THE POTENTIAL FOR CONSERVATION CONTRACTS TO CONTRIBUTE TO BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION IN MADAGASCAR

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THE POTENTIAL FOR CONSERVATION CONTRACTS TO
CONTRIBUTE TO BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION IN
MADAGASCAR

• Joanna Durbin, Aristide Andrianarimisa, Philip
  Decosse, Andrew Keck and Frank Hawkins

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Madagascar

• One of the most important biodiversity hotspots
  in the world
  
• Very high endemicity, at higher taxonomic levels
  as well as species
  
• Extreme species richness for plants (12,000
  spp.)
  
• Almost all endemic species limited to forests
• High and increasing rates of habitat loss, mostly
  through slash-and-burn, an assured source of food
  and revenue in a climatically and politically
  variable context
• Very little privately-owned forest land

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Conservation Initiatives

• 15 year National Environmental Action Plan
  largely initiated through donor interest in
  biodiversity (1991-2007)
  
• 300 M USD in the first ten years
• Initially a conventional focus on protected areas
  and provision of alternatives to unsustainable
  resource use
  
• Latterly a switch (with enabling legislation) to
  community forest management at a landscape scale

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Initial lessons

• Protected areas work well but at a relatively
  small scale and are expensive
  
• The linkage between development investment and
  conservation was obscure, leading to little
  conservation gain
  
• Community forest management is rarely adequate to
  ensure biodiversity conservation on its own
  hunting and small-scale forest use continue to
  erode biodiversity

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Conservation Contracts

• Our hypothesis is that existing management
  transfer contracts can be modified to provide a
  direct incentive for conservation, and that this
  will provide a productive complement to other
  initiatives already underway

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Context of existing management transfer contracts

• Contracts relate to use of forest resources for
  subsistence or commercial use
  
• Contracts are between villages and the Water and
  Forests authority, with the commune as a
  guarantor
  
• Contracts are for three years renewable to ten
  years
  
• Control and oversight are very difficult as
  infrastructure is poor, authorities
  under-resourced and abuse frequent
  

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How will conservation contracts work

• Using existing management transfer legislation
• Funds will come through regional biodiversity
  coordination committee, who provide regional
  biodiversity planning context to ensure
  larger-scale conservation benefit
• Contracts will be agreed for conservation areas
  adjoining village-managed sustainable use areas

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How will conservation contracts work (2)

• Payments will be made to three main contractual
  beneficiaries
  
• Village(s) with a management contract for the
  conservation area
  
• Local authority with responsibility for forest
  management (Water and Forests Ministry)
  
• Local administrative authority (communes)

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Contract parameters

• Payments will be made on a yearly basis for an
  amount negotiated either
  
• As an estimation of the value of the forest
  products foregone (traditional use rights)
  
• Or on willingness to accept
• Villages agree not to cut wood, hunt, clear
  forest for cultivation, collect honey, tubers,
  medicinal plants in the conservation area
  
• They agree to report infractions to an agreed
  agency

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Communities

• Payments will be made to individuals represented
  by community organisations
  
• Communities will agree not to use the core area
  of forest at all
  
• Communities will agree on a set of rules and
  sanctions implemented through a traditional local
  law- a dina

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Local authorities

• The Water and Forests authority are responsible
  for creating the management plan and implementing
  the national forest law- particularly preventing
  third party abuses
• The communes approve the contract, facilitate the
  dina, and mediate in regional disputes

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Monitoring and enforcement

• Deforestation can be tracked by remote sensing
• Small-scale forest use by regular patrols
  involving independent monitors, community members
  and local authorities
  
• Abundance of important bushmeat species may be
  monitored through repeated and replicated
  presence-absence surveys

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Testing

• Testing is envisaged in three areas of particular
  biodiversity importance
  
• Menabe forests, centre-western deciduous forest,
  threatened by clearance for maize and
  unsustainable logging
  
• Lake Alaotra, extensive papyrus reedbeds, where
  burning and hunting of an locally-endemic lemur
  occur
  
• Makira forest, eastern lowland and mid-altitude
  rainforest, cleared for hill rice

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Larger-scale issues

• Provides a mechanism for external investors to
  channel funding directly to biodiversity
  providers
  
• Beneficiaries often the poorest of the rural
  poor
  
• Potential complementarity with, or channel for,
  ecosystem service payments
  
• For larger contiguous areas of forest beyond
  village management capacity, the state may agree
  to conservation concessions

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