TUBE AWU

• Improving knowledge through beach monitoring and boat surveys documenting marine turtle presence, nesting sites and feeding areas, and landing-site monitoring to characterise bycatch and identify marine mammal species caught in the area.

• Supporting communities through income-generating activities, structuring fishers’ associations to promote sustainable fishing, and promoting ecotourism by identifying tourism-potential sites and supporting a local ecotourism promotion body.

• Changing perceptions and practices in and around the MPA through community awareness and school-based environmental education on marine and coastal biodiversity conservation, and reviving traditional and ancestral knowledge as a conservation tool.

• Improving the MPA’s territorial governance through community structuring, stakeholder mapping, and governance analysis to ensure communities are included in decision-making.

TUBE AWU grew out of the Iyasa local communities’ desire to protect their cultural heritage and conserve marine turtles along the Kribi-Campo coastline (Cameroon).

Officially recognised on 19 January 2015 by the Prefect of Ocean Department, its headquarters are located in Ebodjé (Cameroon), specifically at the “Maison de Ndiva”.

It is a collective of people from diverse backgrounds working for the conservation of marine and coastal biodiversity while improving local populations’ living conditions. It is apolitical, non-profit, secular and non-discriminatory, governed by the provisions of Law N67/LS/19 of 12 June 1967 on freedom of association and its subsequent implementing texts.

In addition, TUBE AWU’s creation was also motivated by a desire to support the creation of the marine park – confirming these communities’ acceptance of marine and coastal conditions biodiversity conservation within the marine park.