Participatory Management, Protection, Enhancement and Perpetuation Project of the Ndjan Community Nature Reserve

The Youth Organisation for Promotion and Development/ Organisation des Jeunes pour la Promotion et le Développement (OJPD) project fights against desertification and poverty, especially for the region's women and young people.

An initiative of Youth Organisation for Promotion and Development / Organisation des Jeunes pour la Promotion et le Devéloppement (OJPD)

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.
Objective

The project's main objective is to contribute to the fight against desertification and to reduce poverty, especially for the region's women and youth.

Level of progress

Ongoing research

Project timeline

October 2019-2024

Quantitative results
  1. Protect the territory covered by the RNCD to conserve regional biodiversity:
    • The populations of the five villages of the Ndjan Rural Community demonstrate more environmentally friendly behaviour and protect the 10,430 hectares of the reserve.
    • Better scientific knowledge makes it possible to measure the state of the resources and to improve protection actions.
  2. Promote shared governance to ensure functional management of the RNCD:
    • The Functional Management Committee and the management plan are applied.
    • The RNCD is part of a regional dynamic.
  3. Promote local economic development by enhancing the natural resources of the RNCD in order to perpetuate conservation actions:
    • Income-generating and environmentally friendly activities create sustainable local development.
    • Ecotourism development enables the sustainability of RNCD’s conservation actions.

 

Financing

We are in the process of seeking funding.

About the
organisation

Youth Organisation for Promotion and Development / Organisation des Jeunes pour la Promotion et le Devéloppement (OJPD)

website
Beni Laya
Chairman of the Board of Directors
ojpd2000@yahoo.fr
23566290632

The Youth Organisation for Promotion and Development/Organisation des Jeunes pour la Promotion et le Développement (OJPD) is a national coalition of youth organisations under Chadian law working for environmental preservation and to improve the local populations’ living conditions. Headquartered in N’Djamena, OJPD is recognised by the Ministry of the Interior and Territorial Administration as a non-profit voluntary organisation, receiving operating authorisation on October 10, 1995, registered in the Register of Associations folio 212 and registered as a national NGO at the Permanent Secretariat of NGOs (SPONG) on August 18, 1999 under N° 259.

OJPD intervenes in the following areas:

  • Advisory and financial support to grassroots youth organisations
  • Tree planting for environmental protection
  • Preservation of biological diversity through the defence of ponds and forest sites
  • Protection of children, girls, women and vulnerable people
  • Agricultural production and discrimination
  • Fight against discrimination in all its forms and protection of the rights of women, girls and vulnerable children
  • Basic education for children and adult literacy
  • Micro-finance and entrepreneurship
  • Health (fight against HIV/AIDS and sexual violence against women)
  • Women and development
  • New Information and Communication Technology (NICT)
  • Culture of peace in schools and management of conflicts between farmers and herders
  • Support for artists’ groups
  • Support for civic education and citizenship
A project
in collaboration
  • Assocation Tchadienne pour l'Enfance / Chadian Association for Childhood

    Non-Governmental Organisation

    Binber Kainbé Asroh
    atepourlenfance@yahoo.fr
    23566233610
  • Association pour le Ministère parmi les Enfants / Ministry Association among Children

    Association

    Mme Nessiel Debeye Dekasse Perside
    dekasse@yahoo.com
    +23566268446