News
Young fundraiser walks 1000 miles for the rainforest
RFUK’s star fundraiser, Abigail Wheeler, is set to reach the 300-mile mark of her 1,000-mile charity walk for the rainforest this weekend! The seven-year-old decided to get active about deforestation at the start of 2017 and pledged to walk 1,000 miles, hoping to raise £1 for each mile, for RFUK! Supported by her parents, younger … Read more
Who protects the rainforest?
To mark World Biodiversity Day, we have released the second video in our Rainforest Parks & People vlog series. In this video, we asked local communities in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a simple question: “What does the forest mean to you?” The answer we kept hearing was very clear, and it was best summed up by … Read more
New Norway-backed logging plan for DRC’s rainforest would spell environmental catastrophe
The future of the world’s second largest contiguous rainforest hangs in the balance as the Congolese authorities and international donors consider a proposal to triple the area given out to commercial loggers. The rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, (DRC), have been relatively safe since 2002 when an official ban on the issuing of … Read more
Asháninka cocoa growers sign landmark agreement
With support from the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK), Kemito Ene, the cooperative representing hundreds of Asháninka cocoa producers in Peru, has just signed an agreement to export 90 tonnes of certified organic cocoa for the international market. The agreement has been made possible in part thanks to a growing relationship with organic chocolate maker Loving … Read more
Community forests: from theory to practice
What does a community-managed forest look like in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)? That is precisely the question that the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) and our partners are currently working to answer through our Community Forests (CF) project, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID). In February 2016, the DRC government passed landmark community … Read more
RFUK launches new interactive website on the human impacts of protected areas
The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) has just launched Rainforest Parks and People – an interactive website aimed at increasing the transparency and accountability of conservation projects across Africa’s Congo Basin rainforests, and showing how such projects have impacted on local people. Drawing on publicly available information as well as RFUK’s own field research, Rainforest Parks and People features 34 … Read more
New film series explores why conservation needs people
by Maud Salber, RFUK Policy Advisor Today the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is releasing the first of a new short film series about why, if we want to protect the world’s rainforests, local people need to be at the centre of nature conservation efforts. As part of a global scramble to mitigate climate change, countries around the … Read more
Well done to our 2017 runners!
It took dedication, passion and months of training, but last month our London Marathon team came out to run for the rainforest, raising a staggering £14,300 as they each ran over 26 miles in support of RFUK. One of our runners, Trudie Young, who started running a year ago, decided to support our work because the … Read more
International workshop on community-based real-time forest monitoring takes place in Cameroon
RTM Lesson sharing & refresher training workshop – Yaoundé, Cameroon, 30/01-3/02/2017 Since launching our community-based real-time monitoring (RTM) project in 2015, the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) has helped train dozens of community observers in rainforest communities across Cameroon, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Community observers are now sending increasing numbers of real-time … Read more
DRC: National roundtable sets the stage for a new era of community forestry
A third national Roundtable on Community Forestry took place this month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), bringing together 90 stakeholders from across government, Congolese civil society and the international community. In February 2016, the DRC government passed game-changing community forest legislation in what is arguably the most significant legal development related to Central … Read more