Circuit court du marché des produits agricoles: pour une gestion efficace du paysage ouvert, cas du bassin-versant de Maningory, Madagascar

Separated by the Zahamena National park, smallholder farmers in the western part of the Maningory watershed largely rely on irrigated rice cropping, whereas those on the eastern front mainly rely on cash crops cultivated using slash and burn practices known as tavy in addition to rice cultivation. The watershed is made up of a mosaic of open landscapes, defined in this article as all grasslands, degraded cropland, and agricultural land. This mosaic is interspersed with the forests of the Zahamena National Park as well as those of eucalyptus reforestation, and Lake Alaotra’s marshlands. As cultivable rice parcels become increasingly scarce, farmers are pushed to extend their farming into the tanety and open landscape. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the role of local agricultural product markets commercialization in landscape changes. Two approaches were implemented to this end, namely companion modelling using role-playing games and personal interviews. Results show that small farming economy is largely based on local subsistence. Most of the agricultural production is used for personal consumption, leading to a weak resilience of the landscape and suggesting high vulnerability towards the market. The role of the market on land use strategies remains allusive and intrinsically linked to the product prices, as well as to the ease of access to locations. RésuméSéparés par le rideau forestier du Parc National Zahamena, les paysans du côté Ouest du bassin versant du Maningory vivent en grande partie de la riziculture irriguée, alors que sur le versant Est, la culture itinérante sur brûlis ou tavy caractérise les pratiques agricoles des paysans. Ils sont connus pour les cultures pluviales de riz, d’arachide, de haricot et les cultures de rente de girofle, de café, et de letchi. Le bassin versant est constitué de la forêt naturelle de l’Aire Protégée, de la forêt de reboisement d’eucalyptus et des zones marécageuses autour du Lac Alaotra. Cet ensemble forme une mosaïque de paysage ouvert—défini dans cet article comme l’ensemble des zones herbeuses et arbustives, des zones de culture sur formations dégradées, ainsi que des espaces cultivables en bas-fond et en bas de pente. Le constat est que les surfaces des rizières cultivables deviennent de plus en plus restreintes, incitant les paysans à coloniser les tanety ou le paysage ouvert pour les pratiques agricoles. Cet article tente de comprendre le rôle du circuit court de commercialisation des produits agricoles dans le changement d’occupation de ce paysage. Deux approches ont été utilisées à cette fin : la modélisation d’accompagnement à travers un jeu de rôle, et des entretiens individuels. Les résultats démontrent que l’économie paysanne est surtout basée sur une économie de subsistance. La plupart de la production agricole est destinée à l’autosubsistance, incitant ainsi une faible résilience du paysage et suggère une forte vulnérabilité face à l’économie de marché. Le rôle du marché dans les stratégies d’occupation du sol reste encore allusif mais intrinsèquement lié au prix des produits agricoles et à l’accessibilité des sites

Can REDD+ social safeguards reach the ‘right’ people? Lessons from Madagascar

AbstractThere is extensive debate about the potential impact of the climate mechanism REDD+ on the welfare of forest-dwelling people. To provide emission reductions, REDD+ must slow the rate of deforestation and forest degradation: such a change will tend to result in local opportunity cost to farmers at the forest frontier. Social safeguard processes to mitigate negative impacts of REDD+ are being developed and can learn from existing safeguard procedures such as those implemented by the World Bank. Madagascar has a number of REDD+ pilot projects with World Bank support including the Corridor Ankeniheny-Zahamena (CAZ). Nearly two thousand households around the corridor have been identified as ‘project affected persons’ (PAPs) and given compensation. We compare households identified as project affected persons with those not identified. We found households with more socio-political power locally, those with greater food security, and those that are more accessible were more likely to be identified as eligible for compensation while many people likely to be negatively impacted by the REDD+ project did not receive compensation. We identify three issues which make it difficult for a social safeguard assessment to effectively target the households for compensation: (a) poor information on location of communities and challenging access means that information does not reach remote households; (b) reluctance of people dependant on shifting agriculture to reveal this due to government sanctions; and (c) reliance by safeguard assessors on non-representative local institutions. We suggest that in cases where the majority of households are likely to bear costs and identification of affected households is challenging, the optimal, and principled, strategy may be blanket compensation offered to all the households in affected communities; avoiding the dead weight costs of ineffective safeguard assessments. The Paris Agreement in December 2015 recognised REDD+ as a key policy instrument for climate change mitigation and explicitly recognised the need to respect human rights in all climate actions. However, safeguards will be prone to failure unless those entitled to compensation are aware of their rights and enabled to seek redress where safeguards fail. This research shows that existing safeguard commitments are not always being fulfilled and those implementing social safeguards in REDD+ should not continue with business as usual

Who bears the cost of forest conservation?

Background While the importance of conserving ecosystems for sustainable development is widely recognized, it is increasingly evident that despite delivering global benefits, conservation often comes at local cost. Protected areas funded by multilateral lenders have explicit commitments to ensure that those negatively affected are adequately compensated. We make the first comparison of the magnitude and distribution of the local costs of a protected area with the magnitude and distribution of the compensation provided under the World Bank social safeguard policies (Performance Standard 5). Methods In the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor (a new protected area and REDD+ pilot project in eastern Madagascar), we used choice experiments to estimate local opportunity costs (n = 453) which we annualized using a range of conservative assumptions concerning discount rates. Detailed surveys covering farm inputs and outputs as well as off-farm income (n = 102) allowed us to explore these opportunity costs as a proportion of local incomes. Intensive review of publically available documents provided estimates of the number of households that received safeguard compensation and the amount spent per household. We carried out a contingent valuation exercise with beneficiaries of this compensation two years after the micro-development projects were implemented (n = 62) to estimate their value as perceived by beneficiaries. Results Conservation restrictions result in very significant costs to forest communities. The median net present value of the opportunity cost across households in all sites was US$2,375. When annualized, these costs represent 27–84% of total annual income for median-income households; significantly higher proportionally for poorer households. Although some households have received compensation, we conservatively estimate that more than 50% of eligible households (3,020 households) have not. Given the magnitude of compensation (based both on amount spent and valuation by recipients two years after the compensation was distributed) relative to costs, we argue that no one was fully compensated. Achieving full compensation will require an order of magnitude more than was spent but we suggest that this should be affordable given the global value of forest conservation. Discussion By analyzing in unprecedented depth both the local costs of conservation, and the compensation distributed under donor policies, we demonstrate that despite well-intentioned policies, some of the poorest people on the planet are still bearing the cost of forest conservation. Unless significant extra funding is provided by the global beneficiaries of conservation, donors’ social safeguarding requirements will not be met, and forest conservation in developing countries will jeopardize, rather than contribute to, sustainable development goals

Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence on the True Local Welfare Costs of Forest Conservation in Madagascar: Are Discrete Choice Experiments a Valid ex ante Tool?

Protected areas may impose local welfare costs through the enforcement of use restrictions. Predicting their welfare impacts before their establishment could help with the design of compensation schemes. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are increasingly used for ex ante evaluations but their validity is largely untested in low-income settings. Using a case study of a new REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) project in eastern Madagascar, we explore the validity of DCEs in two ways: (i) whether the estimates of welfare costs derived from DCE are affected by respondents’ prior experience of conservation (ii) whether DCE results have high theoretical and content validity. We surveyed households who have varying degrees of experience of restrictions to swidden agriculture. We also qualitatively debriefed a sub-sample of respondents to better understand their thought processes. Latent class analysis shows that DCE outcomes vary with conservation experience. Households more experienced with forest protection are less willing to trade-off rights to clear forest for swidden agriculture with any compensatory interventions whereas less experienced households highly favor support for alternative agricultural techniques and a secure right to clear one hectare of forest. Although the results show apparent non-attendance to some attributes (e.g., cash payments), qualitative debriefings suggest that respondents infact do expect relatively low or no utility from the given attributes and hence have theoretically valid preferences. Similarly, the DCE has generally high content validity. Although DCE can elicit current preferences in this context, using ex ante DCE to estimate the welfare costs of such a long-term intervention requires caution. We conclude that it is difficult to robustly estimate compensation in advance of an intervention, there is therefore a need to rethink conservation approaches, and the feasibility of achieving fair compensations for conservation-imposed restrictions

Factors enhancing the level of utilisation of research knowledge on ecosystems

The significant resource investment in research on ecosystems for development of the Global South does not necessarily result in high levels of research knowledge utilisation (RKU). Understanding the factors associated with various levels of RKU can inform funding agencies and researchers developing new projects. We applied a combination of a questionnaire survey and follow up interviews with members of research teams of multiple, broadly comparable projects to make an assessment of achieved RKU levels using a combination of quantitative statistical hypothesis testing and narrative description of survey responses. Research knowledge dissemination by members of the project team who work for non-academic institutions or champions, e.g. particularly motivated people that promote and facilitate implementation or adoption of the project results, and via television was associated with higher research knowledge utilization. By contrast, dissemination by members of the project team working for academic institutions and via peer-reviewed journals was associated with lower RKU. The achieved level of RKU was consistently lower than the targeted level of RKU across spatial scales. The discrepancy between the perceived level of RKU and the evidence provided by survey respondents indicates the need for better monitoring the utilisation of research knowledge in development pathways. Our results further suggest that three years project duration is too short to achieve high levels of RKU in socio-ecological systems. We recommend involvement of non-academic members of the project team in project design, leadership and dissemination for increasing RKU.ISSN:1932-620

Circuit court du marché des produits agricolesj : pour une gestion efficace du paysage ouvert, cas du bassin-versant de Maningory, Madagascar

Séparés par le rideau forestier du Parc National Zahamena, les paysans du côté Ouest du bassin versant du Maningory vivent en grande partie de la riziculture irriguée, alors que sur le versant Est, la culture itinérante sur brûlis ou tavy caractérise les pratiques agricoles des paysans. Ils sont connus pour les cultures pluviales de riz, d’arachide, de haricot et les cultures de rente de girofle, de café, et de letchi. Le bassin versant est constitué de la forêt naturelle de l’Aire Protégée, de la forêt de reboisement d’eucalyptus et des zones marécageuses autour du Lac Alaotra. Cet ensemble forme une mosaïque de paysage ouvert défini dans cet article comme l’ensemble des zones herbeuses et arbustives, des zones de culture sur formations dégradées, ainsi que des espaces cultivables en bas-fond et en bas de pente. Le constat est que les surfaces des rizières cultivables deviennent de plus en plus restreintes, incitant les paysans à coloniser les tanety ou le paysage ouvert pour les pratiques agricoles. Cet article tente de comprendre le rôle du circuit court de commercialisation des produits agricoles dans le changement d’occupation de ce paysage. Deux approches ont été utilisées à cette fin : la modélisation d’accompagnement à travers un jeu de rôle, et des entretiens individuels. Les résultats démontrent que l’économie paysanne est surtout basée sur une économie de subsistance. La plupart de la production agricole est destinée à l’autosubsistance, incitant ainsi une faible résilience du paysage et suggère une forte vulnérabilité face à l’économie de marché. Le rôle du marché dans les stratégies d’occupation du sol reste encore allusif mais intrinsèquement lié aux prix des produits agricoles et à l’accessibilité des sites.ABSTRACTSeparated by the Zahamena National park, smallholder farmers in the western part of the Maningory watershed largely rely on irrigated rice cropping, whereas those on the eastern front mainly rely on cash crops cultivated using slash and burn practices known as tavy in addition to rice cultivation. The watershed is made up of a mosaic of open landscapes, defined in this article as all grasslands, degraded cropland, and agricultural land. This mosaic is interspersed with the forests of the Zahamena National Park as well as those of eucalyptus reforestation, and Lake Alaotra’s marshlands. As cultivable rice parcels become increasingly scarce, farmers are pushed to extend their farming into the tanety and open landscape. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the role of local agricultural product markets commercialization in landscape changes. Two approaches were implemented to this end, namely companion modelling using role-playing games and personal interviews. Results show that small farming economy is largely based on local subsistence. Most of the agricultural production is used for personal consumption, leading to a weak resilience of the landscape and suggesting high vulnerability towards the market. The role of the market on land use strategies remains allusive and intrinsically linked to the product prices, as well as to the ease of access to locations

Participatory Bayesian network modeling to understand driving factors of land-use change decisions: insights from two case studies in northeast Madagascar

ISSN:1747-4248ISSN:1747-423

Approaching Local Perceptions of Forest Governance and Livelihood Challenges with Companion Modeling from a Case Study around Zahamena National Park, Madagascar

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a widely used approach aimed at involving those utilizing resources in their management. In Madagascar, where forest decentralization has been implemented since the 1990s to spur local resource users’ involvement in management processes, impacts remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate farmers’ perceptions and practices regarding forest use under various forest governance systems, using a participatory gaming approach implemented in the Zahamena region of Madagascar. We report on (i) the conceptual models of the Zahamena socio-ecological system; (ii) the actual research tool in the form of a tabletop role-playing game; and (iii) main outcomes of the gaming workshops and accompanying research. The results allow the linking of game reality with real-world perceptions based on game debriefing discussions and game workshop follow-up surveys, as well as interviews and focus group research with other natural resource users from the study area. Results show that the Zahamena protected area plays the role of buffer zone by slowing down deforestation and degradation. However, this fragile barrier and CBNRM are not long-term solutions in the face of occurring changes. Rather, the solution lies in one of the main causes of the problem: agriculture. Further use of tools such as participatory gaming is recommended to enhance knowledge exchange and the development of common visions for the future of natural resource management to foster resilience of forest governance.Forestry, Faculty ofNon UBCForest Resources Management, Department ofReviewedFacult