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In a letter jointly signed by 30 researchers and addressed publically to the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment, Professor Simon Lewis (University of Leeds) and his colleagues denounced the potentially negative impact of logging in the vast swamplands of the Congolese Cuvette, which partly comprises peatlands. The letter requested that Norway refuse to fund a programme for sustainable forest management in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) submitted by Agence Française de Développement (AFD) in 2017. The purpose of this programme is to revive legal logging, which is in sharp decline in the country, and to back better management of forest resources by providing support to the national and provincial forestry boards, and by improving governance.

In DRC, as in the Republic of Congo, the law authorizes the inclusion of these swamplands in the concessions granted to logging companies. While quite rare in the Republic of Congo, in DRC around 4.5 million hectares, i.e. 26% of the swamplands in the country, are entirely or partially covered by thirty or so concessions.

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