Africa Community Rights Network Statement

We members of Africa Community Rights Network from Ghana, Liberia, Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroun, Togo, Central Africa Republic, Congo Brazzavile, Gabon, Nigeria and our partners from UK, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Brazil, Ecuador and The Netherlands participating in the 2ND Annual Conference on Community Rights from 27-29th April 2010 in Monrovia, have the following observations:

Whereas African countries are going through economic reforms opening up their economies for Investment with the intention increasing financial inflows, the poor governance and management of forests and exploitation of mineral resources continue to negatively affect the rights of the communities.

We also noted that communities’ involvement in natural resource management is still very limited in most regions.

We noted that inequitable distribution of benefits accruing from natural resources exploitation is still a concern within our communities.

We noted that although there has been progress in some countries over the last decade in enacting community rights laws they have been inadequate and poorly implemented.

We also noted that carbon trading will provide a perfect excuse for northern and industrialized countries to escape their responsibility to drastically reduce their carbon emissions.

We also noted inadequate representation of women in decision making in natural resource management.

We have noted the increasing amount of land being targeted for large scale monoculture in Africa over the last few years.

We also observed the dangerous effects of large scale plantations in Africa as well as Asia and Latin America; in relation to food security, community livelihood and ecological well being.

 

We members of Africa Community Rights Network in light of the above call for the following urgent actions:

· That Community rights should be at the centre of natural resource governance and management.
· That governments ensure Community Rights Laws are made and where such laws exist, fully implemented and the knowledge should be made accessible to the communities.
· That governments ensure access to information on natural resource management to interested parties particularly to affected communities.
· That community involvement should be based on free prior informed consent.
· That in the case of Liberia we call on the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) and the Government to facilitate the renegotiation of all social agreements in order to create transparency and ensure that the concerns of communities are incorporated.
· That governments ensure that women have equal rights and access as well as equal participation in natural resource management.
· That governments ensure that fair price should be paid for natural resource exploitation from Africa.
· To allocate resources for capacity building of community based institutions and structures.
· Having noted the negative effects of the large plantations in around our countries, we call for vigilance on the part of governments, communities and other interest groups in order to protect livelihoods and environment.
· We call for monitoring and enforcement of already existing laws that protect communities and community rights.
· We reject carbon trading as a means of financing sustainable forest management.

Background Note

The Africa Community Rights Network (ACRN) is a network of national coalitions and organizations promoting community rights over forests and landed resources across Africa. It was established in 2008 by representatives of networks that had for four years prior to that collaborated around the European Union Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade/Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) initiative. Our 2009 May meeting in Yaoundé Cameroon formalized principles, membership criteria and admissions processes, minimum standards for engagement with national consultative processes and a core work programme for national level REDD work. The meeting was attended by CSOs / networks from 11 African countries as well as representatives of the Africa Initiative on Mining Environment and Society, Green Actors of West Africa and collaborators from the North including FERN, Global Witness, Forest Peoples Programme and the Rights and Resources Group. Civil society activists from Cameroon also participated in order to provide some focus on their struggles and in particular the (then) upcoming RRI / ITTO conference on Rights and Tenure in Africa.