As told by Guy Moussele, President, Bomassa Association to Promote Culture and Protect Biodiversity
The below described project is part of a partnership with the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative (CLARIFI). CLARIFI's mission is to raise public and private funds to strategically extend flexible resources directly to Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples’, and local communities to advance their approaches and priorities when it comes to achieving land rights, conservation, climate change adaptation, and sustainable management of their territories, while supporting greater equity across gender, age, and ecosystems.
The project areas, namely the Bomassa triangle landscape (Sangha) and the Lac Mboukou-Ebouhole landscape (Likouala), are essentially forest ecosystems whose resources are used by Indigenous Peoples and local communities to meet their vital needs. The communities concerned are Bandzambas, Mbendjeles, Baboles, Bomassa and Pomos. They number an estimated 2,000 individuals in over 200 households.
The communities have lived here since time immemorial in harmony with nature, and have developed traditional cultural and socio-economic knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation. However, despite the efforts Indigenous Peoples and local communities have made to conserve these landscapes through their traditional knowledge and practices, these forest areas are now exposed to various threats that threaten their very existence.
Large-scale logging companies are exerting permanent pressure on forest resources, posing a major threat to the living environment of indigenous populations. The important biodiversity that abounds in these ecosystems also faces poaching and risks losing its most emblematic species, such as the elephant and the gorilla. Furthermore, another major conservation challenge is the lack of a well-structured organizational framework to ensure the management and protection of natural habitats and landscapes.
The Bomassa Association for the Promotion of Culture and Protection of Biodiversity (ABPCB) therefore wanted to contribute to the national effort to preserve the culture of Indigenous populations, while ensuring the protection of the biodiversity of the landscapes concerned, in conjunction with local communities and Indigenous populations.
The project aims to address the issue of land tenure security, biodiversity conservation and natural resource management in the context of the fight against climate change, as well as to support communities in the creation of Indigenous and community protected areas to ensure the conservation and sound management of natural resources in their territories, while contributing to the 2030 objective of the Global Biodiversity Framework. It aims to secure 270,200 ha of forest, peatland and lake areas for the communities themselves.
Three major activities have been carried out to date, which include awareness raising of local customary authorities on the importance of good management and conservation of natural resources in their respective territories. This was done through individual contacts, focus groups and mass workshops at the two project sites. The project also worked on advocacy with stakeholders at the central level (ministries, institutions and NGOs) as well as with the departmental and municipal authorities on which the sites in question depend. Finally, geo-referenced mapping exercises are being carried out at the two project sites, namely the Bomassa triangle in the Kabo district (Sangha) and the Mboukou-Ebouhole lake landscape in the Epéna district (Likouala).
The major challenges encountered include the remoteness of the sites from the association's headquarters, requiring long and arduous journeys to reach the sites and communities and the lack of clean means of transport for both advocacy and site visits.
