Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ment. Sally and Michael often diverted their own salaries to needs in the field, and for André, the
hardest moment came when he had only three dollars left in his house, which his wife planned to
use to buy food for the family. He was supposed to email a report to BCI, and he would have to pay
exactly three dollars for the Internet use at a nearby business.
She said, “You're telling me that you want to spend the money for Internet when we need food.”
“
Oui, madame
,” he responded.
She went into the bedroom, came out, and threw the money at him. He took his flash drive and
ran to send the documents. When he returned, he went to a small garden he'd planted near the house
and began harvesting what he could find. But his wife refused to eat with him.
Not long after, BCI began paying him $500 a month even though they lacked funding for
Sankuru. They bought him a new motorcycle when his ceased to work and supplied him with radios
to communicate with people in the field. BCI also took over costs of ACOPRIK's students, who
were being educated to work in the reserve.
Having been further marginalized in the conservation community, Sally and Michael looked to
carbon credits to support the reserve. In Kokolopori, BCI had been working on proposals for Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM), the first carbon credit program under the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997
international treaty that obliges signatories among industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. CDM worked through reforestation and preservation of forests that would allow the re-
serve to sell credits to industrialized nations or businesses. But international standards for carbon
credits were still being formulated, and for Sankuru, BCI hoped to develop a contract with the gov-
ernment that would put BCI and ACOPRIK in charge of how they were managed.
In speaking of Sally and Michael, André recalled their determination.
“I saw how hard they tried. They weren't working miracles, but they were nourishing my hope
with small solutions. They were giving me enough to sustain what I'd already built. I fully under-
stood the depth of Sally's tenacity at the end of 2009, when we were negotiating with the govern-
ment so that the reserve could manage carbon credits. On each of her trips to Kinshasa, she met
with government officials and spoke with the minister of the environment. Once, just after she'd
left, I had a conference with the minister, but he refused to sign and told me to forget the proposal. I
called Sally and she said, 'André, you do not have the right to forget about that proposal. You have
to go see him again. This isn't just for Sankuru, but for all people.'”
BCI's goal was to develop a protocol for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation (REDD), a carbon credit system that allowed reserves to work with several different
international programs. But given that there was no precedent for REDD carbon financing in the
DRC, the process took six months. BCI developed a contract with the help of the DLA Piper
law firm, which had offered its services pro bono, supporting BCI from both its DC and Brussels
branches. At the BCI Kinshasa offices, when the ICCN was holding a commission with BCI on
REDD, the staff joked about the
troisième bureau
, the third office. The
deuxième bureau
, the second
office, refers to where one goes to have an affair. The third one was the parking lot outside the Min-
istry of the Environment, where vendors sold Cokes and phone cards, and BCI's staff waited each
time the commission was to be convened.
André recounted in his sparse manner how, at yet another meeting, the minister insisted that he
needed to speak with Sally. André called her, she took the next flight to Kinshasa, and they signed
the contracts—the first-ever government contract for REDD in the Congo.
