Following its successful training on the alternative protein production project in Maluku, the Urban Economy Analysis of Bushmeat in Kinshasa project of ERAIFT has just obtained US$5,000 in funding from the Congo Basin Institute to strengthen the capacity of its investigators to analyse the value chains of alternative proteins to bushmeat. This training, which will be hosted both at ERAIFT and in Maluku, aims to respond to the survey team's expressed needs to improve their knowledge and research approaches in social sciences and nature conservation.

The Urban Economy Analysis of Bushmeat in Kinshasa project is funded by the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) through UNEP-WCMC and works in partnership with the Wildlife Conservatin Society (WCS), an American wildlife conservation organisation in the DRC, and the University of Oxford. It's vision is to contribute to the decrease in bushmeat demand from big cities centres in Central Africa by understanding how the interaction between feelings, actions, socio-cultural and economics values influence the decisions and behaviour of urban citizens regarding bushmeat.

ERAIFT thanks the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for its involvement in this programme. It also thanks the project supervision team for the work done. ERAIFT is grateful to the Congo Basin Institute for this support.

The Director of ERAIFT, Category 2 Centre under the auspices of UNESCO, participates to the IUCN- Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) in Kigali from 18 to 23 July. Tuesday, July 19, 2022, he animated a side event entitled "Flux Tower in a Biosphere Reserve : The Yangambi experience" at the UNESCO Congress Pavilion, from 03.00pm to 04.00pm. This successful side event was introduced by Ms Shamila Nair-Bedouelle, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO in Paris.

ERAIFT thanks UNESCO for the invitation, the Kingdom of Belgium for funding the Yangambi Science Pole project and the European Union for its support.