Curzon Consulting gives technical support to Rainforest Foundation UK
As consultancies look to help clients to make a difference for the environment, a number have offered support to non-profits linked to preserving the world’s surviving forests. Curzon Consulting is the latest firm to help such an organisation, with the firm providing technical support for a workshop on forest governance.
Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is an organisation which looks to tackle deforestation locally and globally. Locally, the group helps forest communities to gain land rights, challenge logging companies, manage their forests and protect their environment, while internationally it campaigns to influence national and international laws to protect rainforests and their inhabitants.
Being able to monitor and respond to illegal deforestation quickly is key to the organisation’s goal, something digital solutions have played a huge role in bolstering. Real-time community-based monitoring is a tool that connects local people with national law enforcement in an effort to stop illegal logging – something RFUK’s bespoke ForestLink system provides so forest communities can send alerts and evidence of a number of threats to the forest, even in remote areas with no mobile connectivity.
RFUK’s ForestLink project is currently supporting dozens of communities across Central and Western Africa and Peru, with nearly 600 local observers having already been trained in Africa alone.
In order to help expand this further, and explain the importance of the new technology, the organisation recently hosted a three-day virtual workshop. Titled ‘The role of ForestLink and community-based monitoring in improving forest governance,’ the event was enabled by support from Curzon Consulting.
Curzon Consulting provided technical support to RFUK and its partners in Ghana, DRC, Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Liberia at the end of November 2020, in an event which brought together national and international stakeholders. The workshop went on to explore the role of community-based approaches in enhancing the monitoring, protection and governance of forests beyond promoting legality of forest operations.
The news comes in the same year when Deloitte announced it had been helping the World Wildlife Fund to develop new technology in the fight to protect the world’s most fragile ecosystems. Supported by the Deloitte Impact Foundation, the Cognitive Deforestation Prevention programme uses artificial intelligence to prevent illegal deforestation.
