Africa (general)

In December 2015, the Paris Agreement was celebrated with great fanfare. This agreement, part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), establishes new measures to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which are responsible for global warming.

Skilful selection and nurturing of the seeds best suited to a particular location are at the heart of peasant farming and agroforestry systems. The resulting agrobiodiversity of hundreds of thousands of crop varieties and animal races found in peasants' fields around the globe provides the corner stone of the world’s food system. Peasant farmers and the local varieties that they developed are still feeding the majority of us.

The short film “Sacred Voices”, supported by the African Biodiversity Network and the Gaia Foundation, shares the messages of eight traditional Sacred Site Custodians from Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Uganda. Sacred Sites in Africa are being increasingly threatened by mining companies, investors, plantations, tourist developments and governments. “They do not respect our ancestral lands or our Sacred Natural Sites, which are potent healing places for maintaining vitality of our planet.

“This small family, the father, the mother and their two children, enters the sacred forest in order to find solutions to the illnesses and various problems that afflict them.”

The Congo Basin in Central Africa contains the second largest forest in the world. Its extensive territory is shared by six countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Equatorial Guinea. With this Bulletin we seek to explore in depth and report on the intense land-grabbing that people are confronted with and resist in this region—a forested area that houses and provides the livelihood and sustenance for around 30 million people.

This report aims to draw attention to violations and threats that environmental justice defenders in Central Africa are facing, specifically in the Congo Basin. The report is based on two studies. The first concerns the legal framework for the protection of environmental justice advocates in Central Africa. The second focuses on the inclusion of communities' rights in Central African countries. Read the report in French.

Women, communities say NO to the expansion of oil palm plantations and industrial palm oil