The World’s Best Forest Guardians: Indigenous Peoples
Indigenous peoples and local communities have an unsurpassed connection to the Earth's forests.
Home / Issues / Forests & Biodiversity / Community forestry / Page 11
Indigenous people have lived from the forest since time immemorial, using its resources sparingly and carefully so that it might continue to produce its riches. What the Rainforest Alliance brings to this age-old model are the tools and support to make it economically viable in today’s world. We connect local and indigenous communities with markets, provide technical and business support, and work to improve human well-being—all while conserving the forest.
This page features information about the Rainforest Alliance's work to promote community forestry and links to all our related content and resources.
Working with forest communities, governments, companies, and civil society organizations, we promote more sustainable forest management practices throughout the tropics. We provide training, tools, and knowledge to communities; promote youth inclusion and gender equality; work to increase forest cover, biodiversity, and carbon capture; promote secured rights to forests; and provide access to alliances, finance, and markets, so that forest communities—and forests—may thrive.
This paper outlines our principles and strategies for stopping forest degradation and supporting forest communities in vulnerable tropical regions.
Our Kleinhans Fellowship supports research that seeks solutions to the challenges faced by the community forestry model.
Our Forest Allies initiative leverages the enormous power of our partnerships to support forest communities as they address the climate crisis and combat deforestation.
This paper summarizes our lessons learnt from twenty years of global experience in community forestry.
Indigenous peoples and local communities have an unsurpassed connection to the Earth's forests.
The forest concessions of the Maya Biosphere Reserve have boasted a near-zero deforestation rate for 20 years.
Sitting in the heart of the Congo Basin, the 36,000 square kilometer Salonga National Park (SNP) is the largest protected area of dense rainforest on the African continent.
We are working to grow Mexico’s domestic market for sustainably produced products.
As one of the only such projects in the world that is building on community-based production forestry and enterprise, GuateCarbon is generating important lessons with global significance.
In this brief, the case of Mexican community forestry is presented, with a special focus on the diversity of local enterprises and inter-community associations that have developed over the past twenty-five years, as well as an assessment of some of the main regulatory barriers that communities face in undertaking legal forest harvesting.
Before the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) was established in the Petén in 1990, the area was plagued by illegal logging, which focused on removing only the most valuable tree species, such as mahogany. At the same time, civil conflict and displacement resulted in significant in-migration to the region, sparking extensive conversion of forests for agricultural […]
Sustainable management of the world’s natural resources is shifting from an option to a vital necessity. Increasing evidence attests to the fact that sustainable resource management practices can promote economic development and livelihood improvement for communities. This case study adds to this growing of body of evidence by profiling the work of Rainforest Alliance assisting […]
Technical Assistance and New Market Access for Community Forest Enterprises in the Rio Plátano Biosphere Reserve, Honduras Applying the principles of sustainable forest management and sound business practices, by 2008 the twelve participating cooperatives had achieved remarkable successes in increasing their productivity, enterprise competitiveness and overall income. The below points summarize the most significant gains: Sustained […]
This case study report describes work undertaken to improve community forest enterprise competitiveness in Mexico as a means to local economic development and forest conservation. Over a three-year period, Rainforest Alliance facilitated increased investment while providing technical assistance in value-added processing fora medium-sized indigenous community forestry operation in the northern state of Durango. As a […]