July 21, 2020

We’re delighted to announce the upgraded version of MappingForRights - the geo-spatial platform that aims to put forest communities in the Congo Basin on the map.

Important decisions about forests are too often made with little understanding of the people that live in and depend on them, leading to land conflict and other negative impacts in many areas. MappingForRights aims to fill this gap by making available accurate geographical information on occupation and use of forests that communities have collected themselves using simple, low-cost data collection tools.

MappingForRights is already used in a range of settings from supporting community forest applications and participatory land use planning processes to drawing attention to the impacts of agribusiness projects and strict nature conservation on local people. The new Congo Basin Community Atlas, developed in collaboration with Mapbox, now takes this a step further with the following new features:

More open access to over a thousand community maps covering more than nine million hectares (though users will still have to log-in or register to view more sensitive datasets).

A one-stop shop to view up to date information on forest cover as well as community and other land uses across the Congo Basin.

Explore community mapping projects in different parts of the region where MappingForRights has supported forest communities’ land and resource rights.

Analyse private concessions and protected areas in the context of community-generated data on customary land tenure and resource use as well as information on local education and health services and population estimates.

Download data on villages, education and health services, subject to the database user agreement (authorised users only) and upload your own datasets to the atlas.

The MappingForRights website also contains publications, community mapping and monitoring tools as well as the addition of data-driven map stories, the first of these being about the potential human costs of the CBD drive to place 30 percent of the world under protected status by 2030.

We hope you find this resource useful.