Challenges for Community-Based Forest Management in the KoloAla Site Manompana

Following the IUCN 5th World Congress on Protected Areas in 2003, the then-President of Madagascar decided to increase the area of Madagascar's protected areas from 1.7 to 6 million ha. To combine the aims of protection and timber production, a new concept was developed through the establishment of community-based forest management (CBFM) sites, called KoloAla. However, experience shows that similar management transfers to communities in Madagascar have only been successful in a very few cases. We aimed to explore the success to be expected of this new approach in the particular case of the Manompana corridor at Madagascar's eastern coast. In a first step, the readiness of the corridor's resource users for CBFM has been analysed according to the seven resource users' attributes developed by Ostrom that predict an effective self-organized resource management. In a second step, we explored how KoloAla addresses known challenges of Madagascar's CBFM. Analyses lead in a rather sober conclusion. Although KoloAla attempts to address the goals of poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation and timber production under a single umbrella, it does so in a rather non-innovative way. Challenges with regard to the state's environmental governance, agricultural inefficiency and thus deforestation remain unsolve

Who wants to conserve remaining forest fragments in the Manompana Corridor?

Contiguous forests in Madagascar are continuously converted into forest fragments due to deforestation, and dispersed into landscape mosaics dominated by agriculture. These fragments are of increasing importance for biodiversity conservation as well as for the well being of rural inhabitants, providing a high diversity of timber and non- timber forest products. An increasing number of international projects are therefore trying to preserve remaining forests and to transfer the management of these forests to local communities. However, it is not known how important the preservation of forest fragments is to local people. We therefore explore the importance of forest fragments as a source of cash income to different groups separated by wealth level and access to forest resources. A multi-method research approach was taken, based on score application exercises as well as interviews with individual households and focus groups. Our study site was located at the east coast of Madagascar in the Manompana corridor. Results show that some groups are significantly more interested in the preservation of forest fragments than others. Interest is significantly related to the wealth of local inhabitants as well as to the walking distance between villages and forest resources. Nevertheless, interest in resource preservation does not depend on how important fragments are to local people, but rather on the awareness about resource scarcity.  Résumé En raison d’une forte déforestation sur la côte est de Madagascar, de nombreux massifs forestiers d’un seul tenant et de vastes écosystèmes interconnectés ont été détruits, laissant des fragments de forêts qui s’intègrent dans une mosaïque paysagère dominée par l’agriculture. Ces fragments gagnent en importance. Ils jouent un rôle de premier plan dans les réseaux de biodiversité en assurant un certain niveau de connectivité. Mais les fragments sont essentiels au bien - être de la population locale, fournissant produits et services pour la consommation quotidienne ou donnant accès à un revenu monétaire. Sur un plan global, aussi bien les organisations de protection de la nature que les milieux scientifiques essayent d’endiguer la déforestation. Depuis les années 1996 la politique nationale à Madagascar a généré lois et processus visant à transférer la gestion des ressources forestières de l’Etat aux communautés locales. Cependant, il n’a pas été possible, jusqu’à ce jour, d’atténuer l’ampleur de la destruction et de la fragmentation des forêts pluviales de l’île. Plus encore, à l’heure actuelle la perception de l’importance des fragments de forêts n’est pas connue par la population. Un projet de recherche a été lancé pour contribuer à combler cette lacune, dans le corridor de Manompana, sur la côte. Les buts de ce projet étaient (i) d’explorer l’importance des fragments de forêts pour les revenus monétaires de la population locale et (ii) d’analyser la perception de l’importance des fragments de forêts par la population locale. Les recherches se sont déroulées dans quatre villages situés à des distances différentes du grand massif forestier. La population locale a été répartie en différentes catégories de niveau de vie et en fonction de la distance à parcourir entre les villages et la forêt. Cette approche a permis d’étudier le rôle de la forêt quant aux revenus monétaires des différents groupes de la population. Nous avons également cherché à établir un lien entre l’ampleur des revenus monétaires et un intérêt à conserver les fragments de forêts qui subsistent. Nos méthodes de recherche font recours à des exercices de « scoring », à des discussions avec des groupes ciblés et à des enquêtes de ménages. Il ressort des analyses que certains groupes ont un intérêt à conserver les fragments forestiers. Cet intérêt est significativement lié, d’une part, au niveau de vie de la population, d’autre part, à la distance entre le village et le massif forestier. Cependant, l’intérêt à conserver les fragments de forêts est plus fortement lié à la conscience de la finitude des ressources forestières qu’au montant des revenus monétaires que la population peut tirer des produits forestiers.

Impact of Women's Harvest Practices on Pandanus guillaumetii in Madagascar's Lowland Rainforests1

Impact of Women's Harvest Practices onPandanus guillaumetiiin Madagascar's Lowland Rainforests.Pandanus guillaumetii B.C. Stone is endemic to the east coast rainforests of Madagascar. The plant is an important non-timber forest product (NTFP) for the local population living near these forests, and its leaves are collected by women to be woven into mats. These mats have economic value and are also used for daily activities. At present, little is known about how local harvesting practices impact this plant species. In this study, we describe women's local harvest practices and quantify their impact on the P. guillaumetii population. We carried out plant inventories as well as interviews and participatory observations with local people harvesting P. guillaumetii in two villages with different population densities in the Manompana region. Inventories were conducted at varying distances from the villages in order to better understand the influence of human pressure on the plant population. The results suggest that local communities apply practices that tend to minimize the harvest impact on the plant. Harvesting seems to have no effect on the actual density of P. guillaumetii. However, the availability of plants with leaves of sufficient quality for mat production is influenced by human pressure. Considering the decreasing number of plants suitable for handicraft, we assume that their availability in the long term may not fulfill the needs of the local peopl

Understanding and Integrating Local Perceptions of Trees and Forests into Incentives for Sustainable Landscape Management

We examine five forested landscapes in Africa (Cameroon, Madagascar, and Tanzania) and Asia (Indonesia and Laos) at different stages of landscape change. In all five areas, forest cover (outside of protected areas) continues to decrease despite local people’s recognition of the importance of forest products and services. After forest conversion, agroforestry systems and fallows provide multiple functions and valued products, and retain significant biodiversity. But there are indications that such land use is transitory, with gradual simplification and loss of complex agroforests and fallows as land use becomes increasingly individualistic and profit driven. In Indonesia and Tanzania, farmers favor monocultures (rubber and oil palm, and sugarcane, respectively) for their high financial returns, with these systems replacing existing complex agroforests. In the study sites in Madagascar and Laos, investments in agroforests and new crops remain rare, despite government attempts to eradicate swidden systems and their multifunctional fallows. We discuss approaches to assessing local values related to landscape cover and associated goods and services. We highlight discrepancies between individual and collective responses in characterizing land use tendencies, and discuss the effects of accessibility on land management. We conclude that a combination of social, economic, and spatially explicit assessment methods is necessary to inform land use planning. Furthermore, any efforts to modify current trends will require clear incentives, such as through carbon finance. We speculate on the nature of such incentive schemes and the possibility of rewarding the provision of ecosystem services at a landscape scale and in a socially equitable manner

Challenges for Community-Based Forest Management in the KoloAla Site Manompana

ISSN:0364-152XISSN:1364-152XISSN:1432-100

Impact of women's harvest practices on Pandanus guillaumetii in Madagascar's Lowland Rainforests

ISSN:0013-0001ISSN:1874-936

Understanding deforestation and forest fragmentation from a livelihood perspective

Worldwide, forests provide a wide variety of resources to rural inhabitants, and especially to the poor. In Madagascar, forest resources make important contributions to the livelihoods of the rural population living at the edges of these forests. Although people benefit from forest resources, forests are continuously cleared and converted into arable land. Despite long-term efforts on the part of researchers, development cooperation projects and government, Madagascar has not been able to achieve a fundamental decrease in deforestation. The question of why deforestation continues in spite of such efforts remains. To answer this question, we aimed at understanding deforestation and forest fragmentation from the perspective of rural households in the Manompana corridor on the east coast. Applying a sustainable livelihood approach, we explored local social-ecological systems to understand: (i) how livelihood strategies leading to deforestation evolve and (ii) how the decrease of forest impacts on households' strategies. Results highlight the complexity of the environmental, cultural and political context in which households’ decision-making takes place. Further, we found crucial impacts of deforestation and forest fragmentation on livelihood systems, but also recognized that people have been able to adapt to the changing landscapes without major impacts on their welfare