepted that the three concessions around the park, so you can see the green one, the red-striped one, and the orange one to the south of it, will be different from the other concessions. They will have management plans before they are exploited. People will look at the resource, the availability, where it is, ecosystem considerations, considerations for local land rights.
  We are in the process of doing the legwork that we need to do to make that a reality, but the government has put a moratorium on logging in the two concessions on the east side for 4 years and we are currently working on the one to the south, because that was in a logging concession so we have had to negotiate with the company that is currently in place there.
  That has been a very interesting experience because it is a company that has been operated by a European concern. It has French Government investment involved. Over the last 2 years, especially since the Asian influence has started to penetrate into Central Africa, we found that the European partners are starting to come our way a lot more. They are starting to be much more willing to collaborate with us.
  Mr. ROYCE. My understanding is that some logging operations of top value hardwoods, especially in the Northern Congo, actually lose money because the transportation costs are so high. I am told that 85 percent ends up in Asia.
  These operations are said to exist on subsidies from foreign governments and international development banks. To your knowledge, is this true?
  Mr. FAY. I think we have someone in the audience here, David Wilkie, who did a very good study on one of the concessions to the west there, in fact that central western one, the pinkish one, which showed very clearly that development banks were, in fact, subsidizing logging operations. The World Bank has had projects previously. And the Africa Development Bank has also had projects.
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  In many cases, these projects have gone bankrupt and when you look at the overall investment that was involved and the amounts that were taken out and returned to development banks, certainly they could be construed as subsidy to logging operations.
  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Fay. I am going to ask the vice chairman, Amo Houghton, if he has any questions.
  Mr. HOUGHTON. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Fay. Good to see you, Mr. Shaw.
  Are you, in effect, saying that things are OK? That they are not perfect but they are moving in the right direction, and the Congolese Government is interested in having forest planning and therefore, given enough time, things will work themselves out? Is that what you are saying?
  Mr. FAY. No, what I am saying is the model that we have been able to introduce into Congo is a viable one and it is one that should be supported. I think the current levels of support are falling short of our needs.
  And I also think that the model can be replicated not only in Congo but elsewhere in Central Africa. So I think that we really need to act very quickly if we are going to be able to replicate this kind of model elsewhere because the land grab is on and we only have a few more years.
  Mr. HOUGHTON. I do not know what condition the government is in. Is it running a surplus, a deficit? Has it got big debts?
  Mr. FAY. Yes, it is in very bad shape. They have lots of debt.
  Mr. HOUGHTON. So if you come through or some foundations, with help from any funds that we might deliver, and say we think it is a good idea for you to curtail the cash input from your chief crop, what is their reaction going to be?
  Mr. FAY. In fact, their chief crop is not wood, it is oil.
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  Mr. HOUGHTON. OK, from wood.
  Mr. FAY. From wood, once again, as the chairman suggested, there really is not a--I would say significant, some would say a large input from the logging industry into the national government's coffers. I really believe that if you looked at it from a resource point of view, and you looked at what the Congo is giving up for what they are getting out of the deal, they are getting a raw deal.
  Mr. HOUGHTON. I guess what I am trying to think of, if I were a politician and I were thinking and all of a sudden my revenues would be curtailed so therefore my debt would go up or my expenses would have to go down. What is the incentive for me to do something in the long term that clearly is something which is right?
  Mr. FAY. I tend to work empirically and the evidence is that the Congolese do have an interest in conserving their resources and in using them wisely. I think that they need help in making that a reality. I think that the evidence is that, indeed, if there are people on the ground working and if they are making, you know, good arguments about why they might want to conserve their resources, it actually happens.
  Mr. HOUGHTON. So I am an agency. You come to me and say resources are not adequate, the inclination is there. There is a good concept to implement, we need money. How much money do you need and what would it be used for?
  Mr. FAY. Well, the current operation that we have in Northern Congo costs about $600,000 a year and that is an area of about 1.5 to 2 million hectares that we are involved in managing. I think that the ultimate goal of our work is not to lock these resources forever. Like I said, we are talking about going from 225 years down to 50 years. 225 years is still not an outrageous amount of time to remove all of the primary resources that they have in those forests.
  Mr. HOUGHTON. So you are interested in the sustainability?
  Mr. FAY. I am interested in getting closer to sustainability. I do not think we are there yet.
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  Mr. HOUGHTON. So in order to get close to sustainability and taking the other amounts of land, what are you talking about, in terms of additional money?
  Mr. FAY. Well, I think that you could also encourage a lot of private involvement in these schemes. The trend has to be attacked at many levels and that is why I talked about an even playing field. If we can convince governments that this is important, I think that you will find that there will be more and more participation by private companies and private industry in sustainable logging.
  In fact, the Europeans have shown, just in the past 1 1/2 years a great deal of interest and are, in fact, now actively lobbying the Congolese Government to do the exact same kinds of things that we have been encouraging them to do over the last 5 years. I think that ultimately it has to be an economic question, which I think is what you are asking.
  I think that the Congolese will find that the rate at which they are exploiting these forests ultimately is too fast and that they are going to be going through a very quick boom and bust cycle which risks catching up to them before their political tenure is even over.
  Mr. HOUGHTON. Thank you very much.
  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Fay. We have been joined by my colleague, Mr. Payne, from New Jersey. Did you want to make an opening statement for the record, or would you like to submit it for the record?
  Mr. PAYNE. I will submit it for the record.
  [The prepared statement of Mr. Payne appears in the appendix.]

  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. At this time, we will go to my colleague, Mr. Hastings, for questions.
  Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Fay, and our colleague, Mr. Shaw. Thank you so much for bringing him here to sound yet another alarm with reference to the ecosystem in the locale that is the subject of this hearing.
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  Mr. Fay, I hear you, on my colleague Mr. Houghton's questions, were very direct regarding who would get how much. I am curious to know, and to say from the record before asking this question, Mr. Houghton, it appears that the minister of agriculture, animal husbandry, water forests and fisheries in the Congo, according to the testimony offered in the record, said the following: the priority of the Republic of Congo is development for its people. If this necessitates the destruction of the forests of the country, it will be done.
  That is more than ominous, but also to be expected from a country with limited resources, to have its leadership speaking along those lines.
  Mr. Fay, I do not share your optimism regarding the French and others who have already intervened before the Asians got there. OK? Now they are all interested in what the Asians do.
  I also do not share your optimism about private investors who have a profit motive necessarily. And as the chairman pointed out may, in some instances, require subsidization from a number of entities in order to reach a profit. So I do not see them hurrying in the Congo or elsewhere to say they are going to do the right thing.
  We enter into bilateral agreements of extraordinary magnitude, NAFTA being the closest example. I recently visited the maquilladoros and I will be damned if we have not done what we said we were going to do when I voted for NAFTA. Do you understand what I am saying?
  Mr. FAY. Yes.
  Mr. HASTINGS. So I do not know how it is we have leverage. I guess that is my question. How does the United States of America, its policymakers, and more specifically those of us on the Subcommittee of Africa, who have at least our jurisdictional confines focused in that direction, how do we have any leverage to help you to help the Congo and Central Africa to deal with this particular problem?
  Mr. FAY. Well, I would have to admit that I work in a very small sphere and I do not know how to solve the global problems. I think that they are very serious and I would agree with you, I try to remain optimistic but in the face of what is happening it becomes increasingly difficult.
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  But I think that once again, if you work empirically and you look at what we have been able to accomplish in Northern Congo and the relationships that we have been able to establish with European logging companies, I think that there is some hope for collaboration with those companies. And I really do believe that even though the profit motive is there, there are also other considerations that the Europeans, in particular, are subject to and increasingly so.
  That is evident to me on the ground because they are more and more willing to talk to us, rather than less and less willing.
  Mr. HASTINGS. When is the next world conference, if you know, being convened dealing with rainforests?
  Mr. FAY. I could not tell you.
  Mr. HASTINGS. Did someone give an answer? That seems to me to be something that all of us ought to be interested in. Society in general, you being a botanist, and I have a little bit of a scientific background, ought to be interested in rainforests if for no other reason than the medicinal propensity for new medical discoveries.
  Mr. Chairman, just one final question if I may. I am not asking you, Mr. Fay, but if any of you or your colleagues could provide the statistics for us--you talk in empirical terms--of the percentage of concessionaires, where they are from, and who they are? I mean, unless we put a lamp on them, we have talked here today, no names have been called.
  You see, I do not really mind calling names. You may have a different take. But if I can be supplied some names so that I can talk about their dirty doings, then maybe that will help. Thank you very much.
  Mr. ROYCE. I think Mr. Fay was going to give you a quick response.
  Mr. FAY. I was just going to add that indeed, that is a very important aspect of the problem. When I started this exercise a few weeks ago, I tried to collect statistics and information on companies that are operating in neighboring companies, in Northern Congo and in Southern Congo, in fact, we have good information. But I was rather surprised to find that there is not a single organization, as far as I can tell, that has a real good clearinghouse of information on who is logging, where, and how much.
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  I think that certainly those kinds of statistics would be extremely valuable and the proof that they do exist is I got a fax just 2 days ago that came in from some of my colleagues in Zaire and which has a list of every single logging company, I would assume, in Zaire, where they are, what the surface area is and what the contract term is.
  So the statistics exist, even in a country like Zaire. So I think that is important. I think we should work on it.
  Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. ROYCE. And I think Mr. Hastings makes a very good suggestion and this committee will attempt to obtain that information. I know that 85 percent of the Congo concessionaires, at this point, are supposed to be Asian companies, but we will check and see and obtain that information for members of the committee.
  Could I turn to my colleague, Congressman Campbell?
  Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is for our colleague, Congressman Shaw. Clay, since you are kind enough to come today and give us just a very clear indication of your own honest commitment and interest in the area, I am going to put you a little bit on the spot.
  We need, I think, to increase the U.S. assistance in Africa. Now you have, from personal experience, identified an area and the gentleman whom you introduced us to said ''current levels of support are falling short of our needs'' and that is obviously the burden of his testimony, in part.
  But you know, there is not even an item in the appropriation bill for the development fund for Africa. There has been a proposal to do that and in past years there has been, but not in the last year's appropriation bill. What I am attempting to do is to get some interest on the Appropriation Committee's side for funding the development fund for Africa. We have development funds elsewhere in the world. There are some very, very important reasons that we should have a focus on Africa instead of just the general development funds with no guarantee that that will find its way to Africa.
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  So I said I was going to put you on the spot. I am just going to ask you, if I might, would this be an issue in which I and colleagues on this committee who share, all of us I think share this, would you help me get to Chairman Livingston and Chairman Callahan with this request?
  Mr. SHAW. Yes, I think so, but I think also it has to be very carefully targeted. Mr. Archer and I and the group we were traveling with met for an extensive length of time with the president of the Congo. We found him to be a delightful gentleman, very well educated, and I think very well-meaning for his people. So I mean, we were basically very impressed with him.
  I think, though, that it is a question of properly targeting some of these funds for development. We do not want them to develop more logging activities.
  Mr. CAMPBELL. Clearly.
  Mr. SHAW. And I think that it was Mr. Hastings that brought up the point that I think Mr. Fay confirmed, that much of this is marginal economic activity anyway. It is just stealing the future of the country. But I think in quoting the Minister of Agriculture there, I think it shows that politics is getting a little bit ahead of common sense, in making statements such as that. And it shows, I think, some disregard for future generations of Africans.
  I guess we could turn the same argument on ourselves, with some of the expenditures that we are going through and some of the things that we are doing here in our government. So the Congo is certainly not unique in making some short-sighted decisions.
  But I think it should be properly targeted, remembering that we are talking about, in many cases, very primitive regions of the world. And I think that we need to not only put money on it, I think we also need to put some of our expertise and get the opinions of the Mr. Fays of the world, as to exactly how that can be properly done.
  One of the things that I was most impressed about, in talking with Mr. Fay, is he an environmentalist? You better believe he is. Is he concerned about endangered species? Like nobody's business he is, to the extent of devoting his life to it. But does he recognize the rights of the indigenous people to hunt and do those things? Yes, he does. And does he also recognize the need to allow, or certainly to tolerate and to expect, reasonable use of the natural resources such as doing a certain amount of selective cutting as long as it is not destructive to the future forests? Yes, he does recognize that.
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  I feel that from this standpoint he is not one of those people who wants to put a fence around Africa and says nobody can get in and they cannot harvest their natural resources. He is for responsible husbandry of the resources that they have. And I think that is tremendously important.
  Mr. CAMPBELL. My request was really very simple. I take every point you make. I think you are absolutely right in each respect. But we are not even in a position to use our expertise in our country, the environmental expertise in our country, if there is no fund directed to Africa. And taking every precautionary point that you made, I would still request your assistance and hopefully that of Chairman Archer--if he were here, I would ask him, too--that we have the vehicle. Because without the vehicle, Mr. Fay and projects of this value will not receive the additional assistance that his testimony tells us is needed.
  That is why I say my request to you, and I am putting you a bit on the spot, is a simple one. It is to be sure that there is a development fund for Africa and then all of the caveats very wisely that you put forward would apply in report language and in our oversight of AID.
  But we are not even there unless we take that first step.
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Chairman, could I drive home a point before this portion of the hearing is concluded?
  Mr. ROYCE. Certainly, Mr. Shaw.
  Mr. SHAW. I think it is vitally important that, particularly this committee, look at the track record of certain countries and the recklessness of which they have devastated the environment of the world. Now I am getting away from the Congo, but you see those same people who have been destructive to other countries to the extent of just devastating the natural resources, are now present in the Congo. That is what we need to see.
  Mr. ROYCE. That is Mr. Hastings' point, as well.
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  Mr. SHAW. We need to take names. We have to know what countries are tolerating this. I mean, they are taking everything out of the Congo that will make as much as a toothpick, and that is wrong. That is what we have got to really, as the leader of the world today, be very highly interested in.
  Mr. ROYCE. And indeed, this might get some of the other concessionaires on board and some of the other countries on board, with respect to conservation programs. So we shall do that, Mr. Shaw.
  Before we go to Mr. Payne, Mr. Shaw, I think Mrs. Shaw is in the audience, as well. Should we recognize her?
  Mr. SHAW. Did she come in? And Mrs. Archer is back here, too.
  Mr. ROYCE. Let me introduce Mrs. Archer at this time.
  Mr. SHAW. And I might say, also, you were talking about all the congressional perks that we put up with by the lack of everything, I would like to say that our wives held up just as well as we did, and they were with us.
  Mr. ROYCE. That is wonderful news. I know that Mr. Fay has had some 15 or 18 bouts with malaria as a result of his experiences in the jungle or in the rainforest. He has been a very brave and committed man to this effort--to try to preserve the environment there. We very much appreciate him coming to testify today.
  I am going to turn to my colleague at this time, Mr. Payne.
  Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very unique and interesting hearing and I compliment you on this focus. I have been on the committee for 9 years and this is the first time that we have had an opportunity to talk about the resources.
  Of course, I do not know where Mr. Fay--where do you live now, Mr. Fay?
  Mr. FAY. In the Congo.
  Mr. PAYNE. Do you still have an address in Plainfield? That is near my district. I can get an absentee ballot to you.
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  Mr. FAY. I was born in Plainfield.
  Mr. PAYNE. I know, that is why I was wondering about the current address. I need every vote I can get, you know.
  We have seen the devastation of the rainforest in Brazil. I had an opportunity to go down in 1968, down into the Amazon region and dealt with the Colorado Indians. We saw the beginning of the devastation at that time, but now, almost 30 years later, much of what we saw at that time is totally gone. The same thing can certainly occur, as you have indicated here, in Africa.
  It is clear that there are people and companies and countries that are allowing entrepreneurs to operate where it is very damaging to that particular country. And in Liberia, during the civil war, a tremendous amount of timber, virgin lumber, was taken out in exchange for guns. Diamonds, too, but mainly the timber.
  And it was French companies, I mean it is no big secret, that were dealing with Charles Taylor and the insurgents which kept the weapons coming and kept destroying--as a matter of fact, there are many rare birds that through the whole history of Liberia these bird sanctuaries were very, very treasured. And of course, that is because of the ecosystems and once you destroy the timber, then the ecosystem destroys itself. Some of those rare birds, of course, are now on the verge of becoming extinct.
  That is a clear example of what is going on as late as several months ago, and if you look in Nigeria with Shell Oil, with the Egoni people, who the AID Egoni's, Ken Sarawewa and other AID Egoni's were hung because they protested and spoke out against the degradation of Shell Oil. They have pipes that leak oil into the soil. When it rains soot comes down, children spew up this kind of fumes that are all in the air. But that continues to go on and Shell Oil Company, out of Holland, they will not have any discussion in Holland about this whole question of what Shell is doing.
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  Even a U.S. company was allowed to bid on a project in the Sudan. They are on a sanctions list but there was some natural gas there, big deal, and so they said let us throw in our bid, too. They did not get it, but if we are going to talk about other countries doing things and we allow our own government to allow an American company to go in for a big deal because there is a lot of natural gas there, you know, this whole thing is a little bigger than perhaps we think.
  It is a very serious situation. The Sahara, for the past two decades, has been encroaching about--it started at a half an inch and now it is almost an inch a year that the Sahara is simply going south. It just continues each year, the erosion.
  And then we can look at places even outside of Africa. You take Haiti's 50 years of degradation, which was really pushed by the United States during World War II when we were cut off from Southeast Asia. The U.S. Government asked Haiti to grow latex from rubber trees. They said they will not grow here. But what they did, they cut off all of the natural habitat and tried to grow rubber trees for the war effort. They failed and erosion has continued on. They also cut the rest of it and sent it to Europe for heat, for burning.
  And so we have got an irreversible situation in Haiti, where 80 percent of the country is probably going to be denuded and the amount of topsoil that is left that goes into the ocean each year is just a clear example of the degradation.
  So to say that it is certainly going to be difficult at best, as Mr. Hastings said and Mr. Amo Houghton, talked about the fact that the countries are in bad shape in the first place and they want to see about upgrading the standard of living for people in the countries--although in many of the instances, the standard is only lifted for a few people, not the general public.
  But I guess I really do not have a statement, other than the fact that it is certainly going to be a very, very difficult thing to move forward. But I think that we need to perhaps get specific and start identifying companies, as we indicated, and at least let it be known--you know, if you are doing wrong, let everybody know you are doing wrong and maybe that kind of pressure.
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  And then we might want to look at selective sanctions if someone is doing some degradation in a place, then maybe they should be restricted from doing business in the United States. If we can do it in Menendez' bill in Cuba, and it certainly has caused a lot of attention around the world, I will say that much. Maybe we could get the same amount of attention. You would never know we disagree on the system, but we are very close friends.
  But maybe some of these things could be introduced, or we could think about some new approach, so that we could prevent what has happened in certain parts of Africa and indeed, in the rainforests in Brazil, from just spreading all over Africa.
  And the countries that really do a job, you take Zimbabwe, where they have done such a tremendous job at preserving the elephant, that it is almost a national disaster because you know, you just cannot put them in the back yard. They are just all over the place. They bring a delegation every year about can we crop the elephants, and I said well, it is not up to me, see someone else.
  But that is a job done so well that it creates a problem. But if you say yes, you can poach in Zimbabwe and you can sell ivory on the market, then you are going to find that the places that are not doing a good job are going to continue or increase the poaching to try to get that into that market that can be sold. So you have another problem.
  I just guess I would like to commend Mr. Fay and certainly I am very pleased that Mr. Archer and Mr. Shaw have found this of interest and look forward to working along with you, Mr. Chairman, as we proceed. Thank you.
  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Payne. We are going to go to Mr. Menendez. Do you have any questions?
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Just very briefly. Mr. Fay, I want to thank you. I had, unfortunately, testimony to give at another committee in which I had asked for the hearing. So if you do not show up for the hearing you asked for, it is a difficult proposition later on.
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  I have admired your work from afar. I have seen some of the programs that Mr. Shaw referred to. And as a New Jerseyan, I am happy to see the type of work that you have done and we are glad to have you today. My aide has been here and telling me some of the things that you testified to.
  So I do not have any questions. The only thing I would say from my dear colleague from New Jersey, who we agree with 99 percent of the time, is that the difference in the bill that you referred to is that it is the illegally stolen properties of U.S. citizens and companies.
  However, I do agree with you on one thing. What is our national resolve? And what are we willing to do as it relates to in our interrelationships with African countries, both on aid and trade? And on this issue of sustaining natural resources, what are we willing to do to promote that?
  That we do have a role in. Maybe it is the way you suggested. Maybe there are some other ways. But if we give this the importance that I think it deserves, I think there are ways for the United States to be a significant partner in the process and we look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for coming before the committee.
  Mr. SHAW. Just one further thing, Mr. Chairman. I would like to introduce Mr. David Barron and Dr. Jake Smith, who brought us all together in the Congo. They are here in the audience, as is Greg West, who accompanied us also to the Ndoki.
  Mr. ROYCE. If I could ask you to stand at this time. Thank you all. Thank you, gentlemen. Again, Mr. Shaw, thank you and Mr. Fay, we appreciate your testimony here today.
  We have another panel, a second panel of three very interesting witnesses. So I will ask them to come up at this time. We are going to ask the witnesses to stay to the 5-minute rule. We want you to summarize your testimony and then the members will have more time to ask you questions at that point and you can elaborate your answers.
  So we will ask the second panel to come up. In the meantime, we are going to adjourn for a vote and reconvene in 15 minutes. Thank you.
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  [Recess.]
  Mr. ROYCE. All right, we will get underway. On our second panel we have Mr. Brian Child, a consultant with Africa Resources Trust. As a senior official with the Zimbabwe Government, Dr. Child was instrumental in developing a highly successful wildlife industry on private land. He has been a wildlife advisor for AID, the World Bank, the United Nations and several African governments.
  We also have Tom Fox, vice president of the World Resources Institute and Director of WRI's Center for International Development and Environment. Mr. Fox is principally responsible for WRI's developing country and capacity-building programs which provide technical support and policy advice to governments, donor agencies, and non-government organizations.
  And finally, we have Mr. Achim Steiner, Senior Policy Advisor for IUCN, the World Conservation Union. He previously served as IUCN's program coordinator for Southern African and has been involved in a wide range of projects and studies on rural development, environmental policy, and natural resource management in Africa and Asia.
  Mr. Child, if you would like to begin, and I am going to ask each of you to summarize your testimony. Keep it to 5 minutes and let me just recognize my colleague, Mr. Chabot of Ohio, who has joined us for this hearing. Mr. Child.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN CHILD, Ph.D., CONSULTANT, AFRICA RESOURCES TRUST

  Mr. CHILD. Thank you very much. I actually live in Zambia. Contrary to what I look like, I am a rural African. I live under the A, the last A in Zambia, and work among rural people.
  Contrary to what we heard earlier, it is not all doom and gloom in Africa. In the ADMADE programme in Zambia, in the last year, in 1 year, by using wildlife, we have increased incomes 25 percent, and a process of grassroots democratization has been catalysed. And as a result of this, people are now looking after wildlife.
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  You can talk about these programs from the perspective of a development worker, a conservationist, governments, democracy and so on. But because of the focus of this hearing, I am going to talk about property rights, because property rights are at the core of sustainable use of wildlife and the successes that we are seeing in southern Africa in terms of wildlife utilization.
  Essentially, we developed a new technology for using land. Cattle ranching was failing because it did not add value. You take one lump of grass, you turn it into meat, there is no added value. So, we took wildlife, which you also produce the same amount of meat as in cattle ranching; but has additional value because of safari hunting. Because of hunting and a variety of other uses, such as photographic tourism, the change in land use from cattle to wildlife can be ten times more economically productive. We know this is a new technology for land use.
  Then we had a major institutional problem. Because of colonial legislation and so on, you were not allowed to benefit from your wildlife. It did not belong to you. So people still carried on growing cattle although wildlife could be much more profitable.
  So to amend this, the rules of ownership, the tenurial control of wildlife was changed and devolved down to the level of the landholder. The farmer now, or the rancher, or the community now owned the wildlife. Because he owned it, he could then capture the value of that wildlife. Because he could capture the value, he then conserved it and started to shift his land use from cattle toward wildlife.
  This is often considered to be the greatest conservation success since Yellowstone. Yellowstone is national parks. 15 percent of Southern Africa is conserved for national parks. An equal area is now conserved because of wildlife enterprise. So not only are you creating economic growth, more jobs, added value, comparative advantage, all that sort of thing, you are also conserving wildlife.
  The real challenge has been taking this technology into areas where poor disenfranchised people live and where property rights have essentially collapsed over the last 100 years for various reasons. That is the real success of programs like CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe, that have introduced property rights into communities where it is extremely difficult to do so.
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  What they have essentially done is taken a community, and drawn a line around it. If you do not delineate resources you cannot have prices. If you do not have prices, you cannot compare the relative values of resources and you misallocate them. You get wastefulness, you get poverty and so on. There is a whole theory on property rights on that.
  So we have introduced the practical tools of taking the theory of property rights and devolving those rights on indigenous people. So when an elephant or a buffalo or something is shot, that money comes in and the community sits in a public forum and debates the use of that money. That creates transparency. Everybody can see what everyone is doing. It is democratic. Everybody is involved. It is accountable because if we allocate the money to somebody else to do a certain job and they do not do it, the communities are all aware of this and ensure that things get done.
  It also makes Africans realize, rural Africans, the value of elephants and all species. Ten years ago they were seen as a pest, now they are seen as an asset. So what we have right through southern Africa is a large number, hundreds of rural communities sitting under trees, developing themselves. So instead of living in an environment of poverty, they are now living in an environment of hope where they can actually, for the first time, see a glimmer of hope in the future because for the first time they have got money. Because of that, they empower themselves, and they start to do jobs for themselves.
  A very interesting fact. If you look at small development projects like clinics, schools and so on, when it is done by governments or donor agencies, it is slow and it is inefficient. If you give the implementation responsibilities to communities, even though they are not educated and they are very poor, because it is their money building their clinics, their schools, they do it a lot more efficiently. We can produce a lot of examples of how effectively this has worked.
  What we have essentially done is taken control from the few bureaucrats in the center to 600, 800, 1,000 people on the periphery. The challenge then is to develop the capacity of those people to manage the resources. That is, institutional capacity, technical wildlife management capacity, the ability to run meetings, to run democratic institutions, unite constitutions and so on. That is what a lot of the aid is being used on.
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  But AID is not a healthy thing. It creates a sense of desperation among people and it is basically a sickness. What we really need to do is shift this whole issue out of AID and into trade. I think I should stop there. Thank you very much.
  [The prepared statement of Mr. Child appears in the appendix.]

  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Dr. Child. I am going to ask Mr. Fox.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS FOX, VICE PRESIDENT, WORLD RESOURCE INSTITUTE

  Mr. FOX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My written remarks document the remarkable wealth that continues to exist in Africa, in both renewable resources like forest and water and arable land, and also non-renewable resources like oil and diamonds. The testimony also documents that many of those resources are not being utilized to their full potential. For example, Africa has 23 percent of the world's land, but less than 25 percent of arable land is actually cultivated. And only 2.8 percent of that cultivated land is irrigated.
  Switching to another subject, geologically, Africa's mineral potential is at least equal to that of other continents. Overall, 20 percent of the world's known metal reserves, for instance, are in Africa. Natural energy resources, non-renewable and renewable, are plentiful in Africa. But the continent currently consumes only a fraction of its known oil, gas, coal, hydro and geothermal resources. For instance, overall Africa is currently exploiting only about 23 percent of its explored oil supply.
  Aside from this wealth of renewable energy resources, Africa possesses significant renewable energy resources. Less than 4 percent of Africa's vast hydro-resource potential, and even less of its geothermal, solar, wind or bio-gas potential are being harnessed.
  I have further data on Africa's ecosystems and their biodiversity, including marine ecosystems, but I will not summarize those now.
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  There are a few points I would like to highlight. Since so many Africans are poor and live in rural areas, approximately 70 percent, they are unusually dependent on their renewable natural resource base for their very survival. Again, I will go through this argument in the written testimony and so will move on to another subject, since we have already spent some time talking about renewable resources.
  Non-renewable resources remain in abundance in many parts of Africa, often because the infrastructure and investment, and certainly the investment climate needed to exploit them do not exist. But some examples of such exploitation are instructive, since they show that the people, and to a large degree the country overall, has not benefited from their resource anywhere near as much as they might have.
  The wealth from Nigerian oil, for example, is not distributed widely throughout Nigerian society, remaining with only a very few foreign companies and with some now very wealthy Nigerians. The same story applies to Botswana's diamonds.
  Another example, with a happier conclusion, has already been cited here, I believe, by your own opening remarks, Mr. Chairman. In Ghana, gold is one of the most important parts of the economy and sources of foreign exchange. Mining is also the only sector in which direct foreign investment is increasing. In the past, gold mining operations were not significantly regulated and, not surprisingly, companies did not invest much in environmental management and restoration and community development.
  More recently, however, the national government has introduced a number of environmental standards, environmental impact assessment guidelines, and required that the various companies involved prepare environmental management plans. As a result, the industry has become far more friendly to those who live in the mining areas, and the overall industry is more profitable for both the country and for the miners.
  Finally, I cite a familiar example dealing with Central Africa's forests, a program, incidentally funded in large part by the Agency for International Development; called the Central Africa Regional Project for the Environment; it includes not only some of our work but also that of the World Conservation Society you have already heard some about.
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  But here again, the interaction between policy, private sector behavior, and their impact on the natural resources presents an example of the need for concerted action on a number of fronts. Again, I say more about that in my written testimony.
  I would like to quickly skip to what I conclude from this very brief overview and ask you to rely on my written statement for the meat.
  Africa has important essential natural resources, many of them still to be exploited. This fact alone should give all of us reason for optimism, although Africa's leadership must be alert not only to the investment climate their country provides, but also to the terms and conditions of the exploitation.
  Currently, the terms and conditions by which non-renewable and commercially attractive renewable resources are exploited almost never are favorable to the principles of sustainable development, development that combines economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity.
  Second, poverty, the absence of viable alternative livelihoods, demographic pressure, and insecure tenurial rights to land and other natural resources all too often combine to offset the best efforts of African communities to conserve their resource base.
  Third, the economic tools to appropriately measure and value natural resources and their degradation and loss are not integrated into decisionmaker's policies and practices. We did some work on this, incidentally, in Indonesia on national income accounts, measuring how the depletion of oil in that country affected negatively the per capita gross national product. The same sort of principle of applying economic tools would be Africa but have not yet been.
  Finally, all of these trends and conditions also relate to the locus and practice of environmental governance. Much more attention needs to be paid to effective environmental governance and to the distribution of environmental roles, responsibilities, authorities and capacities to those institutions best positioned to achieve them in an effective and efficient manner.
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  Such distribution must include not only the dominant but often all too distant central government, but also local and municipal governments, the private sector, and certainly community organizations and structures and other forms of civil society. Working with African governments, the private sector, and civil society on these issues at the policy level must become even more the cornerstone of our foreign assistance efforts in Africa.
  Along with the resilience and ingenuity of its people, Africa's sustainable use of its natural resource base is its wealth, its future. Thank you.
  [The prepared statement of Mr. Fox appears in the appendix.]

  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Fox. We will return to Mr. Steiner after Mr. Menendez and I take a minute to cast this vote. We will be back. Thank you.
  [Recess.]
  Mr. ROYCE. My apologies, Mr. Steiner. We will reconvene the hearing at this time. Mr. Steiner.
STATEMENT OF ACHIM STEINER, SENIOR POLICY ADVISOR, IUCN WORLD CONSERVATION UNION

  Mr. STEINER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before your subcommittee today. I represent IUCN, the World Conservation Union which is a global union of member organizations and, as a matter of coincidence in fact, all of the panelists this afternoon are with organizations that happen to be members of IUCN, so I will certainly be scrutinized very carefully for any of the views that I present, particularly since I was asked to really give more a presentation on the issue of natural resource and economic development in general, and not as narrow a presentation as you may expect from a conservation organization when you talk about natural resource management in Africa.
  Certainly we recognize many of the developments and trends that were described by Mr. Fay. Yet at the same time we also, for much of the work that has been done by organizations such as WRI and others, see some of the options and solutions and trends that are emerging from within Africa itself, actually, at this point in time on how to address what are clearly worrying trends in some respect as far as the degradation of natural resources is concerned.
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  One of the big lessons that we have learned, in being a union for 50 years, is that we need to bring conservation into the mainstream of development. I think very much the debate of today and the discussions around the topics that have been presented deal with this problem of how conservation can play a role within the economic development process of countries, particularly of countries that--and that applies to much of Africa--depend more than any other part of the world on its natural resource base as a key to development.
  In many ways, the term ''economies in transition'' would apply from our point of view to much of Africa today. Although, as I stress in the testimony, the continent is a very diverse one, and when you talk about natural resources in Africa, one has to take into account that there are regions with 50 millimeters rainfall and there are others with 8,000 millimeters rainfall. And the options for natural resources to play a role in the development, particularly renewal ones, of the country obviously vary greatly.
  I would like to focus, in the few minutes that I have, on two key messages. That is that, echoing the remarks of my colleagues, that the natural resource base itself in Africa is not the constraint. In fact, in many parts of Africa, it is very rich in terms of the potential that could be generated from its natural resources.
  The phenomenon that we have seen really, as conservationists, is that resources have been wasted because they have not been utilized in the sense of proper management. That can range from preservation to sustainable utilization. Second, that the value added that is generated by using the resources is far from what it could be, in many respects.
  Thus the trends at the moment take on a worrying dimension when 44 percent of Africa's land, in one form or another, is today considered degraded. You have predictions of a population by 2025 of over 1.2 billion people. We start to focus really on what are some of the underlying trends.
  I would like to focus for the remaining 2 or 3 minutes, I think, that I have on three issues: the threats, the key problems, and the lessons learned. And in many ways, one leads to the other.
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  We see, in much of what we have learned from conservation across Africa, that the key issue that has emerged really relates to management responsibility. The phenomena is that natural resource management has been planned, executed and, in a sense, benefited from largely by central government authorities. Delegation and devolution to this day remain really an insignificant part of the control over the natural resources. And yet, the very people who actually live with the resources are not able to manage and really execute sustainable management practices.
  That, in turn, relates a lot to tenure and security. I think, from some of the presentations that Dr. Child gave, it gave you a sense of why tenure and the security of actually having the potential flow of benefits return to the very people that actually manage the resource is so important, and not to be captured simply outside the area.
  Another issue is really accessing markets. Much of Africa has relied on its resources being discovered by outsiders, whether it is in the local national context or nations and internationally. And therefore, the whole value added that can be generated from its use has usually been at the expense of local communities and absorbed by elites of a few and many of the international enterprises without really sharing the opportunities that markets provide. This really has to do with capturing the value added.
  I would like to move into the last part of my presentation very briefly, on the lessons learned. We have, I think, seen in conservation five particular priorities that we see as necessary to bring natural resources to their full potential in economic development.
  The first one is decentralizing governments and management back to those who have the greatest potential within the given situation in Africa today to actually make a difference in whether sustainability in resource management can take place.
  The second one is to promote collaborative management regimes. We believe that for far too long the notion that it has to be either government or a community, and the private sector usually, is a threat to African governments and societies is probably outdated. We look toward collaborative arrangements as the real options for leveraging resources, capital and skills, at the same time putting those that are with the resource very much in the power of using it.
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  Evaluation is another aspect. I think for far too long we have seen Africa's natural resources as undervalued or not valued at all. And so decisionmakers do not recognize the values that they are, in fact, selling very often below rates that they could receive.
  The fourth ones, incentives and equitable sharing of benefits, I have referred to before. I think legislation on policy frameworks in Africa are beginning to address more and more the need for people to actually have equitable sharing of benefits and therefore get the incentives. Because without incentives, there is no reason why a community or an individual household should actually invest in common property resources.
  And finally, reinvesting in resource productivity. For much of the colonial and post-colonial era, resource use in Africa has really been more akin to mining than sustainable management. The reinvestment of resources or benefits into the actual management has been very low. So protected areas do not receive income from tourism. Fishing licenses are sold and not reinvested in actual management of fish stocks, similarly reforestation.
  Therefore, to conclude my presentation, I would like to leave two messages with you, and much of this is obviously described in more detail in my presentation. That is that within the continent of Africa, you are beginning to see many interesting examples. In fact, the answers for resource management are emerging from within the continent. Whether you take the 7-S movement in the Sahara, the CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe, and in fact many of its neighboring countries with similar programs, or the example of Namibia which banned fishing by foreign vessels in 1990 after independence and since seen a dramatic improvement of its fish stocks. So much so, that it is now growing at a rate of about 30 percent per annum in terms of its GDP.
  We see responsible decisions being taken on the continent and outside support should focus on strengthening those initiatives that are emerging. And it is certainly, from our point of view, not only a continent of doom. In fact, for conservation, I think the last few years have shown us more and more examples of where we actually need to invest.
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  Thank you very much.
  [The prepared statement of Mr. Steiner appears in the appendix.]

  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Steiner. I am going to hold my questions for the panel until the end and allow Mr. Payne, at this time, if you have any questions.
  Mr. PAYNE. Unfortunately, I missed all of the testimony. We have one of those odd afternoons where the votes are supposed to come, I was waiting for the vote and should have come here. You came, I guess.
  The question of undervalued resources, what do you think can be done so that it is basically just exploitation? Are there any organizations or sort of conservation groups like yourself that might give advice to government officials, whether they would be willing to listen? Or has there been any consideration of an approach like that, to any of your knowledges?
  Mr. FOX. Certainly, within the non-governmental organization community here in the States, there are a number of efforts to work with governments to see how economic decisions that they are taking will have either a beneficial or a detrimental effect on the long-term sustainability of whatever the resource is, as well as a negative or beneficial effect on the actual capacity of the government to carry out its own functions.
  Most of those efforts have revealed that most of the agreements reached to exploit natural resources are, in fact, detrimental both to the long-term health of the resource and to the capacity of the government to fulfill its mandate.
  Similarly, there are some economic tools that have been developed, some by my organization, the World Resources Institute, to value natural resources in a way that they can be fully integrated into economic decisions; and thereby they can have the same impact on economic decisionmaking as the usual capital measurements.
  Mr. CHILD. I have got a similar comment as well. I mean, if you want to value a goat you do not talk about it in the university, you take it to the market and you bargain, contrasting forestry where there is not much bargaining and a lot of the marketing margin is captured by large companies.
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  What has happened in southern Africa is with the devolution of rights to people, they have instead of the government selling hunting or tourism to the first person that comes, you have got communities putting out tenders and interviewing up to 12 or 15 safari outfitters. And that has driven the price up. We have got figures from the CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe where the price increased 450 percent in 5 years by giving the power to the people to choose who they did business with.
  And at the same time, it changes the entire relationship. What you used to have was big white hunters sort of walking over communities. Now what happens is the community is actually in charge and the--what is termed--the exploiter is subservient to him. So you change the whole power relationship as well, as well as the price.
  So the whole issue is another tenurial problem.
  Mr. PAYNE. I missed the testimony and really have not had a chance to read it. But I know in Zimbabwe we had the question of representatives from the government coming over to discuss the overpopulation of elephants. Does anyone have any comments on that and where do you--is it actually over population or is there any way to control it without cropping? Does anyone have any insight on that problem?
  Mr. CHILD. I will make some comments. I do not want to get into the issue of the ivory trade because that is a complex issue. In ecological terms, one of Zimbabwe's problems is that they have conserved wildlife, particularly elephants, and their population has increased from about 43,000 at the turn of the century to about 68,000 now, which is twice as much carrying capacity. So if there are too many elephants, just like too many cattle, it destroys the environment. And you have got to do something with those elephants because they are destroying the environment.
  At the same time, you are in an unethical position where you have got people starving and you are not using your resource.
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  From an African's perspective, an elephant is not seen as a cuddly, lovely animal. It is seen as a pest and it is seen as something that is edible. So they see it as an almost cultural imperialism, the fact that the West is telling them that they cannot eat and sell their elephants. There is a major communication problem between western countries and Africans about the whole elephant issue.
  It is blown up into a lot of conflict and it needs to be compromised.
  Mr. STEINER. May I comment briefly on this? I think one of the important issues is that Zimbabwe has become, in many ways, a sort of focal country for much of the debate on resource management. I think the important part of the lessons to be learned from Zimbabwe are, as I think you pointed out at the beginning, that if you manage your resource appropriately you have the appropriate management systems in place. In fact, the resource, even in a very competitive situation where people are competing with wildlife for land and habitat, you in fact can have an expansion of habitat. Therefore, you know, the whole option for the country to manage and utilize its biodiversity in due course increases.
  I think the important thing that we have found at IUCN is that Zimbabwe, in many ways, is a pioneer country because it is also one of the most transparent in a sense. Its elephant management program and data are considered basically across the world to be probably the most detailed and best carried out surveys, including by very recognized authorities like Ian Douglas Hamilton, who may be known to you as one of the principal people who introduced the whole African elephant counting systems a few years ago.
  I think what we all in conservation at the moment are looking for is whether the answer is sustainable and replicable in many other contexts, as you pointed out. I think what we are seeing is a very interesting trend on the example of the elephant. But really, the elephant is only the tip of the iceberg so to speak. With it comes the whole biodiversity and the habitat. And there we are seeing basically across Africa now a growing number of countries looking at options that take the same example as a starting point.
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  Mr. PAYNE. Just quickly, because we are going to have to leave, do you think that there can be a balance of wildlife and the maintenance of wildlife in Africa with so-called development and things? Just not only elephants but just in general.
  Mr. STEINER. At the moment, yes. I think if you look at many parts of Africa, if you look at the population density compared to Asian countries where it is sometimes 400 to 500 per square kilometer, in Africa we talk about between 4 to 15 per square kilometer. You get a sense, I think, that there is still room. I think the problem comes more when you talk about very isolated parts or very low rainfall areas where competition is much, much stronger.
  I think the real challenge is that we are in a transition period. I think Africa, over the next 20 to 40 years will have to find take-off roots for its population to move out of the rural-based economy. Without that, I think we will basically get into more and more difficult situations; at least for the population growth to be absorbed into more urban and more industrialized development. If that is possible, then indeed the natural resource base at the moment buys a vital piece of time in that development process.
  Mr. PAYNE. Maybe one last question. I do not know if you are familiar with a certain kind of fish that was introduced into Lake Victoria a number of years ago and now it has almost become a predator where it is just eating up everything else in the lake. They do not know what to do. I guess it would be concluded that maybe it was a mistake to enter this kind of a fish that was such an aggressive fish, and it is large.
  Are there any kinds of lessons that we learn from sometimes thinking we are doing the right thing by something like that and it really comes back to haunt us? Do you find examples of where the wrong thing has been introduced and so on?
  Mr. STEINER. You may be surprised to hear that at the last World Conservation Congress which IUCN holds every 3 years and brings 3,000 of the world's leading conservation professionals together, it was--after habitat loss, alien invasive species as they are referred to in the context of conservation have become the second largest threat to biodiversity. The example you quote in Lake Malawi, although I am not familiar with the exact details, I am aware of that being one of the examples. And there are many others around the world.
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  With ship wastewater, we have had species introduced into areas like the Black Sea and so on that are causing great, great difficulties. And to my own surprise, and I think many of us, recent research has really lifted that particular--again, human induced--threat to a much, much higher level than we had ever thought.
  Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. FOX. If I could add something there, I think it is worth noting that what one might call environmental management tools are relatively quite new. The kind of example that you are citing might well have been caught by the rigorous application of environmental impact assessment, which is a relatively new environmental tool, even in this country. It is not surprising that it was not implemented in Africa some 15 or 20 years ago.
  But the use of such tools is now spreading as the governments' systems, and other institutions in Africa are focusing more on environmental management than they ever did before. And that is one of the glimmers of hope, one of the reasons why there is more of an enabling environment for effective natural resource management than was the case 5 or 10 years ago.
  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Payne. I am going to ask a couple of questions of Dr. Child.
  You mentioned that there were as many as 600,000 villagers involved in this operation, and I wondered if you could describe in a little more detail the mechanisms of community consensus and control that would be essential for the success of the program you describe.
  Mr. CHILD. In 1993, there were 600,000 people that actually got cash benefits from wildlife in Zimbabwe. What happens is I described the process where the communities get together and sell the hunting to an outfit, or whatever, or the tourism enterprise because it is not only hunting. They sell rights to hotels and that sort of thing.   Then the money comes down.
  You see, what you are trying to do is you are trying to introduce a transparent democratic system among people that cannot read and write. So you cannot have a democracy and a transparency through a paper and written stuff.
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  So one of the technologies that we have introduced is what we call the revenue distribution system. The finances are acted out in the hand, so the money comes down, it gets put on the table like this. If we are a community, we sit around and we discuss where did this money come from? Oh, it came from the wildlife. Gee, the wildlife is valuable. That is the first time, let us look after it. Who can benefit from it? So we discuss who is a member.
  That is the core of property rights. Who is the name of the company? Who is a shareholder?
  Then they discuss what do you want to do with it? Do we want cash? Do we want clinics? Do we want to invest in wildlife management? We will sit around for 2 days and debate how we want to allocate our money.
  Instead of what used to happen, you just send out a list to donors and they might pick up No. 3 and give it to you, you have to very carefully prioritize your money so you put it into the right resource. Once you have done that, say you have put money into a grinding motor or a clinic. Who is going to do it? You then have to elect a committee and you have to talk about, if it is a cash generating project, who is going to be the beneficiaries, et cetera, et cetera. So you have a whole process of people learning how to manage their own institutions.
  Then at the end of the year, those committees have to come back at an annual general meeting and report back on their finances. So you get transparency.
  So essentially--when the money comes, one of the real breakthroughs in CAMPFIRE, was every person comes up and gets their full share in cash. So they can feel it. They cannot read and write, but they can count money. Of course they can. They put it in their pocket. Then they walk over here to the table and if they have decided to put 50 percent of their money in the clinic, they count it out and put it in the clinic. The committee will be behind the table, so they know who they are giving the money to.
  So it is incredibly difficult to corrupt a system like that, because it is so transparent. Even if people cannot understand the accounts, they know that the treasurer has gone and got a new bicycle, and where did he get the money from? And they will sort those problems out.
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  Mr. ROYCE. Your prepared testimony suggests that, as you say, it is time to plot a transition path from development of systems to economic self-sufficiency in some African states. What would this path look like?
  Mr. CHILD. That is a big question. I think it is the path we need to start seriously looking about, because development assistance, we are like junkies. We are stuck on development assistance. We now have to phase ourselves out of that.
  In wildlife, we have been thinking about this in Southern Africa. What we would like to do is encourage trade that buys wildlife that is produced through a sustainable process, and put a green stamp on wildlife so it is sustainable. We do not think that scoring that would be that difficult.
  We have got basically two criterias that we think for wildlife. If the money goes back to the landholder, then that makes for socio-economic sustainability, because they will reinvest, and so on. So that is on the one side. If people have records of the quality of the trophies that come out, that makes a biological sustainability.
  So if you put that on your label and then you educate the consumer nations that buy products that are good, then that should push up the price of good products and reduce the price of bad products. I know that people are just starting to talk about this sort of thing, with fisheries in the North Sea and going into Europe. And also, with tropical forests, and they are using things like international standards organizations, Switzerland and so on.
  I think with the wildlife products, we should be looking at that. Maybe with a lot of the other natural resources, and using a market-led approach, not a big stick, or you do not let property rebound you. I mean, that just does not work.
  Mr. ROYCE. My last question to you would be: Do development aid agencies appreciate the market-oriented approach to the use of Africa's wildlife resources that you are advocating? I would ask that also to the other members of the panel for their observations, as well. Dr. Child?
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  Mr. CHILD. I think, if you look where the development agencies are putting their money, they are supporting it. We have got support from a large number of development agencies for these programs through southern Africa. They are happening everywhere, people like the Americans, the Japanese, most of the European countries, the Germans, the Scandinavians, they are all investing in these projects because they see that they promote democracy, they promote economic growth, and they promote conservation.
  So in the long term, that will reduce dependency on aid. I think there is tacit recognition that, there is recognition of that by them, as well as by the major conservation agencies. But not necessarily by people who consider the rights of animals to be more important than the rights of people. Those are the people that are attacking the trade.
  And we are in a difficult position because now we want to promote wildlife on the basis of trade. What happens if that trade closes down? It is quite a risky market. Should we not just stick with cattle and get rid of the wildlife anyway? That is the sort of debate that farmers are having in rural Africa.
  Mr. FOX. Can I speak to that?
  Mr. ROYCE. Absolutely.
  Mr. FOX. I think that the various aid donors, and this includes certainly our own AID but also all of the bilateral donors in Europe, are recognizing--perhaps particularly in the area of the environment and natural resources--how limited is the capacity of central governments in Africa to really make an impact on the problems.
  Therefore, they are looking hard at the role of local governments, and the role of civil society, and the role of private sector initiatives and capacities. These new incentive systems are being developed with a great deal of encouragement by the various foreign aid agencies.
  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Fox. I know Mr. Steiner has a plane to catch.
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  Mr. STEINER. Just two remarks, if we have time.
  Mr. ROYCE. OK, go ahead.
  Mr. STEINER. Was I supposed to be silent, sir? I did not mean to----
  Mr. ROYCE. Oh no, that is quite all right. I have a vote to catch as well, so go ahead and make your remarks.
  Mr. STEINER. Two remarks, I think. If aid were to be directed in its most strategic directions, in terms of natural resource management in Africa, I think I would like to echo its communities. If we can get communities put in place as resource management, I think that is one priority.
  The second one, I think, is developing markets. Africa has to begin to become an actor rather than just being used in the international market system. I think particularly the big trading nations have the capacity to help with that.
  And finally, I think investment capital. One of the biggest constraints to realizing the potential by communities and also by management companies in Africa is access to capital. I think if you can focus, and I know about some of the legislation you are developing in a development fund, I think in there with enterprise funds and so on there are some very critical ideas. Because it is here that we can really, from the outside, provide critical ingredients.
  The solutions are being developed in the continent. I think it is what we can bring to help those solutions actually emerge that will make a difference. Thank you.
  Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Steiner, Mr. Child, and Mr. Fox, and your full testimony will be included in the record of the committee. We appreciate it again. Thank you.
  This meeting is now adjourned.
  [Whereupon, at 3:32 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]