African Unification Front
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RIVER CONGO: ONE OF THE CLEANEST IN THE WORLD
The Congo River, Africa's second longest, is one of the world's purest major rivers, according to a recent survey. Although it is heavily used for travel, the Congo remains relatively unpolluted because there are few industrial centers along its banks. In contrast, the longest river in the world, the Nile, is seriously polluted by agricultural irrigation, industrial waste and sewage. In addition, much of the Nile's potential flow is lost through evaporation, largely from reservoirs.
The findings were made by the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, a Paris-based organization supported by the World Bank and the United Nations. The group studied 500 of the world's major rivers and offered a generally pessimistic appraisal. "More than one-half of the world's major rivers are being seriously depleted and polluted, degrading and poisoning the surrounding ecosystems, thus threatening the health and livelihood of people who depend upon them for irrigation, drinking and industrial water," the study reported.
According to the commission, water pollution and the subsequent environmental degradation are largely responsible for the existence of some 25 million environmental refugees worldwide (as compared to 21 million refugees who flee war), people leaving their homes in search of cleaner places to live.
Experts say the quality and amount of river water can be increased through international cooperation to make more efficient use of resources and reduce pollution. The commission also urged that everyone be guaranteed access to clean water. The Amazon in South America ranked alongside the Congo as an exceptionally clean major river. On the other hand, seriously polluted and overused waterways include the Yellow River in China, the Colorado River in the United States, and the Amu Darya and Syr Darya Rivers in Russia and Central Asia.
Although it is relatively pristine, the Congo and its tributaries have nonetheless long been the traditional highways of central Africa. Altogether the Congo River comprises 10,000 miles of waterways, which flow past varied topography including dense tropical forests. The Kongo people are believed to have begun settling along its banks in the twelfth century, eventually forging a large empire with the river as its heart. The Kongo Kingdom lasted for several hundred years. The arrival of the Portuguese in 1483 and the rise of the slave trade weakened the Kongo state until it broke into factions following battles with the Europeans in 1665.
However, the Kongo remained influential throughout the colonial era and today are a major ethnic group in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the former Zaire, and in the Republic of the Congo, often called Congo-Brazzaville.
The Congo River has also played an important role in recent political upheavals in both nations. In May 1997, Mobutu Sese Seko left Kinshasa, Zaire, and fled across the river to Brazzaville, in the Republic of the Congo to escape the army of Laurent-Désiré Kabila. A few months later, the flight was in the opposite direction, as thousands of supporters of ousted President Pascal Lissouba used boats to avoid the army of General Denis Sassou-Nguesso, which had entered Brazzaville and proclaimed a new government. One of the strange ironies of the river's relative cleanliness is the fact that political strife and corruption have stunted development in both Congos for decades, with successive regimes placing little emphasis on building industries which would boost the nations' economies, and, paradoxically, cause greater pollution of the river.
In the west, the Congo River has long been seen as a romantic symbol of exotic central Africa, which Victorians called "darkest Africa." In the 1870's, explorers David Livingstone and Henry M. Stanley traveled throughout the Congo basin. Shortly thereafter, Joseph Conrad sailed along the Congo and immortalized the river in his novel, Heart of Darkness. The river was also used by a less sympathetic westerner, Belgian King Leopold II, who mercilessly looted the region in the late nineteenth century. Tons of rubber, ivory, gold and other treasures were floated down the Congo and shipped off to Europe in a staggering process of colonial exploitation which was enforced with a brutality that killed millions of the people living along the Congo's banks.
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