Our mission

FCI's mission is to support conservation of forest ecosystems through the action of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) 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 IPLC-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 IPLCs 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.

*In line with the Gender Plan of Action of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity