The Congo Basin (CB) region is highly relevant in both environmental and social terms. Due to the various roles and meanings that forests play in the region, it becomes urgent to understand how forestry companies disclose their (alleged) corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. This work aims at identifying which CSR themes are more often disclosed by companies, and verifying geographical patterns according to their headquarters location, in a region where studies on the subject are scarce. A grid of CSR themes enabled the analysis of the website contents of 37 forestry sector firms operating in the CB. Companies were divided in three geographical regions, according to the location of their headquarters: West, Africa, and Asia. The results suggest that the companies value timber certification and prefer to focus on disclosing environmental themes related to their operations. Education and health are the most disclosed themes, in line with contractual obligations. There is a clear relation between the disclosure and the geographical origin of the companies: Western companies disclose more than their Asian and African counterparts. The near-absence of disclosure around human and workers’ rights by Asian companies is notorious.

Introduction

The second largest tropical rainforest in the world is located in the CB. It plays a fundamental role on the preservation of biodiversity and climate regulation by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide and contributing to limiting global warming. Around 60 million people depend on this forest for their livelihoods, and it has a crucial social and cultural role for local populations and regional economies (de Wasseige et al., 2015). Despite having inherited good infrastructures from the colonial period and having huge reserves of raw-materials (Matti, 2010), the region is politically and economically collapsing. CB countries (Fig. 1) score low on human development index (UNEP, 2016): life expectancy is short, fertility rates and population growth are amongst the highest in the world, and illiteracy rates are significant. Besides, they are amongst the worst in terms of business environment (World Bank, 2017), with high indexes of hunger (von Grebmer et al., 2012) and corruption (Transparency International, 2016). The forestry sector harvests a natural raw material – wood. Logging generates positive and negative environmental and social impacts, some of which are specific to the CB. The most frequently mentioned impact consists on the construction of logging roads. Such infrastructures generate direct and (mainly) indirect impacts. They damage the forest cover, increase bush meat demand and facilitate access of poachers to previously remote locations (de Wasseige et al., 2014). The upsurge in the circulation of vehicles and people place challenges on the region, namely the emergence of new diseases, the supply of significant quantities of alcohol and toxic industrial products (e.g. glues) used as drugs, generating previously non-existent problems (Amaral, 2016). Albeit relatively well preserved, the forest is threatened by the foreseen economic boom, large scale farming projects, and illegal wood extraction activities in the region (Defourny et al., 2011). The timber industry is an important source of income and jobs for the CB and will be decisive for the future of the forests in the region (Brunner and Ekoko, 2000). This relevance may affect each country differently, as some of them (i) have considerable forest resources but an underdeveloped forest sector, such as Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); (ii) abundant forest resources and an active timber sector, such as Republic of Congo, Gabon and southeast Cameroon; and (iii) scarce forest resources and a small but active forest sector, such as Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and south Cameroon (Ruiz-Pérez et al., 2005). Perspectives of economic growth raise concerns over the role of companies in social development, sustainability of timber operations,