- The rainforest is home to millions of indigenous peoples and other populations whose rights, culture and very existence are threatened by its destruction.
- the rainforest cannot be saved unless those who live there are able to protect their environment while also meeting their immediate and long-term needs.
Rainforest Foundation Norway
Securing rights, Saving rainforests
Rainforest Foundation Norway supports indigenous peoples
of the world's rainforests in their effort to protect their forest.
Through working with local communities we protect the rainforest
Foto: Carsten Thommasen
Foto: Carsten Thommasen
Rainforest Foundation Norway supports projects in ten countries, in all three rainforest continents. We work closely together with more than 100 local partners.
Our approach
RFN advocates a rights-based approach to rainforest protection. We believe that the peoples who for generations have developed their cultures and societies in balanced interaction with the highly complex yet vulnerable ecosystems of the rainforest have fundamental rights to these areas.
Our experience in the Amazon has shown that the most effective way to protect the rainforest is by securing the territorial rights of its indigenous peoples.
Campaigning and lobbying
We campaign to:
- address the underlying causes of rainforest destruction, and
- change the policies and practices of governments and private enterprises
Public awareness
- We work to strengthen national and international public awareness and action.
- We produce a quarterly newsletter and weekly electronic news updates that discusses important rainforest issues.
- We use social media to actively communicate with the public and our supporters
Securing rights
Our work in the Amazon
Deforestation continues at a rapid rate in the Amazon. Human rights are regularly violated, and the last remaining groups of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation are threatened by logging and oil extraction.
Since 1989 Rainforest Foundation Norway has developed close partnerships with a broad network of local organizations throughout the Amazon, including many indigenous organizations. Together with our partners in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia and Venezuela we run projects in;
- Bilingual education
- Establishment and protection of indigenous territories
- Improvement of forest laws and indigenous peoples' rights.
In Peru we work to protect the right of isolated indigenous groups to maintain their traditional way of life and preserve their cultural integrity. This means protecting the forests they inhabit. We also support the fight against exploitation of oil resources inside indigenous territories.
Saving rainforests
- contains more than half of the world's plant and animal species.
- irreversible loss of biodiversity
- The destruction of rainforests accounts for one fifth of global emissions of greenhouse gases.
Our work in Central Africa
In the Democratic Republic of Congo we work closely with environmental and indigenous organizations. Our projects promote forest-dependent peoples' access and rights to land and ensure sustainable, community-based management of the rainforest.
In cooperation with Rainforest Foundation UK, we support advocacy work by local groups. This work seeks to achieve a policy shift - away from the industrial logging focus to a policy that combats poverty through sustainable community-based forest management.
Through mapping their way of using their forest indigenous peoples document their traditional rights and strengthen their advocacy work towards local authorities.
Our projects focus on areas where forest-dependent peoples are threatened by logging interests, by non-participatory conservation policies and by large-scale development projects.
Our work in Southeast Asia and Oceania
Rainforest Foundation Norway started working in Southeast Asia in 1997. We have developed a range of projects together with local organizations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea . Our work focuses on sustainable forest management and securing land rights for forest-based peoples.
Our partners are dedicated organizations that maintain close relationships to communities in danger of losing their traditional lands and livelihoods due to deforestation.
Supporting forest-peoples legal action against logging companies is a main focus area. We also work to help forest peoples obtain exclusive rights to use their traditional lands. Through capacity building, alternative education and para-legal training, we seek to strengthen the role of forest communities in protecting their forest against destruction.
Some of our victories
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2007 DR Congo: The World Bank Inspection Panel investigated the practices of the World Bank in the rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, following a request from indigenous groups. The Panel concludes that the Bank's bias towards industrial logging impoverishes local people.The World Bank should rethink its approach to forest management, and develop a policy based on true participation of forest-dependent peoples, with the aim of securing their traditional rights and promoting alternatives to industrial logging.
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2007 Peru: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights gives an official warning to the Peruvian Government for its failure to protect the isolated indigenous peoples living in the Peruvian Amazon. The warning is a response to the complaint which RFNs partner organizations AIDESEP and FENAMAD presented to the Commission in 2005, holding the Peruvian state responsible for the dramatic situation faced by the isolated indigenous peoples in the country.
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2003: The controversial and highly destructive Kiunga-Aiambak logging project is halted in Papua New Guinea. This marks an important victory for local communities and a signal to the loggers that they will be prosecuted if they do not abide by the strict logging code of the country.
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2000: The semi-nomadic Orang Rimba people of Sumatra have their traditional lands demarcated and are granted exclusive use of the area. For the first time in Indonesia, an indigenous group is allowed to continue its traditional cultivation, hunting and gathering activities within the boundaries of a national park.
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