Forest Peoples Programme: facing the challenge

The threats
Forests cover 12% of the planet and nearly all are inhabited. Many of the peoples who live in and have customary rights to their forests have developed ways of life and traditional knowledge that are attuned to their forest environments. Yet forest policies commonly treat forests as empty lands controlled by the State and available for 'development' - colonisation, logging, plantations, dams, mines, oil wells, gas pipelines and agribusiness.These encroachments often force forest peoples out of their forest homes. Some conservation schemes to establish wilderness reserves also deny forest-dwellers' rights. Cut off from their ancestral territories, forest peoples face poverty, the erosion of their customary institutions, loss of identity and cultural collapse.