Everything is linked to everything; the backstory to your mobile phone battery.

A guest blog by Karine Nohr

This column has previously written about the links between Sheffield  Environmentalists and Congolese Environmentalists. This relationship started in 2021 when the UK hosted the annual global environmental COP meeting. Because the Congolese contributors were denied visas to attend the COP, some Sheffielders platformed their perspective for them, and have done so repeatedly at other events since then.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in Central Africa, has massive rainforests and peatlands, second only in size to the Amazon Forest as a global carbon sink. ‘Carbon sink’ refers to the ability of a place to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, essential to counteracting rising levels of carbon dioxide, caused mainly by the burning of oil, gas and coal (‘fossil fuels’).  That is why the tropical forests of the Amazon and the Congo are so important because high carbon dioxide levels lead to increasing global temperatures. 

The DRC is one of the richest countries in the World in natural resources. As well as having the second largest tropical forest in the World, it is also rich in other natural resources, including minerals such as Cobalt, Gold, Zinc and Copper, arable land and massive biodiversity, such as the famous Mountain Gorillas. Nevertheless, it is one of the poorest countries on the Planet and many people live in extreme poverty. All of us in the rest of the World want to profit from their resources, but we want to get it as cheaply as possible, without concern as to how it is sourced, or who gets hurt in the process of that sourcing. 

The mining of Cobalt, for example, which has multiple uses, from mobile phone batteries to engines to magnets,  is romantically known as ‘artisanal mining’. What this tragically means in reality is that the mining is completely unregulated, by desperate people digging a hole in the ground and getting it out with their hands. Even pregnant women and children are involved in climbing into these dangerous holes. Because the DRC does not have refinery infrastructure, people load up sacks of mined materials onto their bicycles and cycle the stuff on tracks and muddy paths to sell their sacks to traders, for pitiable prices, who often then sell it to Rwanda, on the Eastern border of the DRC. Rwanda has refinery infrastructure and is able to sell the refined product to International Companies who seek it out (such as mobile phone factories). 

Eastern Congo has been suffering terrible conflict for a long time. In recent weeks there has been a huge escalation of violence, by the M23 Army, funded by Rwanda. This complex fight is for DRC’s natural resources. Rwanda has financial stakes in the mining of rare minerals in the Congo.   The M23 Army has been entering villages in Eastern Congo, randomly killing and raping. Villagers, who already barely owned a cooking pot or a spare set of clothes, have fled with all their worldly possessions on their backs.  Children, who should be at school, or at play, are on the run, literally,  with no food and no infrastructure to support them. The scale of the tragic fallout from this conflict is staggering; now 7 million people have been internally displaced and hundreds of thousands of people have died.

And, shockingly,  our UK Government is funding the Rwandan Government, through its absurd refugee relocation scheme. The UK Government has paid £240 million (without sending a single refugee), £220 million of this for ‘economic development’ with a further £50 million to be paid this year. Additionally, there will be a fixed payment for each refugee sent. And, deceptively, our Government has legislated that Rwanda is a “safe” country, in full knowledge that they are involved in this conflict.

Our brave young friends, the Congolese environmentalists, have spent their entire lives living in a war. They have never known peace. They have lost many friends and family members, who were completely innocent bystanders to this conflict.  Striving for nonviolent solutions that bring peace and stability to their country, they have fought intensely to protect their rainforests from fossil fuel exploration, the very forests that the rest of us all over the World need to be protected in order to help stop the Planet overheating. We, all of us, have needed them to do this. Now, once again rising conflict on the ground means that there are even more innocent victims. Additionally, they are being bombed. The severe poverty will only worsen. The absence of security, of medical aid and other humanitarian aid is unimaginable. We have a significant Congolese population in our city of Sheffield. Many have fled to safety here, but remain intensely concerned about their families and friends back home.

Time and time again our Congolese friends have worked to protect their Forests from exploitation. Time and time again these attempts have been sabotaged by international greed and enterprise. This is heart-breaking.  

We need to be so much better informed, on so many issues, to understand the linkages and the consequences of our consumer lifestyle. And our Government should be accountable for the way it spends our taxpayer money in this irresponsible, immoral and reckless manner, in their support of criminal and evil politics abroad. 

Further reading

Extinction Rebellion Press Release

Guardian article It’s time to ask why the US and UK fund Rwanda while atrocities mount up in DRC

DRC football team protest

Comment from Extinction Rebellion UK (Facebook)