Gabon sits within the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest and a vital global carbon sink. Its vast forests store carbon and harbour extraordinary biodiversity, making their protection important for people far beyond this small Central African nation. Much of the international conversation focuses, understandably, on keeping these forests standing. But what does that involve in practice, in places where people have lived with and depended on forests for generations?

That question was at the centre of a recent visit to Gabon by Ashden colleagues Isona Shibata, Head of International Programmes and Dua Zehra, Senior International Programmes Officer. Through Thriving Forests, Ashden and The Nature Recovery Project support locally rooted organisations working across forest protection, community rights and sustainable livelihoods. They spent time with three of them in Gabon: Nsombou Abalghe Dzal Association (NADA), Ngudu Dimbu and L’association Protectrice des Grands Singes de la Moukalaba (PROGRAM).

Spending time with these organisations and the communities they work with gave a much clearer sense of what sits behind the outcomes we often talk about in conservation. Protecting thousands of hectares of forest might be described by a simple number, but achieving this can take years and depends on local knowledge, trust, resources and organisations with the capacity to stay the course.

The visit offers four practical insights for funders and environmental actors supporting locally led conservation. They are lessons we are taking on board too, as we think about what the next phase of Thriving Forests should look like and how we can better support locally led conservation.

1. The forest is a “territory of life”: understanding how communities know and care for it

NADA describes the forest as a “territory of life” for the communities it works with. When heavy rains make roads difficult and communities more isolated, the forest becomes their “pharmacy and supermarket,” providing traditional medicine and food.

Living so closely with the forest has also shaped how communities use and care for it. Some areas are considered sacred: people seek permission before entering and access is restricted. NADA’s camera traps are finding rich biodiversity in these same forests, showing how practices rooted in culture and spiritual belief can also limit disturbance and protect critical habitats.

That knowledge has a practical role in securing communities’ rights too. Through participatory mapping, communities identify rivers, boundaries and sacred sites, which are then mapped using GIS. This forms part of NADA’s work to help 19 communities legally secure more than 145,000 hectares of ancestral forest in Ougoué Ivindo province.

These examples show why conservation programmes need to understand how a forest is already being managed before introducing new approaches. Community rules and beliefs may already be protecting particular places, while knowledge built over generations can help establish where territories begin and end.

Tools such as camera traps and GIS can strengthen this work, providing evidence of what is living in these forests and helping turn community knowledge of the land into maps that support legal recognition.

2. Livelihoods and biodiversity are often part of the same problem and the same solution

Around Moukalaba-Doudau National Park, this connection is evident. Communities rely on the surrounding land and forests for food and income. When other opportunities are limited, activities such as hunting or exploiting forest resources can become important ways to make a living. At the same time, elephants can enter farms and destroy crops, putting further pressure on household food and income.

This is why Ngudu Dimbu works on livelihoods alongside biodiversity protection. It supports 21 local beekeepers with hives and training, while beehive barriers can also help deter elephants from eating the villages’ crops without harming them. Its five-hectare community orchard is being developed to produce fruit for local markets and native tree species that can eventually support forest restoration around the fringes of the national park.

PROGRAM is approaching the same relationship from another direction. It works with local people, including former poachers, who are now involved in tracking and protecting wildlife and community-led tourism, alongside promoting sustainable food production and other ways to earn an income.

Reducing pressure on forests is difficult without addressing why people may need to depend on activities such as hunting or forest extraction in the first place. Creating viable livelihoods can change that equation, while approaches such as beekeeping can also help communities manage the very real costs of living alongside wildlife.

3. The operational complexity of locally led conservation is huge

One thing that is easy to underestimate from a distance is how much time and work sits behind achieving conservation outcomes. These organisations are often working in remote areas and across vast distances, where journeys that look short on a map can take hours. The work is also closely tied to the seasons. Planting happens with the rains, while consultations or training in remote villages may need to be planned for the dry season, before flooding makes some areas difficult to reach. Securing recognition of a community territory can take years, livelihood activities need time to become established, and relationships with communities and local authorities have to be built and maintained.

Much of this is being managed by relatively small teams. Alongside the work on the ground, they are managing grants, budgets, monitoring results, gathering evidence and responding to donor reporting requirements.

All of this is necessary, but it takes real staff time and capacity. For funders, understanding this operational complexity means being realistic about timelines, budgets and reporting requirements, particularly when small local organisations are taking on ambitious conservation work with limited resources.

4. Funding needs to match the reality of the work

Funding is not only about how much reaches local organisations. The way that funding is structured can shape what they are able to do with it. Flexible, longer-term funding gives organisations more room to make decisions based on what is happening on the ground, adapt when plans change, and invest in the people and systems they need to grow. It can also give them some stability beyond delivering a set of activities within a single grant cycle.

This matters because local community and Indigenous people-led organisations still receive only a small share – less than 2.5% – of international climate and conservation finance directly. And when funding does reach them, the conditions attached to it, such as restricted budgets and stringent reporting requirements, can influence how useful that funding actually is. This is part of what Thriving Forests is testing: combining flexible, grants with support to strengthen organisational capacity and help them access more diverse sources of finance.

As more funding turns towards the Congo Basin, the question is therefore not simply how much reaches locally rooted organisations, but whether it gives them the flexibility, time and capacity to use it well.

Read more about Thriving Forests here.