About half of the Republic of Congo’s dense rainforests have been participating in a forest protection project under the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) framework. In exchange, the country is supposed to receive payments from the World Bank. But Mongabay Africa staff writer Elodie Toto’s recent investigation revealed the nation has also granted nearly 80 gold mining and exploration permits in areas covered by the project, driving deforestation and negatively impacting local populations.

She joins the podcast this week to explain what she saw, and what she uncovered in the investigation.

"It was beyond words, if I may say. I could see people using excavators to uproot trees. I could see them washing the earth and it basically looked [like] a war zone," Toto says on this episode of the podcast.

Toto is also part of Mongabay Africa's team producing a new French-language podcast, Planète Mongabay, and discusses how the program makes environmental news more accessible to audiences who often prefer to get their news via audio or video.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Cover image: An excavator digs for gold at the Alangong-Bamegod-Inès mining site in the Sangha. According to environmentalist Justin Chekoua, “nothing seems to be done” to preserve biodiversity at the site. Image by Elodie Toto for Mongabay.

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Timecodes
(00:00) Rainforest given over to gold mining

(10:17) Curious connections & justifications

(17:34) The law of the land
(22:03) In plain sight
(25:33) Planète Mongabay