It is intended to enable forest communities themselves to demonstrate their presence in the forest; decision-makers and the private sector to take account of and recognise this presence; and to assist the international community in ensuring that programmes concerned with the Congo Basin’s forests provide equitable benefits for local communities.

The atlas contains more than 1,000 maps covering more than nine million hectares produced by rainforest communities through low-cost, easy-to-use mobile applications and using a specific methodology developed over the last 15 years. Users can analyse these in the context of other land uses such as logging activities, agricultural concessions, protected areas and REDD+ projects, as well as information on villages, forest cover and provision of state services in these areas. 

MappingForRights can be used to better understand the dynamics underpinning forest use, to counter the harmful impacts of other forest uses on local communities and to support rights-based approaches to forest management such as participatory land use planning and community forest development. 

The atlas has been built with support from Mapbox.