Forest & Communities Initiative

The Forests and Communities Initiative (FCI) is a collaborative work dedicated to support conservation of forests ecosystems through the action of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. FCI was created in 2022 ans is supported by 5 partners working on complementary facets of forest conservation: the Prince Albert of Monaco Foundation, the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, the International Ranger Federation and Global Forest Coalition and the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

FCI’s mission is to support conservation of forest ecosystems through the action of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP and LCs) and through the development of a supporting network of actors providing a multidisciplinary set of expertise.

The current geographic scope of FCI’s activities is: Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, South and South East Asia, and Pacific islands.

The following six cross-disciplinary principles are guiding all activities supported by FCI:

• Focusing on the conservation of high ecological value areas, particularly primary forests and zones with low anthropic activities, with an emphasis on IP and LC-driven sanctuarization and preservation of these areas.
• Exercising conservation through a holistic approach to preserve all elements that make up these natural ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain; fauna, flora, soil, air, human beings, and all life cycles which they are part of.
• Respecting the knowledge and rights of IP and LCs within and around conservation areas, moving forward with their full and effective participation and supporting them being at the forefront of decision-making processes and conservation action, using gender-just*, rights-based approaches and participatory methodologies in order to take into account the rights, roles, needs and aspirations of all members of the community without discrimination.
• Practicing and promoting science-based, evidence-based, adapted and applied methodologies for projects’ activities and monitoring, to guarantee their long-term ecological effectiveness for the proposed solutions and clear results for the conservation and growth of local biodiversity.
• Practicing and promoting a multi-disciplinary approach to conservation, taking into account conservation science, environmental law, but also social science including the understanding of economical, political and cultural contexts.
• Fostering open-minded and open-sourced dialogues, research, information sharing, best practices exchanges, which can advance our understanding and our practice of forest conservation globally as well as locally.