Despite destroying both forests and forest-dependent peoples’ livelihoods, industrial scale logging and agriculture plantations are often presented as the only routes to pulling developing countries out of poverty. In fact, evidence increasingly shows that smallholder forestry and agriculture, when promoted by state policy and protected with secure land rights, can be much more effective at providing income, producing food, and protecting environmental quality for future generations.

Fern works with partners to develop and promote livelihood models in the following ways:

  1. Showing the economic, social and environmental benefits of small-scale production models, to allow civil society to advocate for alternatives to the large-scale industrial production model.
  2. Collecting different countries’ experiences of small-scale livelihood models, to help develop new models in other countries.
  3. Connecting people working on small-scale livelihood models in different countries, to enable them to learn directly from each other.

This short briefing explains why communities are key to protecting Congo Basin forests.

Forests contribute much more to the planet than we are aware, playing a major role in food security, fresh water, culture and wellbeing. They provide significant income for rural communities in developing countries, and are essential to the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people around the world.

Find out more about the benefits of community forests

Frequently asked questions

What is community forestry?

We use the term ‘community forestry’ to define ‘a situation in which communities have the right to manage the forest resources upon which they depend, with a view to improving their living conditions. This definition was agreed at a meeting of Fern's partners in 2014 to highlight that the term ‘community forestry’ refers to forest management by and from the point of view of communities.

Read more about community forestry

Talk to us

Indra Van Gisbergen

Indra Van Gisbergen

Responsable de la campagne Forêts et Consommation

How does community forestry link to restoration?

Community forestry is not just about small-scale logging or alternative livelihoods models, it can also be about restoring degraded forests for the good of the community, for wildlife and for the climate.

Find out more about Fern's restoration work

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