Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
While bonobos as symbols might sound quaint in the context of rainforest villages or community
building, the importance of the coalitions they represent shouldn't be minimized. Traveling, I've
often encountered disillusioned youths who have worked with NGOs, whether humanitarian or con-
servation, and who are heading home, finished with saving the world. Their stories are remarkably
similar: infighting, power grabs, projects that have more to do with the people running them than
with what or whom they are trying to protect.
If the stories told by those involved with BCI and Vie Sauvage are to be believed, the greatest
challenge to the conservation work being done by BCI and its Congolese partners isn't government
ministries, corrupt officials, or decayed infrastructure, but rather competing NGOs. As Sally ex-
plained, BCI's greatest challenges began with the arrival of the large conservation NGOs that came
to the Congo under the auspices of USAID. With the end of the Second Congo War, USAID initially
decided to allocate fifty-three million dollars to the Congo basin, funds that were to be matched by
hundreds of millions more from donors and governments abroad. The resulting project, the Congo
Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), set about dividing the Congo basin into twelve “landscapes” and
putting the big international NGOs—the BINGOs—in charge.
CBFP's mandate emphasized partnership and resource-sharing with those already working on
the ground. However, there were some regions where none of the BINGOs had worked, and while
BCI was one of the few organizations already operating in these regions, it was small, nothing com-
pared to the larger, more established structures of the World Wildlife Fund and the African Wildlife
Foundation. BCI's 2011 revenue reached $1 million in 2011, compared to $26 million for AWF and
$238 million for WWF. BCI met with AWF, which had yet to work within the Maringa-Lopori-
Wamba landscape (containing Kokolopori), providing it with information for its bid to become
landscape administrator. And yet while AWF's proposal used information from one of BCI's studies
of the region, it didn't credit BCI, and shortly after AWF had been made landscape administrator, it
distanced itself from BCI. As Alden Almquist recalls, the person he had worked with at AWF told
BCI that the subcontracting was being organized in Kinshasa.
In the decade that followed, AWF would resist sharing funding with BCI, preferring to set up
its own projects. When BCI petitioned to receive a portion of the funds directly, Sally recalled how
USAID told her that BCI had to work through AWF. Between 2002 and 2011, the United States
government invested $98 million in the twelve CBFP landscapes (at least $50 million of which was
matched by foreign donors); of the millions that AWF received for the landscape that contained the
Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve, only $3,650 went directly to BCI—in 2004, to support a survey. Even
though the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve was an integral and ecologically rich part of the landscape
and made a nationally gazetted protected area in 2009, it was left off AWF's CARPE/CBFP map of
the landscape for several years.
