Indigenous Land and Livelihoods
Realising the Pledge: How Increased Funding for Forest Communities Can Transform Global Climate and Biodiversity Efforts
A briefing from the Rainforest Foundations of the United Kingdom, the United States and Norway for climate funders and policy makers on what it will take to realise the US$1.7 billion pledge on indigenous peoples and other local communities and to mainstream support to these groups in climate and biodiversity funding more broadly.
Protected Areas and Indigenous Rights: A submission to the UN Special Rapporteur
In response to a call for comments to inform the Special Rapporteur’s report to the UN General Assembly at its 77th session, RFUK has put together a brief highlighting how, despite much lip service to the contrary, conventional conservation and climate change programmes continue to wreak havoc on indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities.
KEMITO ENE
Founded in 2010 and winner of the UN Equator Prize, Kemito Ene is a unique indigenous cooperative representing hundreds of Asháninka cocoa producers in Peru. They support Asháninka families to produce sustainable, organic cocoa and to sell it to international markets to enhance their livelihoods while preserving their ancestral forests. This, according to the Asháninka … Read more
CARE
CARE is the self-led indigenous organisation of the Asháninka people in the Ene river valley, central Peruvian Amazon. Representing 17 communities and 33 annexes in the Ene River, the main aim of CARE is to support the Ashaninka communities to achieve a “good life.” Under CARE’s leadership, they have emerged from the darkness of civil … Read more
AIDESEP
AIDESEP (Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana) represents the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, working for the defense and respect of their collective rights. AIDESEP works to expose indigenous people’s struggles and present alternative development proposals according to their worldview and culture. News Putting land-use planning into action: community monitoring with the … Read more
Asociación de Productores Kemito ‒ Ene (Peru), New Economy, Equator Prize 2019 Spotlight
In an area where forests are threatened by illegal logging, large infrastructure projects, and oil exploitation, Kemito Ene tells a story of indigenous entrepreneurship that sustains families and forests. This successful indigenous social business enterprise is a model for sustainable commodity supply chains worldwide. Kemito Ene advocates for the well-being of its producers based on … Read more
Making Community Forestry Successful in DRC: Anthropological Perspectives on Community-based Forest Management
In 2014, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) adopted ground-breaking legislation that enables forest communities to obtain “local community forest concessions” (CFCLs) of up to 50,000 hectares of their customarily owned lands, in perpetuity….
Making Community Forests Work for Local and Indigenous Communities in the Central African Republic
As the Central African Republic (CAR) is entering a decisive phase that could lead to the allocation of the country’s first ‘pilot’ community forests, the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) and CAR civil society groups are supporting local communities in their application processes.
From war to sustainable chocolate: Indigenous Amazonian cocoa producers awarded prestigious United Nations ‘Equator Prize’
A cooperative of indigenous cocoa producers based in a remote part of the Peruvian rainforest has won the biennial UN Development Programme’s Equator Prize in recognition of its “outstanding community effort to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.” Kemito Ene (“cocoa from the Ene River”) was formed in 2010, with support from the Rainforest … Read more
ForestLink app helps catch illegal miners red-handed in Peru
Environmental police seized an estimated £1 million of illegal mining equipment during a raid near Barranco Chico, in Madre de Dios | Photo credit: FENAMAD Over the last two months, dozens of suspected illegal gold miners causing terrible environmental damage in the Peruvian Amazon were caught with the help of the ForestLink smartphone app developed by the Rainforest … Read more