Congo DR

A report from the Rainforest Foundation UK, shows how attempts of community based forest management in the Congo Basin thus far have not been able to transfer meaningful rights or benefits to local communities. Only around 1% of the total Congo Basin is under the formal control or management of local communities while industrial-scale logging represents by far the biggest land use in the region.

A video from the NGO Global Witness, who visited many communities in DRC directly impacted by the logging industry, shows the reality of these concessions on the ground. Mostly, the same story repeated itself. Communities have had no positive effects since logging companies started operating, resources they depend upon have become scarce and rivers are drying up, while promises of developmental projects and employment have vanished. “We have no voice.

    Reseau CREF (Network for Conservation and Rehabilitation of Forest Ecosystems) is a platform of organizations working on governance of natural resources in the province of North Kivu. Among others, it intervenes in the governance of the mining sector through its program “Mines and Hydrocarbons”. Context of the province of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo

Report about how several prominent development finance institutions (DFIs) are funding Feronia Inc., a Canadian agribusiness company accused of land grabbing and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Several prominent development finance institutions (DFIs) are funding Feronia Inc., a Canadian agribusiness company accused of land grabbing and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

REDD: A Collection of Conflicts, Contradictions and Lies presents summaries of reports from 24 REDD projects or programmes with a common characteristic: they all show a number of structural characteristics that undermine forest peoples' rights, or fail to address deforestation. As offset projects, they all fail to address the climate crisis because by definition, offset projects do not reduce overall emissions: emission reductions claimed in one place justify extra emissions elsewhere.

This video shows the struggle of communities that depend on the forests in the Republic of Congo, and that of their defenders, to reduce the impacts of deforestation and to guarantee their rights to manage and control their own forests,  

In late 2013, a group of representatives of African, Indonesian and international NGOs met with members of La Via Campesina and the African Biodiversity Network in Calabar, Nigeria, to address the massive expansion of industrial oil palm plantations on the African continent and discuss, in particular, the situation in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon.

Governments are opening the doors to corporations for planting vast areas of land with oil palm plantations. This trend is not only happening in West and Central African countries, but is even expanding to parts of Eastern Africa. Large scale oil palm plantations are already causing serious environmental and social impacts in some countries, resulting in loss of community rights over their territories.