Rainforest Foundation Norway

History

Rainforest Foundation Norway was founded in 1989, following the formation of the Rainforest Foundation the same year by Sting and his wife Trudie Styler after the leader of the indigenous Kayapo people of Brazil, Chief Raoni, made a personal request to them that they help his community protect its lands and culture. RFN at that time comprised the Norwegian branch of the international Rainforest Foundation network. In 1996, it became an independent foundation, with five Norwegian member organizations. From the organization's inception, the executive director was Lars Løvold, until Dag Hareide took over the role on January 1, 2013.

Approach to rainforest protection

Rainforest Foundation Norway espouses a rights-based approach to rainforest protection. Its approach is founded on the notion that the peoples who for generations have developed their cultures and societies in balanced interaction with the highly complex yet vulnerable ecosystems of the rainforest have fundamental rights to these areas. In order to attain its goal of implementing rights-based rainforest management in significant rainforest areas in all 12 countries where RFN and its partners are active, RFN supports programs and projects in cooperation with local organizations, indigenous peoples, and traditional populations of the rainforest. It also seeks changes in the policies and practices of governments, intergovernmental bodies, and private enterprises; and to generate and strengthen national and international public awareness and action. In addition, the organization has adopted an approach that emphasizes the strengthening of civil society as an important goal in the countries in which it is active. On this basis, it has prioritized building long-term partnerships with local and national organizations that share its key objectives, as well as supporting the development of representative indigenous associations and community-based organizations.

Programs

With its goal of preserving the rainforest, Rainforest Foundation Norway advocates for the rights of its indigenous inhabitants, by providing project-related grants, capacity-building expertise and direct technical assistance to its local partners on the ground, including indigenous communities and grassroots organizations. In addition to working with these groups directly through program activities in local communities, RFN support them indirectly through policy, advocacy, and information activities aimed at securing rights, establishing indigenous territories and protecting the rainforest.

The Amazon

From its inception, Rainforest Foundation Norway has developed partnerships with a broad network of local organizations throughout the Amazon region, including many indigenous organizations.

RFN's main focus in this region is on indigenous peoples, although other rainforest inhabitants, such as small-scale farmers, are also included.

RFN runs projects together with partners in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia and Venezuela which have become leading actors with documented results in applying the rights-based approach to rainforest management. The results vary from country to country, but are most evident when it comes to the establishment of indigenous territories and the integrated management of these territories; the strengthening of indigenous organizations; the development of bilingual indigenous education; the consolidation of forest laws and the rights indigenous peoples; and the development of national REDD+ strategies and activities. In various countries throughout the region, including Peru, Paraguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil, RFN works to protect the right of uncontacted peoples living in voluntary isolation to maintain their traditional way of life and preserve their cultural integrity, which entails protecting the forests they inhabit. It also supports the struggle of indigenous communities against such drivers of deforestation as the exploitation of petroleum resources inside their territories. RFN's work in the Amazon gained considerable momentum in 2007 when the organization received support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for its initiative "Sustainable Management of Amazon Territories Across National Boundaries and Founded on Legal Rights". The main aim of the initiative is to ensure that the Amazon rainforest is managed holistically and in a sustainable way, across national boundaries and with due respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and other forest inhabitants. A key priority in this regard is to facilitate efficient cooperation between agents who can push regional rainforest policy in this direction and who work with similar issues, so as to better secure the integrity of indigenous territories and wider ecosystems.

This kind of collaboration produced the first map showing a complete picture of all the various protected areas, together with deforestation, across all of the Amazon Basin. To achieve this, RFN provided support to the cartography network "the Amazon Network of Geo-referenced Socio-environmental information" (RAISG). Through this network, strategic partners from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela have exchanged digital geographic information about the Amazon region. In addition, through the lawyer network RAMA, RFN's partners have shared experiences and information in order to advance their efforts to secure the rights of indigenous people in several parts of the Amazon rainforest.

The work on the initiative got under way in 2007, and is taking place over two periods. The first phase of the program ran from 2007 until 2010. A thorough evaluation of the experiences from the first phase was conducted by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010. The evaluation pointed to "positive results", and emphasized the link between forest protection and indigenous peoples' sustainable use of the rainforest. The second phase of the program runs from 2011-2015.

Central Africa

Rainforest Foundation Norway has been active in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2003, working with forest-dependent local communities, both Bantu and Pygmy, as well as environmental and indigenous organizations. Its projects promote the access and rights of forest-dependent peoples to land, and advocate for a sustainable, community-based management of the rainforest. In addition, RFN supports advocacy work by local groups. The work is designed to achieve a policy shift - away from a focus on industrial logging to a policy that combats poverty through sustainable community-based forest management. RFN's projects focus on areas where forest-dependent local peoples are threatened by logging interests, by non-participatory conservation policies and by large-scale development projects. Local groups throughout the DRC, in collaboration with RFN, are supporting forest-dependent communities in mapping their traditional uses of the forest in order to document their traditional rights and strengthen their advocacy work vis-à-vis local authorities. Communities are kept informed of decision-making processes, which are in turn systematically informed by field work and the concerns of forest-dependent peoples. RFN and its partners have also worked to enhance the capacity of Congolese civil society to influence Congolese forest management policies in other ways, such as through input and advocating for local and customary land rights and the principle of 'free, prior and informed consent' (FPIC). In addition to policy work, RFN has also worked with partners on field activities such as participatory mapping and micro-zoning in relation to land use rights (see, for instance, http://www.mappingforrights.org/Inongo_Territory), and ensuring the involvement of local communities in the creation of a protected area in the Itombwe Mountains.

Furthermore, through its ongoing REDD project, which got under way in May 2009, RFN and its local partners have sought to influence the REDD process in the DRC by disseminating information at the grassroots level on the opportunities and challenges of REDD - to local communities, small NGOs, and members of government and research institutions. RFN has also strengthened the capacity of a large number of Congolese civil society organisations to influence the REDD agenda of the DRC, both at the national and at the international level and has, alongside its partners, succeeded in securing civil society participation in the DRC's National Steering Committee for REDD. As stated by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), "the Rainforest Foundation Norway support to the Civil Society National Climate and REDD working group in DRC has brought full Congolese civil society participation and involvement in developing the national REDD+ strategy and all of its components".

Southeast Asia and Oceania

In Southeast Asia, the focus of Rainforest Foundation Norway is on marginalized forest-dwelling ethnic groups. A much larger group of people, often smallholder farmers, also depends on the use of forest resources, and is included in RFN's work in various ways. In Papua New Guinea, the vast majority of the population is indigenous and, living in rural areas, depends more or less directly on forest resources for its sustenance - thus constituting RFN's target group. RFN started working in the region in 1997. It has initiated a range of projects with local organizations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, and is in the process of establishing partnerships with local organizations in Burma. Its work in the region focuses on sustainable forest management and securing land rights for forest-based peoples, and its partner organizations maintain close relationships with communities that are at risk of losing their traditional lands and livelihoods due to deforestation (see, for instance, http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/100/Malaysia.html). RFN's strategy for Southeast Asia and Oceania also places particular emphasis on supporting forest peoples' legal action against logging companies, and palm oil and pulp and paper plantations. In addition, the organization assists forest peoples in obtaining exclusive rights to use their traditional lands, and seeks to strengthen the role of forest communities in protecting their forest against destruction by means of capacity building, alternative education and legal training. In both Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, RFN has sought to support community organizations on the basis of traditional governing principles and the introduction of culturally adapted education so as to contribute to the empowerment of forest peoples. Its long-term support for strategically placed organizations has been a central aspect of its strategy for strengthening civil society - as exemplified by its contribution to the formalization of JOAS, the Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia, which acts as an umbrella organization for a large number of community-based organizations and provides them with support and capacity-building expertise. In Indonesia, RFN and its partners have made use of the opportunity presented by the international attention which followed the country becoming a target of many REDD initiatives, including a US$1 billion bilateral agreement between Norway and Indonesia, in order to provide advice, criticism and input in dialogue with the government and in the media. As a result of these political opportunities, RFN has gradually shifted its focus from geographically limited local projects to greater advocacy and policy efforts on the national level - although these two approaches still work in tandem.

Campaigning, advocacy and policy work

Alongside the primary target group, which is rainforest-based peoples and communities, the secondary target group for Rainforest Foundation Norway is governments at the local, regional, and national levels. All of RFN's projects have provisions for policy work, so that actors at government levels can be influenced to improve existing legal frameworks and practices that affect forest-dependent peoples and rainforest ecosystems. As regards the organization's international policy work, important target groups are national governments, national delegations to relevant international negotiations, international finance institutions, international bodies and institutions dealing with rainforest management, organizations working with the rights of indigenous peoples and forest certification, nature conservation organizations, development organizations, and selected private funds and private actors. On the international arena, a key priority for RFN has been to influence the design and implementation of REDD+, mainly through the UNFCCC negotiations and the UN-REDD program, and the World Bank's REDD+ initiative. RFN, alongside its partners and allies, has sought to influence the development of REDD+ towards a greater emphasis on civil society participation, the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and the protection of biodiversity. RFN and its partners have also increasingly employed international human rights instruments as a means of focusing attention on forest-dependent peoples, and of improving their situation. The organization's impact on the international arena has, in addition, been manifested in its pioneering of an approach to rainforest preservation which focuses on large geographical areas, including a trans-border perspective, for more robust protection. RFN's policy and information work in Norway targets the political leadership, members of parliament, political parties, and government institutions. The aim is to ensure that protection of natural forests, biodiversity and human rights, including the rights of forest-dependent communities, are top priorities, not only rhetorically but also in fact and in funding. Indeed, as stated by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), "RFN has played an active role in influencing [Norwegian] government policies and priorities on both [the environment and natural resources and indigenous peoples] as recognised by Norad". The Norwegian government's international climate and forest initiative is a key target for RFN's advocacy work in Norway, since Norway has taken a leading role in worldwide rainforest protection. This work also has broader significance, as it affects the development of national REDD+ policies and instruments, as well as national REDD+ policies in RFN's project countries.

RFN's campaigning, advocacy and information activities are also designed to ensure that other major Norwegian actors (such as the Government Pension Fund Global) espouse policies that are consistent with rainforest protection, and to promote awareness among Norwegian businesses and the public of the impacts of their investments, activities, and consumption patterns on the rainforest and its peoples.

The Amazon

Central Africa

Southeast Asia and Oceania

Campaigning, advocacy and policy work

Funding

RFN's finances are to a significant degree based on multiyear contracts with Norwegian public authorities regarding long-term financial assistance. The organization derives additional funding from individuals and bequests (including from regular private donors designated "Rainforest Guardians"); contributions from members of the business community such as Nordic Choice Hotels; and international funds and foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the Rainforest Foundation Fund. Of the total resources expended in 2012, 86.9% were spent on programs on the ground.

Organization

From its inception in 1989 until 1996, RFN made up the Norwegian branch of the international Rainforest Foundation network, after which it became an independent foundation, with five Norwegian member organizations: Friends of the Earth Norway, Young Friends of the Earth Norway, Children's Friends of the Earth Norway, the Development Fund, and the Future in Our Hands. Lars Løvold held the role of executive director from the organization's inception until Dag Hareide took over the role on January 1, 2013.

Publications

Rainforest Foundation Norway produces a quarterly newsletter and publishes regular news updates on its website, as well as maintaining an active presence on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The organization also regularly publishes reports, fact sheets and other documents on issues related to its work, in order to raise awareness and provide information to policy- and decision-makers and members of civil society.

Criticism

In June 2003, Dr. Lim Keng Yaik, Malaysia's Minister of Primary Industries, charged Rainforest Foundation Norway with circulating misleading information about forestry management in Malaysia. The Minister stated that RFN had released a report alleging that Malaysia had destroyed most of its virgin forest, which according to him was "totally untrue". He further asserted that "the (Foundation's) [sic] report also alleges that Malaysian timbers such as Merbau and Kempas are endangered species when in actual fact, information from our latest National Forest Inventory shows that there are about 1.9 million and 10.3 million trees of more than 30cm in diameter of Merbau and Kempas respectively in Peninsular Malaysia alone".