Community Management of Forests and Territories – National Meeting

16 Sep 2016 to 19 Sep 2016
City of Lorica, Córdoba

The areas protected and managed by local communities cover a large part of the planet’s land area. This responsibility that communities naturally assume, not only preserves unique lifestyles and cultures, but its results are much more effective than the ones obtained by conventionally protected areas, regarding forest conservation and restoration. At the global level, it is widely known that indigenous peoples, black communities and local communities play a key role in implementing strategies to protect and restore the ecosystems.

Recently, the Global Forest Coalition – organization that Censat Agua Viva and Fundaexpresión are part of – started a process in 20 countries, to strengthen and assess community initiatives for the protection and recovery of forests and territories. The objective of the assessment is to understand and get familiar with the ways in which communities restore and take care of their territories, to identify the main obstacles and needs, to make bottom-up recommendations and, finally, to start an advocacy process, at national and international levels, that generates support, acknowledgement and suitable conditions so that the communities can maintain and reproduce this kind of practice.

In this sense, we identified the importance of organizing a “National Meeting on Community Management of Forests and Territories”, with the objective of strengthening communities’ capacities with regard to their initiatives of bio-cultural management of the land. We are glad to invite you to be part of this meeting that will be held from September 16^th to September 19^th, in the city of Lorica, Córdoba.

On the understanding that culture is a fundamental element of community land management, we kindly request you to prepare a cultural event from your territory to be shared during the meeting; it can be music, folksongs, theater, myths, dances, tales, recipes, or whatever your creativity may suggest. We thank each one of you for your participation, and the organization Asprocig for receiving us in order to share knowledge, lessons and experience, and to meet once again in this process of understanding and care of life.

CENSAT Agua Viva
Friends of the Earth – Colombia
Information: clima@censat.org
Phone: (1) 337 77 09
www.censat.org