The Nagaland Community Conserved Area Forum (NCCAF) inaugurated its headquarter office on the June 21 at Purana Bazaar, East Dimapur beside Inter-State Bus Terminal (ISBT). NCCAF is the apex membership based body representing Community Conserved Areas (CCAs) in the state of Nagaland, where communities are conserving forest and biodiversity in community owned lands.

Neema Pathak Broome, South-Asia Coordinator for Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) Consortium inaugurated the office, informed a press release by the NCCAF. In the inauguration speech, Neema Pathak expressed that the support for the establishment of the NCCAF office from the ICCA Consortium comes as part of the consortium vision and mandate of supporting the global movement and its members for indigenous and local communities collective territories of life, of which NCCAF is also a proud member.

She emphasized that Nagaland stands at a critical juncture of initiating exemplary leadership of supporting, sustaining and documenting the territories of life such as conservation of forest, biodiversity and water bodies. That the world looks up to the state and its people for leadership and any collective and self-strengthening work for its communities is a learning for the state and larger global community.

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The members of NCCAF stated that the vision of the office is to become a center of excellence to extend the cause of community biodiversity conservation, a space where research and documentation of CCAs, facilitation for support and policy advocacy of CCAs in Nagaland and training and capacity building of its members could be fostered.

The Secretary NCCAF, Seve Vadeo chaired the inauguration program and the Chairman NCCAF, Heirang Lungalang gave the welcome address, Dr. Y Nuklu Phom, Advisor NCCAF offered the dedication player.