Virunga National Park, classified as a World Heritage site
sits amongst the Rwenzori Mountains on the eastern portion of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC). It spectacular features include its most well
known residents, hippos and mountain gorillas. It is believed to have more
biological diversity than any other protected area in Africa, no doubt in large
part due to its mountain forests, wetlands, savanna grassland, volcanoes and
lakes.
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Created by Belgian King Albert in 1925, the park has
witnessed many tragedies and harbored much crime including heavy poaching,
hunting, illegal mining and more.
More recently, in 2010, the DRC government defied
international criticism to allocating 85 per cent of the park to oil interests.
Oil and gas exploration company Soco, an offshoot of Snyder Oil Corporation in
the U.S. believes that reserves currently being explored by several companies
over the border in Uganda extend into the park.
More controversially, Soco claims that the oil,
which is thought to be mostly under and around Lake Edward, can be extracted
from Virunga without doing environmental harm. And the company suggests that
its activities can “help raise living standards for local communities to levels
sufficient to reduce their pressure and negative impacts on the protected
area.” So far Soco says that it has improved a road, built a medical center,
and installed a mobile phone mast at Nyakakoma, one of three legal fishing
villages in the park.
The DRC government, whose state oil company has a
15% stake in the enterprise, reiterated its support for the oil
exploration in a statement in March. This support extends to the government
agency in charge of the park, the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of
Nature (ICCN), which issued a permit to Soco allowing the oil-exploration
activity.
The ICCN’s best-known employee, de Merode, has in
the past publicly voiced opposition to exploiting oil in the park. But back in
the capital city of Kinshasa, his bosses have issued Soco a permit to work
there — effectively an exemption from a 1969 national law banning resource
exploitation in national parks — and received a fee for doing so. Under DRC
law, the ICCN is permitted to issue exemptions not only for scientific studies
but also for projects deemed to be in the wider national interest.
Whatever the politics in the DRC, internationally
there is little support for the idea of seeking oil in an iconic national park
that was elevated to the status of a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979.
UNESCO warned in 2011 of the “extremely harmful repercussions of this type of
activity for the outstanding universal value of Virunga National Park.”
Read more at: Yale360.
Hippo image via Shutterstock.