1 Introduction
1.3 Natural history, land-use change, and conservation in Madagascar
Through my PhD, I addressed research questions on drivers and impacts of land-use change in north-eastern Madagascar. To embed this research in the wider literature and local con-text, I describe key aspects of the natural history, past and present land-use change and ongoing conservation action in Madagascar.
1.3.1 Natural history
Whether Madagascar can be truly described as an island remains contested as one could argue that Madagascar qualifies as a ‘mini continent’ (de Wit, 2003). In favour of this argu-ment, one can list 300’000 years of isolation from Africa and Asia (de Wit, 2003), the diver-sity of climatic zones (Donque, 1972), the variety of habitats (Du Puy & Moat, 1996) on small scale (Figure 1.1), and the biogeographic origin of the Malagasy flora and fauna, which is partly autochthone, partly roots in Africa, and partly immigrated from Asia (Wilmé et al., 2006).
This manifold of origins and the long isolation has led to an exceptional biodiversity in Mad-agascar. While the total species richness lacks behind other tropical areas (Mammals, amphibians and birds: Grenyer et al., 2006; Plants: Kreft & Jetz, 2007), the Indian island
nation counts as a biodiversity hotspot (Myers et al., 2000), due to the high levels of ende-mism and threat. Unparalleled is also the micro-endeende-mism, i.e. the endeende-mism within a very restricted area (Wilmé et al., 2006). Endemism reaches 92 - 100% for terrestrial vertebrates and 52% and 60%, respectively, for birds and bats (Goodman & Benstead, 2005). Inverte-brates and plants also show high levels of endemism (Goodman & Benstead, 2005).
Figure 1.1: Land cover (A) and elevation (B) in Madagascar. A: The central highland of Madagascar is largely deforested and covered with grassland on the hills and rice paddies in the valleys (McConnell et al., 2015). Towards the west, savannas, of at least partially natural origin (Bond et al., 2008; Solofondranohatra et al., 2020; Vorontsova et al., 2016), occupy extensive areas. Western Mad-agascar is dominated by a mosaic of deciduous dry forest, agriculture, fallow land, and wetlands (Scales, 2011). Southern Madagascar is home to deciduous thorny shrubland (Du Puy & Moat, 1996).
The eastern part of the island is characterized by rainforest which is now limited to isolated blocks within an agricultural landscape (Vieilledent et al., 2018). The north of Madagascar is a mosaic of savannah, agriculture, deciduous dry forest, and rainforest (Quemere et al., 2012). These patterns are largely shaped by elevation (B), geology, rainfall, and hundreds of years of human influence (Du Puy & Moat, 1996). Source: NASA, 2004.
1.3.2 Early human presence and influence on forests and fauna
The first traces of humans on Madagascar date back at least 2000 years before present (Douglass et al., 2019), but much debate surrounds the date of earliest human arrival to the
island (Hansford et al., 2018). The impacts of humans on the forests and animals that occu-pied much of the land remained, however, rather limited until circa 1300 years before pre-sent (Burns et al., 2016). Subsequently, much of Madagascar’s megafauna was lost within 200 years, most likely due to a combination of habitat loss and hunting (Godfrey et al., 2019). Over much of the time to follow, Malagasy people mainly settled in the central high-lands and along the coasts (Randrianja & Ellis, 2009). The transformation of the high-landscape in the central highlands and around coastal settlements was consequently most profound, while large areas of deciduous forest in the west, of spiny thicket in the south, and of humid rainforest on the eastern escarpment stayed intact until the late 19th century (Jarosz, 1993).
1.3.3 Agricultural expansion under French colonial rule
In the late 19th century, Madagascar was a nationally united kingdom under the rule of the central-highland Merina people (Randrianja & Ellis, 2009). French colonial power seized control in 1896 (Randrianja & Ellis, 2009), with the aim to exploit the resources the country had to offer. Thereafter, the exploitation of natural resources such as timber, gemstones, and minerals took its course while the production of export crops was intensified (Jarosz, 1993). To do so, each administrative region of the country was to focus on a specific crop (Correll, 1953): cocoa in north-western Madagascar, coffee in the central eastern region, clove in the Analanjirofo region – which even bears the Malagasy word for clove, i.e. ‘jirofo’, in its name – and vanilla in the north-eastern SAVA region (more on vanilla in section 1.4.2).
This exploitation of resources and the expansion of export-oriented agriculture had pro-found effects on the environment. The use of the most fertile land for export crops pushed farmers into shifting cultivation in eastern Madagascar (Jarosz, 1993), while state-orches-trated cash crop booms drove forest loss in the west (Scales, 2011). By 1953, towards the end of colonial times, Madagascar’s forests only covered 27% of the country (Vieilledent et al., 2018).
1.3.4 Forest loss narratives
Triggered by the sight of forest fires, erosion gullies, and silt-rich river runoff, environmen-talists and researchers have often described Madagascar as a textbook example for environ-mental degradation (Bond et al., 2008; Kull, 2000). Tightly linked with this narrative is the notion that Madagascar was once occupied by a single contiguous forest – a myth that has recently been busted based on genetic data from lemurs (Quemere et al., 2012) and the nat-ural history of Malagasy grassland (Bond et al., 2008; Solofondranohatra et al., 2020;
Vorontsova et al., 2016). In short, deforestation and erosion are certainly a problem in
Madagascar, but the long-standing notion of ‘90% forest loss’ in Madagascar is certainly wrong (Scales, 2014b).
1.3.5 Current day environmental threats
Deforestation and land-use change are the most important drivers of biodiversity decline in Madagascar (Allnutt et al., 2008). Unlike in other tropical regions, secondary forest regen-eration in Madagascar is extremely slow (Brown & Gurevitch, 2004), adding to the urgency to halt old-growth forest loss.
Forest loss in Madagascar is mainly driven by smallholder agriculture, in line with trends across Africa but in contrast to other tropical regions (Curtis et al., 2018; Sy et al., 2019). In dry western and southern Madagascar, forest is typically burned to grow maize or peanuts (Vieilledent et al., 2020). After only a few years of cultivation, weed prevalence and drop-ping soil fertility lead to dwindling yields which prompt farmers to cut additional forest (Gay-des-Combes et al., 2017; Raharimalala et al., 2010). In humid eastern Madagascar, hill rice cultivation is the main driver of forest conversion (Styger et al., 2007; Zaehringer et al., 2015). Here, the shifting cultivation system responsible for much of the forest loss is called tavy (more on the system in 1.4.3).
Beside habitat loss, climate change is also predicted to negatively affect biodiversity in Mad-agascar, especially micro-endemic taxa (Hannah et al., 2008). However, land-use and cli-mate change are not independent of each other but are interacting, magnifying the impact on flora and fauna (Morelli et al., 2020). Furthermore, climate change will also profoundly impact people’s livelihoods (Harvey et al., 2014), possibly resulting in adaptation and mi-gration, which could further threaten habitats and species.
Other key environmental threats in Madagascar are fuel wood extraction (Minten et al., 2013), selective logging of timber and precious woods (Patel, 2007; Rakotomanana et al., 2013), invasive species (Kull et al., 2014) and overexploitation and hunting (Razafimanahaka et al., 2012).
Underlying many of these direct threats is the difficult socio-economic situation many Mal-agasy people find themselves in. With a human development index of 0.52, Madagascar is on rank 162 of 189 countries evaluated (United Nations Development Programme, 2019), exemplifying the need to improve living conditions. Particularly in rural areas, where 63%
of people live (Worldbank, 2020), the lack of economic alternatives often makes the exploi-tation of natural resource the only viable livelihood option (Minten & Barrett, 2008).
Blaming poor smallholder farmers as the sole responsible of environmental degradation is thus problematic. Numerous studies (Jarosz, 1993; Kull, 2000; Scales, 2011; Vieilledent et al., 2020) show that state policies, international market forces and urban elites have had a profound impact on rural land-use change in Madagascar, often actively promoting destruc-tive activities. Furthermore, corruption jeopardizes many efforts that aim at improving the living conditions of Malagasy people and conserving the country’s biodiversity (Gore et al., 2013). To have a long-lasting impact, interventions that address the above-described envi-ronmental threats thus need to take the socio-economic situation of people into account, while also tackling governance issues.
1.3.6 Terrestrial conservation action in Madagascar
Conservation in Madagascar has largely been reliant on a protected area approach (Rakotomanana et al., 2013; Waeber et al., 2020). The first protected areas were established in the early 20th century under French colonial rule (Waeber et al., 2020), with a steady increase in protected areas thereafter. Back in 2003, Madagascar’s then president Marc Rav-alomanana pledged to triple the countries’ protected areas by 2008 (Gardner et al., 2018).
Together with a surge of international conservation funding and a spark in eco-tourism, the commitment led to considerable optimism about the conservation of Madagascar’s fauna and flora at the time (Norris, 2006). Consequently, annual deforestation rates fell to 0.4%
by 2005 (Vieilledent et al., 2018). However, a political coup in 2009, which washed Ravalo-manana away from power, led to years of instability. This instability led to an increase of rosewood logging (Schuurman & Lowry II, 2009) and was also associated with an increase in deforestation (Vieilledent et al., 2018). Nowadays, much of the hope conservationists have expressed in the 2000s has vanished (Jones et al., 2019b; Waeber et al., 2016).
The focus on protected areas as the main conservation approach has further downsides:
protected areas have often been designed and delimited in a top down approach (Gardner et al., 2018; Kremen et al., 2008) without consulting local communities, leading to non-com-pliance with newly established rules (Ormsby & Kaplin, 2005). More broadly speaking, costs of protected area establishment to people living at the forest frontier have been largely ne-glected (Ward et al., 2018) and are not or insufficiently compensated for (Poudyal et al., 2018; Sommerville et al., 2010). Unsurprisingly, people who depend on the forest as a future land resource as well as for their daily needs will feel excluded and may continue their prac-tices despite the changed legal status of the land.
To overcome these challenges, a community-focused conservation approach is slowly gain-ing ground in Madagascar (Gardner et al., 2013). Results of Reduced Emission from Defor-estation and Degradation (REDD+) schemes and of community forest management are, however, mixed (Rasolofoson et al., 2015; Toillier et al., 2011).
Today, Madagascar is at a cross road: leading experts on conservation in Madagascar have declared the current term of President Andry Rajoelina as ‘the last chance for Madagascar’s biodiversity’ (Jones et al., 2019c). To seek this chance, they suggest five ways forward:
firstly, improving the rule of law to counteract manifold negative consequences of crime for people and nature (Jones et al., 2019b). Secondly, investment in Madagascar’s protected ar-eas to warrant the safeguarding of biodiversity therein. Thirdly, ensuring that major infra-structure developments limit impacts on biodiversity. Fourthly, strengthening tenure over natural resources, such as forests, for people. And lastly, addressing the mounting fuel wood crisis, which threatens forests across the country (Jones et al., 2019c).
Box 3: My PhD journey – Field work in Madagascar
I spent roughly one fourth of my PhD time in Madagascar – overall a bit more than a year. The experiences I made in this country will profoundly influence me for a long time to come.
I was lucky enough to spend time in Madagascar before my PhD started. Back in 2014, I had the opportunity to attend a field course organized by the Tropical Biol-ogy Association in Kirindy Forest, western Madagascar. During the four weeks, I not only learned about tropical ecology and Malagasy wildlife but also saw how field-work in the country could be like. During the PhD two years later, I learned how-ever, that working on a field station in a forest is very different to working in vil-lages.
The challenges were manifold. Travels from our base in the provincial capital, Sam-bava, to the villages took often half a day on bumpy roads, already requiring much energy. On arrival, we would try to meet all involved farmers before any activity could start. This process, walking around in the villages and knocking on doors, was tedious but necessary to cultivate the relationships with all involved landowners.
After having met everyone, we often had dinner with our host family in the village, before going to bed in the hosts’ home.
Early the next day, we would leave for the first point counts, often wading through muddy paths, fast flowing streams, or brown rivers, with the aim to reach our plots;
some an hour away. This combination – maintaining relationships with landowners and data collection in difficult-to-access plots – would go on for the week before we returned to Sambava, where we unpacked our stuff, charged batteries, wrote emails, packed again, and, occasionally, would have time for a swim in the nearby Indian Ocean.
The openness of farmers and the way we were welcomed as outsiders in the village was, however, remarkable. Farmers let us visit their agroforests, let us measure va-nilla yields, and patiently answered our questions. And on departure, they would fill the car (or canoe!) with fresh avocado, litchi, or coconut.
Nonetheless, maintaining such a field work pace over weeks was only possible thanks to my Diversity Turn colleagues from around the world. Thank you!