Mapping for Rights

Overview

MappingForRights is an award-winning community mapping and land-use planning initiative that enables local communities to demonstrate their presence and use of the forest; governments and the private sector to take account of and recognise this presence; and to assist the international community in ensuring that programmes concerned with the Congo Basin’s forests provide equitable benefits.

The issue

The Congo Basin forests are home to tens of thousands of communities whose customary tenure systems extend across the region. Typically, these groups lack formal rights to areas they have inhabited and protected for generations and are largely excluded from decisions about the forests they depend on. This leaves many as “squatters” on their own lands, living in very poor conditions on the edge of logging concessions and strictly protected areas.

Underlying this marginalisation is often a lack of reliable and transparent information on their use, ownership and possession of forests as well as the threats facing them. MappingForRights aims to change this by putting otherwise 'invisible' forest communities on the map.

What we're doing

We enable communities to map their lands through low-cost, transferrable technologies and a participatory mapping methodology developed on the back of more than 20 years’ field experience. This data is then made available to authorized users through the online interactive Congo Basin Community Atlas where it can be analysed in the context of other forest uses.

The community maps have played a key role in promoting the rights of local communities in land reforms, in the management of protected areas and REDD+ programmes as well as the establishment of community forests.

With legal security over their lands, the programme also provides communities with a set of tools and approaches to develop and implement sustainable land-use plans for these areas.

Explore the Mapping for Rights website