African Voices for Africa’s Forests🌳🧑🏾‍🌾

Land ownership, women empowerment, and Indigenous’s rights in Cameroon’s forests

Dear ReWilder, 

Our hearts are heavy when we hear about the plunder of natural ecosystems, trees hundreds of years old, scarred and chopped at a whim, indigenous communities losing their access to sacred land, livelihoods, and connection to nature because of governments, western development and growth models, and capitalist corporations’ greed. Nature exploited, extracted, dispossessed, destroyed. 

And then, light trickles through the dense tree canopies to reveal a ray of light. Always. Stories that renew, excite, provide hope, and visions of alternative futures. All across Africa, communities push back against extractive industries and corporations by honouring Indigenous methods of preserving nature and biodiversity using skills, wisdom, and knowledge passed down through generations of people who have intimate relationships with their natural environments. 

The Congo Basin is one of Africa’s largest, and most important carbon sinks. It’s a vast area spanning Cameroon, DRC, Gabon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, and Equatorial Guinea. African Climate Reality Project and ReWild Africa produced a short film titled African Voices for Africa’s Forests that explores climate justice, women empowerment, indigenous rights, ecological restoration, and land rights issues in Cameroon. Through the eyes of one marvellous woman, Ewi, we have the opportunity to meet these people who have made it their lives’ purpose to reclaim degraded land, fight for the rights of indigenous people, and protect natural resources. 

Ewi Stephanie Lamma, is a trained Climate Reality Leader and Coordinator at Forests, Resources and People, in Limbe, Cameroon. She works with local communities, women, and youth, encouraging them to use their voices and take part in local decision-making processes to protect and restore their local forests. Ewi works with these communities not only to address deforestation, but also to reframe how we think about governance of the commons (e.g land, water, soil, etc.) and issues of rights, ownership, and identity. Ewi, and her communities, are amplifying the call for local people to be involved in decision making processes, and consulted before development projects take place through free, prior, and informed consent processes.

For the local communities in the film, the relationship with the forest and the land has always been one of respect and care. These communities have been affected by deforestation because land is owned by the government, who in turn sells it to big corporations, making it privatised, inaccessible, and degrading the land of its natural resources. 

We imagine so many alternative futures when faced with the crisis of climate change. There are so many paths we, as a global community, can take. The one we collectively dream is one where governments work for indigenous people, and for local environments and ecosystems. A world where profit is not the measure by which we determine success. A world where earth’s natural resources are left in peace, because we have realised they provide greater value to us in their natural state; hidden, covered in moss, moist and nestled in the undergrowth, in harmony, and with secrets we will never fully understand. 

What can you do? 💪🏽

Share the film, and help amplify the message using these hashtags:

• Primary:

  • #Forests4People

  • #SaveCongoBasin

• Additional:

  • #AfricaWeWant

  • #NatureBasedSolutions

  • #ClimateActionNow

Wild Regards, 

Team ReWild Africa