A passionate entomologist and naturalist expert, Gérard Filippi is also the founding president of the Microland association. The NGO contributes to discovering the biodiversity of threatened ecosystems by collaborating with the local populations of the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe, an African island state close to the equator. Founded in 2015, it organizes two annual on-site missions in partnership with the Consulate of São Tomé and Príncipe of Marseille, the OPIE, and BirdLife International as part of a project named Archipel de Biodiversité aiming at a better ecological understanding of this territory.