Cameroon
Yaoundé Declaration Declaration: Statement Concerning Community Forestry in the Congo Basin Region
Organisations and individuals from Central Africa, along with international partners from Europe, came together in Yaoundé in February 2019 to discuss the lessons from the recent years of community forest development in the Congo Basin, especially in the context of the projects funded through DFID’s ILLUCBF programme.
Safer Ground: How Participatory Mapping can Mitigate the Social Impacts of Agribusiness in the Congo Basin
The expansion of commercial agriculture in the Congo Basin, especially for palm oil, poses great risks to forests and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods and culture. While efforts to make palm oil more ‘sustainable’ focus on avoiding deforestation and biodiversity loss, far less attention has been paid to land rights and … Read more
Palmed Off: An Investigation into Three Industrial Palm Oil and Rubber Projects in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo
Research carried out by the Rainforest Foundation UK and its partner organisations found that industrial palm oil and rubber plantations in Africa’s Congo Basin continue to disrespect human rights and destroy large swathes of rainforests.
Female perspectives on forest monitoring in Cameroon, DR Congo and Ghana
Two users of RFUK’s real-time forest monitoring technology, ForestLink, in DRC. Credit: GASHE Women have an important role to play in protecting and managing their local rainforests. Whether used for food, medicines or firewood, women in the Congo Basin depend greatly on rainforests for their livelihoods. They have a huge stake in protecting their local … Read more
Real-time Forest Monitoring: Empowering Communities, Preventing Illegalities, Protecting Forests
Since its creation, ForestLink has been successfully deployed as part of RFUK’s Real-Time Forest Monitoring (RTM) initiative in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana and Peru. By engaging forest and indigenous peoples in the fight against illegal logging and deforestation, RTM seeks to strengthen local involvement in forest management.
Protected Areas and Community Rights: Using Local Maps to Support Sustainable Conservation in the Congo Basin
The best conservation projects start with people. Yet protected areas in the Congo Basin continue to be established and managed with poor consideration for local communities’ land and resource rights, fostering conflicts and human rights abuses. A lot of these toxic situations could be avoided if thorough participatory community mapping data, such as collected through MappingForRights, … Read more
Cameroon communities speak out about impacts of large rubber plantation
Representatives of 21 villages affected by industrial rubber project Sud-Cameroun Hevea (“Sudcam”), which is responsible for the largest single destruction of rainforests anywhere in Central Africa, have denounced the impacts of the rubber plantations on their rights and livelihoods. In a statement issued last week, they ask the Cameroonian government and the company that their rights are … Read more
REDD and Rights in DRC: How Participatory Maps Can Inform the Mai-Ndombe Integrated REDD Programme
Forest tenure and resource mapping by local communities in Mai Ndombe is providing a highly detailed and comprehensive picture of customary claims and usages that are likely to extend across the entire province. The results, which authorised users can view on MappingForRights, have major implications for DRC’s flagship jurisdictional REDD+ programme, especially in terms of … Read more
Mapping For Rights: Putting Rainforest Communities on the Map
Since its launch in 2011, MappingForRights has supported more than a thousand communities to map and share highly detailed geographical information about their lands and resources so that decisions on forests do not neglect those who depend on them most. In this introductory briefing, we address the root causes land-based conflict in Central African forests, … Read more
Community based monitoring in Cameroon helps bring illegal loggers to justice
Loggers in Cameroon are now under increased scrutiny, as alerts from local forest monitors have started making their way to law enforcement agencies. Several of these alerts – sent through a real-time monitoring system called ForestLink, developed by the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) in partnership with local organisation FODER (Forêts et Développement Rural) – have contributed … Read more