Community  is the essence and soul of any conservation project that aims to create an interspecies balance. A symphony of Civilization, Fauna, Flora, Fungi and microorganisms.

At Upemba National Park, our conservation partner, Forgotten Parks Foundation, has established a number of programs that are an example of carefully listening and adapting to the context:

Microcredits Program

These are credits provided in partnership with IDPE (Innovation for the Development and Protection of the Environment) and their aim is to provide funds to kickstart sustainable development projects in protection areas.

Think of education, seeds and other resources for agroforestry, sustainable fishing at Upemba Lake and much more. In the current cycle 50 people from the local communities have received them successfully!

Sustainable Fishing at Mabwe

A couple of years ago, at Upemba Lake in Mabwe, finding a fish bigger than the size of a finger was an impossible task due to the illegal and unmonitored overfishing with inappropriate tools used, resulting in destruction of the habitat.

We ran education and awareness workshops and implemented guidelines for sustainable fishing. The results of these efforts have been outstanding as the Lake has regained a substantial amount of its fish populations.

With the support of the communities we also launched a solemn appeal to all fishermen to identify themselves in order to be recognized, preventing harassment to exercise their profession freely and fulfilling their civic duties. This project increased the amount and quality of fish available which not only allows for their subsistence but provides an excess that can be traded responsibly.

This is just the start! In our next post we will be talking about web3 communities and the decentralisation of conservation.

Rodrigo Zapata
Web3 Project Manager