Carbon Offsetting & REDD+
On Protected Areas and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights: A submission to the UN Special Rapporteur
In a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ upcoming report on the impacts of protected areas to the UN General Assembly at its 77th session, RFUK has warned that despite much lip service to the contrary, conventional conservation and climate change programmes continue to wreak havoc on indigenous peoples … Read more
Press Release: Over 360 organisations say “No to Nature Based Solutions!”
Ahead of a vital UN moment for biodiversity, “nature-based solutions” are once again being erroneously heralded as the solution – and NGOs are pushing back. As more and more corporations and governments tout “nature-based solutions” as the means to fight the climate and biodiversity crises, over 360 organisations have come together to launch a statement exposing … 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
A Post-COP Conversation
After a frenetic two weeks for RFUK and our local partners at the climate talks in Glasgow, we reflect on some of the gains, the losses, and the next steps in striving to put tropical forests and their traditional guardians at the heart of the international climate agenda. A declaration by 137 countries promising to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030 … Read more
New RFUK report reveals the growing extent, and impact, of transport and energy infrastructure development in the Congo Basin
A new study by RFUK has found that infrastructure development is causing huge destruction in world’s second largest rainforest – and international climate programmes are ignoring it. While REDD+ programmes in the Congo Basin have invariably targeted subsistence farming as the main driver of deforestation, they have almost completely overlooked the role of infrastructure development – … Read more
Press Release: Open Letter on NbS to the COP26 Presidency
NATURE-BASED ’DISTRACTIONS’: IS THE UK ABOUT TO POUR BILLIONS INTO AN OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY BACKED GREENWASH SCHEME? 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 … 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.
First international counter-conference on conservation will denounce “world’s biggest land grab”
The world’s first major international congress on decolonizing conservation, “Our Land, Our Nature”, will take place in Marseille, France, on September 2, 2021, immediately before the IUCN World Conservation Congress in the same city. At this congress indigenous representatives and speakers from around 18 countries will share evidence and first-hand testimonies of conservation atrocities and … Read more
Upcoming: a decolonized alternative to the World Conservation Congress
This September, as world leaders and conservation NGOs gather for the World Conservation Congress, Indigenous Peoples on the frontlines of deforestation will again be kept out of the decision-making process as these leaders push for more protected areas and “nature-based solutions” – both of which are at high risk for creating human rights violations and … Read more
Payment for non-performance: Gabon receives $17 million in REDD payments despite increasing deforestation
The Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) has just awarded an initial payment of $17 million to Gabon, hailing its achievement in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in 2016-17 from the baseline levels of the previous decade. However this claim is contradicted by data from the FAO and Global Forest Watch which shows primary … Read more