Bushfire in Madagascar: natural hazard, useful tool, and change agent

Bushfire does not usually figure on lists of natural hazards in Madagascar, despite being damaging hazard on the island. This chapter argues that the lack of attention to fire comes from the fact that fire is multivalent, ambiguous, and flexible, being simultaneously an occasional 'hazard' for thatch-roof huts or crop fields, a 'useful tool' that farmers and pastoralists use to manage vegetation, and a major transformational force, or 'change agent', that damages land and forest. The chapter builds on the concept of pyric phases, identifying six important pyric phases in which fire serves, or is perceived to serve, different roles as hazard, tool, or change agent

Savoirs et usages des recrus post-agricoles du pays Betsileo : valorisation d'une biodiversité oubliée à Madagascar

Peoples belonging to the Betsileo cultural group have established villages and settlements in the Malagasy Central Highlands on the western edge of a forested "corridor" which links the national parks of Ranomafana and Andringitra. Their mixed economy is primarily based on the growing of irrigated rice, but also partly on the extensive domestic animal breeding and the slash-and-burn cultivation (cassava, sweet potato, corn, bean...) to produce food.  Insofar as the international aid and conservation communities want to stress the ecological importance of the regional of the secondary forests, as well as their important social and economic roles, it is paramount to have baseline data on the local ecological conditions, such as the botanical community occurring in the agricultural secondary forest and regenerating ecotones at the forest edge.  These secondary regrowth or fallow areas, known locally as kapoka, are excellent sites for a variety local bioindicators (succession, seasonality, and soil fertility), as well as local uses of plant resources (wood for heating, cooking, and construction; medicinal and ritual plants).  Through the analysis of local knowledge and the multiple uses of these lands, which are, as the species that compose them, physically and symbolically embedded between the rice plantation and the forest.  We also show the important and ancestral link between these components, which can exist between a ethnic group of rice growers and the Malagasy forest and its trees