FODI

• Providing technical and administrative support to local and Indigenous communities in acquiring and governing Local Community Forest Concessions (CFCL).

• Carrying out biodiversity conservation focused on protecting Grauer’s gorillas, chimpanzees and their habitats within CFCLs.

• Supporting improved socio-economic conditions for the communities involved.

FODI (Forest for Integral Development) emerged from the dissolution of COCREFOBA, a community conservation association for the Bakano Forest Reserve created in 2002 by young people from the Bakano sector living in Goma, alarmed by the sharp decline of Grauer’s gorillas and deteriorating social infrastructure, inspired by the Tayna Gorilla Reserve model. In the absence of a legal framework for ‘community’ reserves in DRC, Tayna was reclassified by the government as a nature reserve in 2006, imposing stricter usage restrictions – a disappointment for local populations, while civil society pushed for regulations enabling genuine community forestry.

Amid this tension between community forestry and community reserves, some COCREFOBA members favoured nature-reserve status while others favoured local community forest concessions, leading to FODI’s creation in 2009 to advance community forestry with a proper legal and regulatory framework.

FODI is a member of the USHIRIKI Consortium for the implementation of the Conservation Action Plan in the area between the Kahuzi-Biega and MAIKO National Parks, as well as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).