Actions | A Holistic Approach #

Local, community-led work is central to NADA’s work across all four pillars. This work is iterative, and ever-evolving. It currently includes:

• Perpetual community-based research to inform and facilitate sustainable and adaptive governance and management of bushmeat hunting (we the aim to soon expand to freshwater fishing and all and other natural resources). This research includes paraecological monitoring in 20 villages (started in 2015, and resulting in a social-ecological dataset novel in its scale, resolution and application) and participatory mapping (facilitated by hundreds of local hunters using simple GPS technology to map hunts, now being coupled with the mapping of cultural sites and new participatory data tools). Villages create and adapt their own hunting and wildlife management through extensive community meetings, leveraging the data they collect to inform their decisions and actions. See more in our publications.

• Self-determined projects on territories of life and biocultural diversity, including NADA’s well-known work with the community of Massaha. Territories of life, also known in some contexts as ICCAs, are territories and areas conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities. Learn more about the beginnings of this work here.

• NADA’s community-led work is ever-expanding - new initiatives currently include work on gender equity and reforestation. See more in our collaborators.

Villages use the data and maps collected to actively plan and participate in co-management with regional institutions - be it a neighbouring national park or a logging company cutting timber in their backyard - to enable recognition of their land use and local monitoring of the forest. This collaboration is vital to mitigate threats from illegal activity by outsiders.

NADA closely collaborates with the Gabonese government, integrating successes and lessons learned into national policy. We facilitate and promote direct exchange on just sustainability between communities and federal decision-makers, and engage in long-term technical collaboration on specific policy with the government. Currently, NADA is working with the Research Institute for Tropical Ecology (IRET), the National Parks Agency (ANPN), and the Ministry of Forestry. See collaborators for more.

Recognizing similar urgent action is required in many tropical rainforest regions across the planet, NADA integrates successes and lessons learned into international discourse, from publishing papers in scientific journals, providing information to storytellers in international media, to collaboration with NGOs and decolonial conservation movements around the world.