Overview
Our Community Forest programme aims to improve livelihoods while reducing deforestation and protecting biodiversity in the Congo Basin by establishing a successful and scalable model founded on the rights and priorities of local communities, including those of marginalised groups such as indigenous peoples and women.Â
The issue
To date, the forest sector in Africa’s Congo Basin has strongly favoured large-scale land allocations over community-based forest management. In the Central African Republic, for example, virtually the entire rainforest area is allocated to industrial logging concessions and strictly protected areas, denying forest peoples any control over their traditional lands. However, over time this model has generated little developmental or environmental benefit.
There is now a growing consensus that strengthening forest communities’ rights is a more effective means of both protecting rainforests and fighting poverty. Across the region, legal reforms are now opening up this possibility, notably in the Democratic Republic of Congo where a groundbreaking community forest law enables communities to secure and manage their traditional lands in perpetuity.
What we're doing
- To ensure the sustainability of national community forestry processes, we push for the ongoing improvement of related laws and policies and promote multi-actor dialogue and integration with other forest, land and climate reforms. We also strengthen the capacity of forest administrations and local civil society to fulfil their important role.
- On the ground, we support dozens of local communities to understand and navigate their countries' forestry laws, submit applications and develop simple management plans and sustainable livelihoods.
- In DRC, more than 150 community forests covering three million hectares have already been established, with potentially tens of millions more available to local communities. In CAR, where there is a lack of available land, we support piloting of co-management approaches between community forests and overlapping logging concessions.