On Tuesday (17 June) DIFD is launching the Congo Basin Fund – a £50 million fund to help fight climate change by tackling the destruction of the world’s second biggest rainforest.

 

The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK), which has been working to protect the Congo Basin rainforest and the people that live in it since 1996, welcomes the fund as a good opportunity to encourage new ways of looking at forest management. To move beyond a straight choice between “give it to the loggers” and “turn it into a national park”, and towards systems which put the needs of people who live in the rainforest first.

Simon Counsell Rainforest Foundation UK Director said: “While all eyes are on the Amazon, the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest rainforest, is coming under increasing threat. If the Congo Basin follows the same pattern as West Africa, where complete forest destruction followed timber exploitation, then the result would be a catastrophe for millions of forest-dependent people and would drive countless plants and animals to extinction. The destruction of the Congo Basin forests would also have global consequences, releasing the equivalent of six years worth of global carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The launch of the Congo Basin Fund is a great opportunity to reverse this trend, support innovative ways of protecting the forest and generate much-needed livelihoods for local people.”

 

Background:

 

The Congo Basin Rainforest is the second largest in the world and covers 180 million hectares, spreading across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), most of Congo-Brazzaville, the southeast of Cameroon, southern Central African Republic (CAR), Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

 

If it is destroyed, it would leave millions homeless, drive plants and animals to extinction and would release the equivalent of 6 years’ worth of global carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

 

This destruction is a very real possibility.

 

The DRC, for example, contains 60% of the region’s forests. But many logging concessions have been allocated illegally despite a moratorium on new timber extraction OR logging in 2002.

 

RFUK believes the best way to protect rainforests is to secure the rights of the communities that have always lived in (and depended on) them to manage them sustainably. RFUK is working closely with African NGOs to support forest communities’ involvement in forest management.

 

In DRC, with the help of DIFD, RFUK has launched the largest ever rainforest community mapping project in Africa.  The aim is to give people living in the forest the chance to ‘prove’ to the government that they exist and so ensure that their voices are taken into account when decisions are made about how the land is used and by whom.

 

The Congo Basin fund will allow RFUK to widen the mapping project across other Congo Basin countries and hopefully play a significant part in protecting the world’s second biggest rainforest, the people that live in it and the planet’s climate.

The Rainforest Foundation UK

Imperial Works, 2nd Floor

Perren Street

London

NW5 3ED

United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7485 0193

Fax: + 44 (0)20 7485 0315

Registered Charity No. 801436