As an indigenous woman, I am a keeper of traditions that preserve forests. Both indigenous men and women have conserved the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) forests for millennia, but today, they are under pressure from human activities. We, indigenous people, are now the firefighters safeguarding its integrity.
We face a multitude of challenges in protecting our forests. High levels of corruption enable widespread illegal exploitation of our forests, which leads to land grabbing for mining, oil, logging and more, forcing the displacement of local communities and destroying their livelihoods. Consequently, wars and armed conflicts expropriate local and indigenous communities from their lands and forests which increases land insecurity.
