The Rainforest Foundation UK
No Rights, No Rainforest
We’re all looking for ways to tackle climate change, but indigenous communities have been working for years to preserve forests. RFUK campaign for laws that enable them to claim legal rights to their ancestral lands & equip with them with low-cost simple technologies to defend & protect these areas.
It ran from 12:00 PM, 22 April 2022 to 12:00 PM, 29 April 2022
Registered Charity in England and Wales (1138287)
Match funded Campaign target
£60,000
Amount raised
£41,990
Donations
166
Championed by The Big Give Trust
Location
Multiple locations
Campaign overview
Aims
Where's the money going?
Impact & reporting
Situation
Forests are the most important ecosystems to preserve to tackle climate change. However, indigenous peoples and local communities who inhabit them still mostly lack land rights to their ancestral forest homes that they have protected for centuries. They also face increasing illegal encroachment, devastating extractive activities and threats for peacefully defending their home. Furthermore, forests under indigenous control store more carbon & more biodiversity than conventional protected areas.
Solution
We campaign for laws that enable forest peoples to claim legal rights to their lands and provide them with easy-to-use tech to map these areas and support the creation of ‘Community Forests’. We also support communities to manage and protect these areas through the development of sustainable management plans and by equipping them with tools to monitor and report illegal logging in real-time, even from the remotest part of the rainforest.
"In our Community Forest, we have forbidden harmful practices for fishing, such as using mosquito nets and fishing at night with machetes. Things have changed significantly.”
— Nene Kiseka, from the village of Ilinga DRC
"For a long time, we’ve seen loggers come here. It was not good. We only knew that the State had sold the forest, and the loggers kept coming… Then you [RFUK and local partner GASHE] came to support us in obtaining our community forest."
— Dembele Alexi, village chief - Mibenga, Equateur, DRC
"What I like most (about my work with local communities) is the gender aspect. ‘Gender mainstreaming’ means that there will be women's involvement throughout. Women are not only central to family life, but they also have an important role to play in the use of forest resources."
— Ruth Badubaye, community organiser, Group d'Action pour Sauver l'Homme et son Environnement (GASHE)