Congo Villagers Use Satellites to Save Forests

The Rainforest Foundation - UK

One of the biggest community-based rainforest mapping projects in Africa will begin tomorrow (Wednesday 9 April) as the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) bids to help indigenous people protect six million acres of endangered rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

66 Congolese 'Master Mappers' - trained by RFUK - are travelling by canoe and motorbike to the remote Inongo territory in centre-west of the country to work with nearly 100 villages in the world's second largest rainforest.

During Congo's recent civil wars, illegal, uncontrolled and often violent exploitation of natural resources by militias and armies had a devastating impact on indigenous forest people. And now, after a period of relatively low rates of deforestation, DRC's forests are once again coming under growing pressure - this time from industrial logging companies.

The 660 villagers, who speak three different local languages and are mostly hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers, will be taught to use high-tech GPS (Global Positioning System) devices to produce digital maps to prove their existence to the government and to loggers.

Each community will produce a sketch map of their area and then use the hand-held GPS units, to record accurately the important points on their maps. Once all the data from the field has been collected, it will be transferred from the GPS units to a computer to produce a map of the entire territory.

RFUK hopes the map will prove to the government that these forest peoples exist, and that the forest needs to be protected for their use. The government has already allocated parts of the territory to 11 logging concessions, some of which are held by companies from as far afield as Germany, Belgium and Portugal.

But RFUK aims to get the digital territory map completed in time for a May 8 government meeting which will establish the basis on which Congo's vast area of forest is parceled up for various purposes, and which could largely determine the fate of the forest for decades to come.

Cath Long, RFUK Project Director said: "It is going to be the first time that anybody in DRC sees on paper that these forest-dependent communities exist. Their maps will be a vital tool for the communities to negotiate with the government. It will allow them to demonstrate that they are there, and that they need to be taken into account when decisions are made about the forest they live in."

Simon Counsell RFUK Director added: "The last great expanse of forest in Africa is under threat but there is still time to do something to save these forests from being lost and the millions of people who depend upon them being further impoverished.

"This is an issue that affects us all because not only are rainforests home to an estimated 50 million indigenous forest peoples and more species of plants and animals than all the earth's other ecosystems combined, but also because protecting the forests is essential in the fight against climate change".

Rainforest Facts and Figures

*If deforestation continues at the current rate there will be no more rainforests by 2050.

*If we lose rainforests, we lose the fight against climate change, because deforestation is the second largest cause of CO2 emissions.

*If we lose rainforests, we lose an environment that supports an estimated 50 million indigenous forest peoples.

*If we lose the rainforests, we lose the most diverse ecosystems on the planet containing more species of plants and animals than all the earth's other ecosystems combined.

*If we lose rainforests we lose the source of the active ingredients in one in four of all purchases from pharmacies in countries such as Britain. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.

In the 19 years since it's founding in 1989, the Rainforest Foundation has protected 116,485,000 square kms of rainforest- an area about the same size as the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).

www.rainforestfoundationuk.org

Registered Charity No. 801436

www.rainforestfoundationuk.org