Putting forest communities on the map!
Current research on deforestation suggests that securing community land rights is one of the most effective ways in which to protect forests and reduce poverty in forest communities.
In the last four year's hundreds of men and women from Bantu and indigenous communities have been trained to use a very powerful anti-logging device to protect their rainforest home, their lands and their access to forest resources. Their tool, the mighty Geographical Positioning System (GPS) is part of a mapping project that last year extended to cover another three counties in the Congo Basin.
Why we produce maps of the forest?
To show how forest communities use (and have used for centuries) the forest and its resources as a first step to get legal rights to the land.
In many cases logging concessions and decisions on how the forest is used are based on maps that are made from satellite photos which don't show the small village communities that are using the forest without destroying it.
Community mapping or ‘participatory mapping' (as it's sometimes referred) is the process of working with indigenous and other communities to make maps of the forests they live in and use for hunting, fishing, or have sacred sites in. Community members are trained to use Global Positioning System (GPS) units (which use satellites to show the user's current position - similar to the devices in SatNav systems) to map areas of the forest, based on the communities' use of the forest. The data from these devices is then used to create detailed and highly accurate digital maps. Once these maps are complete, each forest village has a record of the land that they use.
As a first step to legal protection, these maps are used as a basis for the communities to negotiate with decision makers in Government, and thus provide a vital tool for defining forest use and defending community land rights.
Where it all started
Our mapping work started in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2006 where our NGO partners and "trainers of trainers" have helped some 528 men and women from Bantu and indigenous communities to produce maps of their traditional lands. A total of 12 mapping laboratories have been equipped and are fully operative, and which have produced a total of 48 community maps covering an area of more than one million acres. Originally intended to cover just five provinces, the project was extended to cover areas in 11 provinces in DRC as a result of its great success.
In 2009 year we extended the great work in DRC and started mapping forest communities in Gabon, the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Republic of Congo too.
So one year into the new project how have we done?
The new project (Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic) has made great strides during its first year with some 69 NGO and government representatives trained as mapping facilitators or "trainers of trainers". More than 20 of these have also been trained as specialist GIS (geographic information system) technicians who are operating three new sophisticated mapping laboratories (one in each country). So far this has enabled a total of 28 forest communities to produce fully geo-referenced maps of their traditional territories and resources on which they depend.
Over the next 6 months, RFUK and its local partners will work with these communities to use their maps to support their rights in a variety of different ways including negotiating with the government over their land rights and access to resources, challenging logging companies and in applying for community managed forests. Over the coming year we also plan to assist 30 additional communities to produce their maps and giving them a voice.
