Community Forestry
The most effective means for conserving forests and reducing human poverty is through legal recognition of customary land rights for the people who have been living in and relying on the forests for centuries.
An Unprecedented Opportunity
In 2016, the Democratic Republic of Congo established the national Local Community Forest Concession (LCFC) program which offers forest-dependent people the right to manage their own lands and natural resources - in perpetuity - according to their own lifeways, customs, and traditions.
With sustainability as a foundational principle, the community-centered approach to forest management has a direct positive impact on the lives of millions of poverty-stricken, forest-dependent people. It is therefore the most effective means of ensuring that vital forest ecologies and sensitive ecosystems remain intact.
Community Forests Can Ensure the Health of Wild Places
When local and indigenous people are empowered to preserve their forests, the health of our whole planet is protected. When forests remain standing, wild animals continue to roam in their natural habitats, watersheds remain clean, and climate remains stable as carbon is safely stored in vegetation and in the ground.
“The forest is our home. If the forest dies, we shall die. We are the people of the forest.”
-Central African Pygmy
Imagining a Future…
In the Congo Basin Rainforest, local communities and indigenous people have historically been subjected to perpetual instability as large scale logging, commercial agriculture, and even traditional models of wildlife conservation have forced them off of their ancestral lands. When granted legal recognition - in perpetuity - to the lands they have occupied for many generations, the relationship they have to their lands drastically shifts as they realize the opportunity to make investments and vision toward their futures.
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