Introducing the Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN)
Founded in 1989 in the wake of Sting and Kayapó leader Raoni’s world tour, Rainforest Foundation Norway is a pioneer in rights-based rainforest protection. Building long-term partnerships with indigenous associations and environmental and rights-based organizations in key rainforest countries, RFN combines extensive activities on-the-ground in remote rainforest regions with targeted national and international level policy action and strategic engagement with the private sector. Together with its 62 partner organizations in the six most important rainforest countries, RFN protects, on a continuous basis, more than 72 million hectares of rainforest (twice the size of Germany). Policy achievements include making Norway a global leader in public funding for rainforest protection since the UNFCCC COP-13 in Bali in 2007, influencing the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund (the USD 1.3 trillion Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global – GPFG) to make reduced deforestation and indigenous peoples’ rights one of its top responsible investment priorities and having the Norwegian salmon industry achieve that its Brazilian soy suppliers became the first soy producers in the world to deliver deforestation-free soy to all its customers, not just the environmentally conscious ones. More recently, RFN’s Falling short report (documenting that only a tiny fraction of official and philanthropic climate and forest support reaches forest peoples on the ground) played an important role in mobilizing the Glasgow $1.7 billion IPLC pledge. The ambitious goal of RFN’s 2018-2030 strategy is to ensure that the world’s large, contiguous rainforest areas are managed in ways that uphold biodiversity, forest ecosystem services and the human rights of indigenous and other forest-dependent peoples and communities. Join us to meet Lars Løvold, Director of RFN from 1990 until 2018, and currently Special Advisor in RFN’s Knowledge and Learning team.
