DR Congo planning to allow oil exploration in national parks

Democratic Republic of Congo's government is seeking to reclassify swathes of two UNESCO-listed parks so that oil exploration can be carried out there, an investigative group said. The London-based NGO Global Witness said it had seen documents about a scheme to "redraw the boundaries" of the fabled Salonga and Virunga national parks, home to many of the planet's endangered species.
The move would remove protected status from areas for which oil licences have been awarded, thus enabling exploration there to go ahead, it said on Thursday. A special commission of ministers and DRC civil servants met on April 27 to push through the plan, it said. The group said documents signed by DRC's oil minister, Aime Ngoi Muken, set out the legal framework for changing the areas' status.