Download THE POTENTIAL FOR CONSERVATION CONTRACTS TO …

THE POTENTIAL FOR CONSERVATION
CONTRACTS TO CONTRIBUTE TO
BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION IN
MADAGASCAR
Joanna Durbin, Aristide
Andrianarimisa, Philip Decosse,
Andrew Keck and Frank Hawkins
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
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
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
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
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
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 largerscale conservation benefit
• Contracts will be agreed for conservation areas
adjoining village-managed sustainable use areas
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)
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
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”
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
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
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
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