Congo Basin

The Green Climate Fund in the Congo Basin Rainforests – Good Money After Bad?

1 July 2019

A report published by the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) on the Green Climate Fund finds that one of the world’s largest climate adaptation and mitigation funds for developing countries may actually do more harm to tropical forests and people on the frontline of climate change unless it is reformed.

Yaoundé Declaration Declaration: Statement Concerning Community Forestry in the Congo Basin Region

10 June 2019

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

3 June 2019

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

Real-time Forest Monitoring: Empowering Communities, Preventing Illegalities, Protecting Forests

24 January 2019

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.

RFUK Annual Report 2017/18

13 December 2018

This summary of our projects and campaigns offers a highlight of the Rainforest Foundation UK’s work over the past year with indigenous and forest communities around the world.

Protected Areas and Community Rights: Using Local Maps to Support Sustainable Conservation in the Congo Basin

28 November 2018

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

REDD and Rights in DRC: How Participatory Maps Can Inform the Mai-Ndombe Integrated REDD Programme

1 October 2018

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

1 October 2018

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

RFUK Annual Report 2016/17

31 December 2017

This summary of our projects and campaigns offers a highlight of the Rainforest Foundation UK’s work with indigenous and forest communities around the world.

FORESTLINK: The Future of Rainforest Protection

8 February 2017

This short film documents the early stages of the Rainforest Foundation UK’s real-time forest monitoring project in Central Africa and the Peruvian Amazon. RFUK works in the world’s two largest rainforests: the Congo Basin and the Amazon. Spread over billions of acres, these forests are under threat from illegal activities like logging and mining. These … Read more