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DRC: Conservation authorities will reconsider communities’ role in conservation in controversial new rainforest reserve
Kinshasa: WWF and the DRC government’s protected areas authority have agreed to reconsider the status of a controversial protected area after meeting yesterday with representatives of local communities who were threatened with loss of their lands and access to natural resources on which they depend for their livelihoods and survival. Supported by Rainforest Foundation UK, … Read more
Are national parks in the Congo Basin failing biodiversity and people? New ‘paradigm’ of conservation needed – RFUK
The briefing, “Protected Areas in the Congo Basin: Failing People and Biodiversity?”, which contains the initial findings of detailed research due to be published in 2015, states that, despite hundreds of millions of dollars having been spent on conservation efforts in the Congo Basin over the past 10 years, current conservation policy and practice in the … Read more
Rethinking Community-based Forest Management in the Congo Basin (Executive Summary)
This summary of our in-depth study considers the constraints and opportunities for community-based forest management in the region with a careful examination of indigenous and customary systems of forest resource management and rights.
Enough Rainforest Martyrs – Rainforest Foundation Statement
RAINFOREST FOUNDATION STATEMENT Four Peruvian indigenous environmental and human rights activists, including outspoken Asháninka leader Edwin Chota, were brutally murdered on September 1st or 2nd, 2014, near the Brazilian border, presumably by illegal loggers from whom they had been receiving death threats. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident, but follows a long-term pattern of … Read more
DRC forest communties are “Squatters on their own lands” – RFUK report finds
A new report published today by the Rainforest Foundation UK challenges current laws in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which ascribe all ownership of land to the State and deprive forest dwelling people of any right to own or protect forest for their own benefit. The study, “In Search of Land Laws that Protect … Read more
New Community Forest Decree in DRC – RFUK Briefing
The DRC is at a cross-roads. The passing of the long-awaited community forest decree, ongoing land reform initiatives, land-use zoning/planning and the development of very large-scale REDD projects, are all likely to have an important impact on the world’s second largest rainforest and its inhabitants. Over the next two months, the Rainforest Foundation UK will … Read more
Mapping and Forest Governance in the Congo Basin
This leaflet provides information about RFUK’s Mapping and Forest Governance (MFG) Programme, designed to contribute to poverty reduction, sustainable management and improved governance of tropical rainforests in the Congo Basin.
New Community Forest Decree in the Democratic Republic of Congo
On August 2nd 2014, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) passed into law decree 14/1018 fixing the modalities for attributing local ‘community forest concessions’, enacting Article 22 of 2002 Forest Code. This briefing considers some of the potential opportunities and risks for the DRC’s forests arising from this new legislation, as well … Read more
Update from the Field
CAMEROON RFUK staffer Georges-Thierry Handja (pictured centre) has just finished training sixteen Cameroonians who will join our team as we start to map areas of rainforest under imminent threat from palm oil companies, logging and road-building. Over the next five years, we aim to digitally map an area of Congo Basin rainforest 30 times the … Read more
World Bank Safeguard Policies
Proposed changes to World Bank safeguard policies will undermine decades of advances in indigenous peoples’ rights – Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) As the United Nations (UN), prepares to mark International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples tomorrow, August 9, the rights of the world’s indigenous peoples are now under greater threat by new policies being … Read more