Overview of the project

The Ndjan Community Nature Reserve/Réserve Naturelle Communautaire de Ndjan (RNCD), located in the wetlands of the Mandoul Region Biosphere Reserve in Chad, is an exceptionally rich ecological site. Composed of three ecosystems, the reserve’s 200 hectares provide numerous environmental and socio-economic services. The effects of climate change combined with the multiple anthropogenic pressures weigh on the natural and cultural wealth of the area on which local communities depend.

Since the reserve’s creation in 2001, communities have mobilised to better protect their territory and thus their living conditions. However, the management systems are currently facing a lack of conceptual, logistical, and financial tools to ensure the sustainability of their actions. Despite some positive results, degradation of local habitats continues to threaten certain species with regional or even international stakes, such as the green turtle and migratory water birds in the Western Palearctic.

The Participatory Management Project of the Ndjan Community Nature Reserve (RNCD) is an initiative focused on biodiversity conservation and the fight against desertification, aiming to:

• Increase the forest’s wooded area, replace destroyed trees, and encourage the population to plant trees with multiple uses (shade, economic, and food).
• To train women in better beekeeping practices, as well as mushroom picking, and conservation.
• Advocate for the populations’ access to forest resources.
• Coach and support women in marketing forestry agricultural and animal products through micro-credit and training.

The recent creation of a management plan, a Management Committee and an Inter-site Committee with the Joal MPA demonstrates the stakeholders’ willingness to effectively pursue their efforts collectively. Supporting and strengthening all  of the RNCD’s actors (managers, populations, authorities) will enable the protection and enhancement of resources ensuring the viability and sustainability of the reserve. In order to achieve the planned objectives the organisation hopes to achieve:

• A social communication campaign (information, awareness-raising, dialogue, consensus, and lobbying) within the framework of the management plan.
• Awareness-raising among local communities: film-debate sessions, forum theatre, palaver sessions, participatory games, a video clip, and a short film will be made.
• Raising the awareness of the general public: use of media, organisation of tournaments, celebration of national and international days relating to the environment.
• Environmental education for young people.
• Development and monitoring: turtle nesting sites for example.
• Reforestation activities with mangrove, cashew, moringa, baobab, ditakh and filaos plants cultivated in previously established village nurseries.
• Performance of exhaustive inventories, in collaboration with a scientific partner, concerning fauna and flora, marine, river and forest resources.
• Studies on the interactions between different species (turtle and fish resources, mangroves and migratory birds) will be carried out; with the phenomenon of salinisation, arable land is becoming increasingly scarce.
• A study on the dynamics of salinisation would make it possible to understand the phenomenon and to implement potential measures to recover degraded lands.
• In response to complaints about attacks on livestock, a conflict management study would make it possible to identify the attacked species, assess the hyena population, map the location of attacks, and finally propose measures to mitigate these conflicts.