Two sacks of salt, 18 bars of soap, four packets of coffee, 24 bottles of beer and two bags of sugar. That's the compensation a Congolese community can expect for giving a logging company access to huge areas of local rainforest. If they're really lucky, they might get a school or a pharmacy thrown in.

According to a report from environmental campaigning group Greenpeace, Carving up the Congo, corporations are offering gifts worth as little as $100 to local people in exchange for permission to cut down wood worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The report argues that a forestry code and a World Bank-backed moratorium on new logging contracts, introduced in 2002, have done little to stop foreign and Congolese companies sealing unfair deals. Greenpeace says that, by April 2006, members of the transitional government had signed 107 new contracts covering more than 15 million hectares of forest.

The World Bank now plans a legal review of land titles to check whether they comply with basic criteria. Greenpeace argues that, in many cases, there are "serious lapses of governance, a massive lack of institutional capacity to control the forestry sector, widespread illegalities and social conflicts, as well as clashes with established conservation initiatives".

All this is worrying not just because of the lack of benefits for forest communities - which include pygmy hunter-gatherers - but also from an environmental perspective. Greenpeace warns that Congo risks losing more than 40 percent of its forests, as the construction of logging roads makes way for poachers and clearance for agriculture.

And it cites predictions that future deforestation in the impoverished Central African nation will release up to 34.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050 - roughly equal to Britain's emissions over the last 60 years.

Sadly, when it comes to corrupt officials lining their pockets and corporations boosting their bottom lines, these concerns don't seem to count for much. As Michael Brown, head of Washington-based community development organisation Innovative Resources Management (IRM), pointed out at a recent seminar in London, money makes the world go round in Congo. And that applies to rural villagers as much as mining and forestry companies.

A river trip that should last five days takes two to three months because you're stopped at a barrier every few kilometres and forced to buy an illegal "visa". Ports overflow with "officials" who'll charge you for the privilege of cramming on to an overloaded boat. And don't expect to make it home without having to hand over a good chunk of your fish catch or grain harvest.

STARTING SMALL

IRM reckons that about $94 out of every $100 paid in "administration fees" is either an illegal charge or pocketed illicitly by someone, with the worst offenders being public officials, whose salaries often go unpaid.

"Petty corruption is perhaps the biggest problem in (Democratic Republic of Congo) today because it involves every single person," says Brown. "There is a culture of acceptance of corruption embedded in daily life, and people need to be 'un-brainwashed'."

IRM has helped communities set up 200 anti-corruption committees, which are doing their best to stamp out dodgy practices in some areas. But there's little evidence yet of a widespread change of behaviour at local government level.

National politicians hardly set a good example. According to a July 2006 report by Belgium-based think tank International Crisis Group, between 60 and 80 per cent of customs revenues are estimated to be embezzled. It said a quarter of the annual budget isn't properly accounted for - though experts say this amount is gradually being reduced - and millions of dollars are misappropriated in the army and state-run companies.

Academic Muzong Kodi, a fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House, says there's little political will at the higher echelons of government to put a stop to this kind of large-scale corruption. So it's important that pressure comes from below.

IRM's Brown thinks the best place to begin is in local communities. "If you start with 'simple' corruption issues, change is possible," he explains. "You create a broad-swell, bottom-up movement, and that should lead to the higher levels to get to grand corruption."

Kodi and Brown argue that one of the main barriers stopping ordinary people from demanding an end to corruption is a lack of knowledge about its scale, how much it really costs them, and their rights. "Most people have no access to information," says Kodi. "Civil society organisations can play a big role in getting (information) out."

Had those forest communities understood that just one tree can be worth almost $8,000 in Europe, it's unlikely that their chiefs would have traded thousands of hectares of valuable wood for a boatload of beer and sugar.

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