LIBREVILLE, (Reuters) – African nations must stop signing away their natural resources in skewed deals with foreign firms, the African winner of the 2009 “Green Nobel” prize, said in an interview.
Ona, a wheelchair-bound Gabonese activist, has won the African 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize for a decade of activism to protect the Congo Basin Rainforest, the second- largest rainforest in the world.
He exposed a secret $3.5 billion deal between the Gabonese government and a Chinese company to build a mine and dam in and around one of Gabon’s national parks. The ensuing outcry forced the government to cut the project concession by 90 percent.
“Africa can no longer sign contracts with economic partners to exploit their natural resources like they did in the 1930s,” Ona told Reuters in Gabon’s capital Libreville.
“Africa doesn’t have to be subservient to do business. We have resources and economic partners have money — it’s 50-50. Those who don’t want to do business by the terms that we fix should go elsewhere,” he said, before flying to the United States where he will receive his prize today.
Gabon is part of the Congo Basin and roughly 75 percent of the country is covered in dense tropical rainforest.
It is losing over 10,000 hectares of wooded land a year to logging, according to Mongabay, an environmental NGO. The World Wildlife Foundation estimated in 2002 that 70 percent of the forestry activities in Gabon were illegal.
In 2002, Gabonese President Omar Bongo designated 10 percent of the country’s land as national parks.
But in 2006, the government handed a 7,700-square- kilometer concession in and around Ivindo National Park to the Chinese company CMEC to develop the Belinga Mine. The project included construction of a railway, roads and a dam in the middle of central Africa’s most beautiful waterfalls to power the mine.
The agreement offered CMEC a 25-year tax break with Gabon receiving 10 percent of the project’s profits.
Ona, 45, leaked a copy of the agreement, and the strong public reaction rove the government to reduce the mining concession by 90 percent, scrap the tax break, and halt the project until an environmental impact assessment was done.
Chinese investment in Africa has burgeoned in recent years, but many of the deals between Chinese companies and African governments are shrouded in secrecy.
Ona was denied permission to leave Gabon three times last year and was held by the police in December, charged with possession of anti-government documents — a charge he denies.
Through his campaigning, he has become a household name in Gabon and is one of the most respected civil society leaders. “We appreciate his dedication and his work and especially the ideas that he defends in our country,” said Gaspard Obiang, a pastor in Libreville, speaking in a shopping center.
“Mr Ona can help engage young people to understand that nature is something unique that God has given us,” said Armel El Matcho, a security guard at the shopping center.
