TF-RD – Tropical Forest and Rural Development

• Securing land: domesticating NTFPs on negotiated protected-area and Bantu community land, valorising physical landscape features and promoting cultural tourism, reforestation, and monitoring climate trend indicators.

• Promoting green jobs: supporting experimental research for NTFP and agroforestry value chains, promoting these value chains among local communities, and promoting community ecotourism and sustainable development education.

• Joint projects with the private sector and civil society for community resilience: CSO-to-CSO cooperation on joint community initiatives, and shared social projects supporting self-development and resilience for communities near forestry operators.

• Supporting self-determination in sustainable development for partner groups: training and structuring farmer and NTFP-collector groups, promoting entrepreneurial leadership among men and women, and championing replication of the TF-RD approach.

Tropical Forest and Rural Development (TF-RD) was founded in response to two observations: the unsustainable use of natural resources and accelerating biodiversity loss in the Congo Basin, worsened by climate change, and the historical injustices caused by conservation models that marginalised local and Indigenous communities. Its founders set out to promote a different approach – conservation built on respectful, ethical and resilient partnerships with local communities, reconciling ecosystem protection with sustainable economic development by empowering populations around protected areas through green value chains (NTFPs and agroforestry cocoa). TF-RD was founded in 2010 to implement this inclusive conservation model centred on community development.