The Massaha Community Forest in the northeast province of Ogooué-Ivindo in Gabon is rich in ecological diversity and home to a vast network of villages, animals, insects, trees, and native plant species—all of which together constitute the forest’s natural ecosystems. The Massaha maintain ancient and sacred practices built around their cultural and spiritual beliefs. These practices enable sustainable use of natural resources for their livelihoods as well as the transfer of ancestral knowledge through initiations and festivals and the protection of their places of worship. Importantly, they guarantee a continuous natural regeneration of the area’s forests and ecosystems and the community’s collective heritage.
But today, the Massaha’s livelihoods and local flora and fauna are increasingly threatened by logging and poaching. A massive increase in logging by foreign companies over the last decade has wreaked havoc on the country’s forests.
With support from the Nsombou Abalghe-Dzal Association (NADA) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the community is proposing to create and legally manage a new conserved area spanning 11,300 hectares south of Liboumba River and the Massaha Community Forest. The area is called Ibola dja bana ba Massaha (the Massaha Children’s Reserve).
Through this project, funded by the Bezos Earth Fund and implemented since 2023 by CLARIFI, RRI’s funding mechanism for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities’ climate and conservation initiatives, the Massaha hope to protect their territorial biodiversity from mining and logging through employing their traditional knowledge.
Even though the legal framework of Gabon’s Forest Code does not yet formally recognize community-conserved areas, the Massaha hope that by demonstrating the collective power of community-led conservation, their actions can become a blueprint for other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) in Gabon and elsewhere.
What are OECMs and why does Gabon need them?
OECMs are a relatively recent conservation tool that can help achieve the 30% target set by the Global Biodiversity Framework. With global biodiversity in freefall, countries simply cannot continue to rely on protected areas alone to stop the loss. OECMs recognize conserved areas that sustain biodiversity irrespective of their objective or area target—a key example being lands and waters used and governed by Indigenous and local communities for hunting, fishing, and cultural practices while also conserving nature.
Forest cover represents more than 80% of Gabon’s land area. As of 2020, 28% of its marine ecosystems are under conservation and 21% of its terrestrial ecosystems are protected in some way. Along with 60 other countries, Gabon is also a signatory to the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to conserve 30% of the world’s biodiversity by 2030.
Through the CLARIFI project, the Massaha communities have already helped significantly reduce forest degradation and deforestation caused by industrial logging by collecting and documenting data; conducting consultations with government agencies and other key stakeholders; and initiating participatory mapping of their ancestral territory. Since January 2023, they have also been advocating for the reform and implementation of Gabon’s policies on conservation and land-use in support of community-conserved areas. All these actions will contribute to Gabon’s attainment of Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework.
NADA is also engaging with the Ministry for Wildlife and Protected Areas to reflect on strategies and policies needed to legally recognize two new categories of protected areas in Gabon: community conserved areas and community hunting zones. The forest proposed by the Massaha community is the first experimental model for a community-conserved area recognized by the Gabonese government.
If the law to officially recognize community-conserved areas and community hunting zones is passed, it will contribute to recognizing millions of hectares of community-conserved areas in Gabon.
“This process is a major asset to help the government implement its national policy aimed at preserving 30% of the world’s biodiversity by 2030,” says Alex Ebang, president of NADA.
The project has mobilized community members to demonstrate the effectiveness of community-led conservation by collecting biodiversity, anthropological, social, and economic data on their ancestral territories. This data shows high biomass in the region, with an average of 378.40Mg per hectare. This means that as of 2023, each hectare of forest has a carbon storage capacity of 172.55 million grams of carbon per hectare.
The community members also identified a significant amount of wildlife diversity, including 24 different species—several of which were previously thought to be extinct in the region and appear on the IUCN’s critically endangered list, like the leopard pictured below. These species include the dormant antelope, grey wild parrots, dwarf crocodiles, white-nosed monkeys, and the giant pangolin among others.
Following the data collection, the Massaha and NADA staff organized consultations with the Gabonese government, represented by the Ministry of Wildlife and Protected Areas, to demonstrate the positive impacts of their rights-based approaches to conservation. These consultations were followed by participatory mapping of the Massaha territories and a validation of all the resulting maps by key stakeholders at community assemblies. The community members also proposed how their mapped areas should be zoned as well as the establishment of community land and forest governance bodies to help manage the areas.
Impacts
Most importantly, the zoning carried out by the Massaha members during their land mapping helped raise the profile of rights-based conservation as an effective approach. It also helped them advocate for the end of land grabbing on their customary lands. In fact, thanks to the local monitoring carried out by the Massaha, which alerts the forest administration to logging activities, a company that still holds a logging permit on the Massaha territory has not conducted any new logging activities there since 2023.
The participatory mapping methodology the Massaha used as part of its delimitation process is also currently being scaled up and recommended by the government as part of a series of actions to recognize several proposed national parks in northeast Gabon, including around Baï de Momba in the Ivindo department and north of the Plateaux Batékés National Park.
Other major successes achieved by the project include:
- In the Massaha territory, women, men, and young people are showing more solidarity than ever before, united in the preservation of their ancestral heritage for present and future generations. They have adopted modern technologies to monitor biodiversity, such as biomonitoring, the installation of surveillance cameras, the use of GPS for georeferencing, and other data collection techniques to assess carbon storage in their forests.
- The project has also raised general awareness of the importance of community-led protection of forests. Lessons from the project have helped the Gabonese government undertake legal reforms of the country’s current framework for governing its protected areas in favor of community-led conservation.
- The project has also strengthened relationships between the Massaha communities and key national and local stakeholders in conservation including the Ministry of Water and Forests, the National Parks Agency, the Tropical Ecology Research Institute (IRET), the Panthera organization, and others. It has also enabled NADA to establish itself as a pioneer community-led organization in the promotion of community-conserved areas and OECMs in Gabon.
None of these achievements would have been possible without the Massaha women, who add courageous and formidable voices to the communities’ advocacy for their rights. Many of the women have undergone training in forest data collection and participate regularly in community patrols. During community assemblies, their contributions to conservation often raise the men’s motivation for forest surveillance activities.
What’s next?
The Massaha have made great strides in their fight to protect their forest from industrial logging, but their battle for conservation continues. Ecological monitoring, community patrols to identify infractions, and further data collection on the biodiversity of the forest are essential to continue this fight.
Here are some steps beyond official land recognition that the project must undertake to ensure that the communities can continue in their mission:
- For the Massaha communities and NADA, this includes monitoring illegal logging activities by companies no longer permitted on community lands, and training more community members, particularly youth, to ensure the generational transfer of traditional knowledge of conservation methods.
- The project must also strive to improve community livelihoods, particularly by restoring degraded areas so that certain species that had become scarce, such as wild mushrooms and medicinal plants, can return to the land.
- For the Gabonese government, which has already initiated a reform of the Gabonese Forest Code and is in favor of legally recognizing community-conserved areas, the next stage should be to increase the mobilization of communities in collecting and documenting additional data and developing a management plan for community-conserved areas.
- Last but not least, these lessons from the Massaha in Gabon must propel donors and climate and conservation leaders invested in global biodiversity to strengthen their support and funding for initiatives that strengthen community-led conservation as both a medium- and long-term investment.
“Setting up a research laboratory specializing in scientific research around community-conserved areas in Massaha is the way forward,” said Modeste Ndongoabendje, a community leader in the Massaha community.
