Aims
- To reflect on who owns the land and the importance of land rights
- To explore the challenges the Baka face from a rights perspective
What you need
What to do
- Read out the first part of the description of life in the forest from the Baka Community Lifestyle info sheet.
- Ask pupils to think about how it might be to go and gather their food rather than go to the shops?
- Do they have any experience of this? Berry picking or foraging for mushrooms and wild plants for example.Can you just get food in this way from anywhere?
- Try to draw out from pupils that access to productive land is necessary to be able to do this. In Scotland you would need a licence to fish or shoot game and in many places you would have to pay the landowner to be allowed to gather edible plants.
- Share the addition information from the Baka Community Lifestyleinfo sheet – except the last section: threats to the Baka people.
Brainstorm all the reasons why land is important to the Baka people.
- Plentiful food and nutrition
- Medicine
- Building materials for shelters and other uses
- Community space for social and cultural activity
- Emotional and spiritual connections
Finally share the information on the threats to the Baka people and discuss the points below.
Teacher prompts
- What are the consequences to the Baka people for being forced from the land?
- What will happen if they can’t go freely in the forest?
- Which of their rights are being denied?
- Is it fair that they can’t access the land?
- The restraints on the Baka people are ever-growing as logging and other commercial activity grow and their rights and ‘ownership’ of land are being denied.
Reflection and evaluation
- Ask pupils to look at the ‘Users of the Forest’info graphic. What do they notice?Who has most ‘right’ to use the forest? Who has least right? Why is there so much inequality in how the land is allocated?
- Ask pupils their views about more land being allocated to protecting forest for wildlife than for people.Point out that most of the logging companies who have licences to exploit the forest are from the industrialised ‘developed’ countries
- What does that say about who has the power in countries of the Congo Basin?Why do they think this is?Do they think this is fair and how things should be?
A longer version of this activity can be found at www.ourforestourfuture.org.uk
Further activities exploring land and rights in Scotland and around the world can be found at www.onthelandwestand.org.uk
