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Gabon’s Massaha community sacred forest being logged despite government assurances for it to become a community protected area
Massaha community’s sacred forest being logged despite government assurances for it to become Gabon’s first-ever community protected area. Logging has resumed in northeastern Gabon in the local community of Massaha’s ancestral forest of unique bio-cultural diversity, despite a commitment by the Forest Ministry to suspend all timber operations in the area and to support the … Read more
New alerts map shows vital role of forest communities in tackling illegal logging
RFUK and its local partners in Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Peru have launched a webmap that includes thousands of illegal alerts sent by local community monitors using the ForestLink system. While satellite forest monitoring has transformed our ability to detect forest loss, ForestLink … Read more
Increased funding for forest communities can transform global climate and biodiversity efforts — but reimagining how is critical
Ongoing challenges have prevented funding from going directly to indigenous peoples and local communities in tropical forests who are key to combating the climate crisis. In a new briefing, the Rainforest Foundations of the UK, US and Norway come together to outline key steps to ensuring climate and biodiversity funding gets to the frontlines. Mounting scientific … Read more
Rural Women and Community Forest Monitoring: A Learning Experience
A guest Blog from our ForestLink partners: Woman community leader and young community observer in the middle of a data collection session using CAT S31 phones equipped with the “Collectaur” application © ECODEV 2020 Forests provide a wide range of products and materials essential to human life, and are integral to some 500 million people living in … Read more
Climate catastrophe looms as DRC oil plan poses new threat to Cuvette Centrale peatlands
The DRC government has adopted a plan to open up one of the world’s largest carbon sinks to oil drilling only months after it signed a $500 million forest protection agreement with the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) at COP26. Last week, the DRC Council of Ministers adopted a plan to tender 16 new oil blocks, several … Read more
Massaha’s fight to protect their ancestral forests in Gabon
RFUK, Forest Peoples Programme and Greenpeace Africa have today written to the Gabonese Minister of Water, Forests, Oceans, Environment, Climate Change and Land-use Planning, Lee White, to call for an immediate halt to illegal logging in the village of Massaha’s ancestral forests, and to support its claim to establish a community-managed protected area. The community’s … Read more
Roads to Ruin: The Emerging Impacts of Infrastructure Development in Congo Basin forests
A report by RFUK reveals the growing extent, and impact, of transport and energy infrastructure development in the Congo Basin – which is on its way to becoming a major driver of deforestation in the world’s second largest rainforest. The eight case studies featured in this report show that, while certain projects may bring some … Read more
Open Letter to the COP26 Presidency and Parties to the UNFCCC and CBD on Nature-based Solutions
With just weeks to go before COP26 in Glasgow, a group of leading environmental and human rights NGOs have written to the UK Presidency of the crucial climate talks warning that one of its flagship policies, so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ to climate change, risks greenwashing some of the biggest polluters on earth.
44 Congolese and international NGOs join call to stop lifting of the DRC logging moratorium
The DRC government has announced imminent plans to lift a near 20-year ban on new logging concessions operations in its Congo Basin rainforest – one of the last intact rainforests in the world. With less than six weeks to go before the crucial climate negotiations at COP26, Environmental and Human Rights NGOs are calling on … Read more
Community finally receives official documents to manage their traditional lands
This Thursday, September 2, the Bamasobha community of Lubero (North- Kivu), comprised of indigenous and Bantu groups, was officially handed the decree legally recognising their hard-won CFCL (local communities’ forest concession). This decree guarantees perpetual rights over Bamasobha’s customary lands, and thus opens the way to the management stage of the CFCL, an area rich … Read more