A Congolese organisation working in the heart of the Congo Basin, securing community forests and protecting the vast peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale, one of the most important carbon stores on the planet.
From Mbandaka, the Groupe d'Action pour Sauver l'Homme et son Environnement (GASHE) works across the forests and peatlands of Équateur. It helps communities win legal title to their forests, and it guards the Cuvette Centrale, the immense tropical peatland whose waterlogged soils hold billions of tonnes of carbon.
What happens to these peatlands matters far beyond the DRC. GASHE works so that the people who live among them are their guardians: securing community forests, monitoring illegal logging in real time, and showing that protecting the forest and living from it can be the same thing.
GASHE has worked from Mbandaka, in the heart of Équateur, for more than two decades, long the natural-resource focal point for civil society in the province. Its mission joins the two halves of its name: saving people and saving their environment, in the conviction that neither can be done without the other.
Much of its work is the patient business of community forestry: helping communities secure Local Community Forest Concessions over the forests they depend on, and drawing up the land-use plans that let them manage them. Around that, GASHE pioneers the protection of the Cuvette Centrale peatlands and equips forest communities to monitor illegal logging in real time.
That monitoring has teeth. Alerts raised by GASHE-supported forest guardians have led to seizures of illegal timber and to landmark enforcement, proof that local vigilance, properly equipped, can defend a globally important forest.
GASHE works the whole of forest governance in Équateur, from securing community forests to guarding the peatlands and catching illegal logging as it happens.
GASHE helps communities obtain Local Community Forest Concessions and the land-use plans to manage them, turning forests long used in custom into forests held in law.
Many community forest concessions secured across Équateur, covering more than a million hectares
Land-use plans giving communities a durable say over their forests
Figures reported by GASHE (gasheong.org) for its community-forestry work in Équateur.
From Mbandaka, GASHE works the territories of Équateur, through the forests and peatlands of the central Congo Basin.
Headquarters: coordination and advocacy on the Congo River, capital of Équateur.
GASHE becomes the natural-resource focal point for civil society in Équateur.
Community alerts supported by GASHE lead to seized timber and landmark enforcement under the forest law.
A community-led pilot begins to protect the Cuvette Centrale peatlands.
Community forest concessions supported by GASHE pass a million hectares across Équateur.
