Global consortium launches six year project to support a sustainable future for people and protected areas in Madagascar

More than 130 researchers, practitioners and decision-makers from 11 global institutions across various regions of Madagascar, the UK, USA and France; have come together under a single project umbrella for the first time.

Together, they will apply their collective experience towards understanding how nine protected areas and neighbouring communities in Madagascar can mutually thrive under a common conservation and management model.

Madagascar is one of the world’s foremost biodiversity hotspots, with a unique assemblage of plants, animals, and fungi; yet much of its biodiversity is threatened. A consortium of international institutions led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; are collaborating to develop a sustainable landscape management model for community-led forest conservation, carbon storage, and livelihoods enhancement across Madagascar's protected area network. Sustainable Management for Future Generations (Fitantanana maharitra ho lovainjafy), will implement and explore interventions with a holistic approach to support livelihoods and restore ecosystems, which contain some of the planet’s most unique and endangered plants and animals.

Dr Paul Wilkin, Ecosystem Stewardship Leader at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and coordinator of the project consortium, highlighted the unique nature of this project collaboration. “At RBG Kew, we’re delighted to be a part of this project to support effective management of forests, improve livelihoods and food security. We hope the programme will result in reduced deforestation rates, protection of globally threatened biodiversity and a net increase in carbon storage. The Protected Areas (PAs) of Madagascar are inextricably linked to the people of the surrounding landscape. Our hope is that by creating an effective management system, we will conserve biodiversity, tackle poverty and support the livelihoods of local people.”

Drawing from over 100 years of combined community-based conservation experience in Madagascar and mobilising a predominately Malagasy team (over 80% of staff), the project will utilize a holistic approach seeking to increase natural capital as a means to achieve long-term sustainability. One of the key aims is for local stakeholders to develop an inclusive, consensual vision for the sustainable management of natural resources in their landscape. Alongside this, they will work to improve food security, financial independence, and reproductive health as a result of increased access to sustainable livelihood opportunities and community health services.

Through the programme, Madagascar’s Protected Areas (PAs) network are co-managed effectively and sustainably in partnership with local communities to ensure conservation of threatened biodiversity and improved wellbeing of local communities. Together they work via sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystem services, thereby providing long term carbon storage and mitigating the effects of climate change.

Coordinating the implementation across protected areas, communities and institutions, Jeannie Raharimampionona’s Missouri Botanical Garden’s Implementation team leader highlighted the opportunities to build on decades of work undertaken to conserve Madagascar’s unique natural heritage and improve local people livelihoods. “We will assess what has and has not worked, integrate local knowledge and experience across all sites and interventions, and deliver best practice across the project. All partners, both within and outside Madagascar, will integrate around a shared vision, and our most important collaboration is with the communities with whom the consortium partners have built trust.”

Sustainable Management for Future Generations is funded by the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA); through the Biodiverse Landscapes Fund initiative that aims to reduce poverty, protect and restore biodiversity and lessen the impact of climate change in six environmentally critical landscapes across the globe. The project’s outcomes will directly support Malagasy government commitments to international climate and biodiversity targets, including forest restoration and avoided carbon emissions.

A female community leader said: "The project managers have integrated us into the identification of common interests and the strategy for sustainable management of our natural resources. This project is special for us because during the consultation, we were able to convince the project managers that the improvement of living conditions is a priority. A reduction of the pressures will be considered. We will be demanding of our natural resources for our daily use and for our future generations."

The consortium has already added most of the new structures and processes to members’ existing activities in Madagascar’s protected areas system that will be needed to undertake the project. In order to inform its community-oriented interventions it as undertaken, through partner organisation CARE in Madagascar, an exercise with 153 communities located in the buffer zones of the nine protected areas to identify their development needs and assess their access to natural resources. This will underpin the main interventions of the project that will begin to impact on communities in 2023.

The organisations collaborating over the course of the project are the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Madagasikara Voakjy, the Peregrine Fund, CARE International and CARE Madagascar, Niras-LTS International, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Marie Stopes and Ileiry Geospatial Services, among others.

ENDS

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NOTES TO EDITORS

The Sustainable Management for Future Generations project (in Malagasy: Fitantanana maharitra hol lovainjafy, or FMhL), led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in close collaboration with partnering institutions the Durrell Widlife Conservation Trust, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Madagascar Voakajay, The Peregrine Fund and CARE International. The key aims of the project are:

Local stakeholders develop an inclusive, consensual vision and plan for the sustainable management of natural resources in their landscape.
Local communities, with support from partners, effectively manage forested areas, including conservation of the local PA and sustainable use of natural resources in the broader landscape.
Food security, financial independence, and reproductive health are improved as a result of increased access to sustainable livelihood opportunities and community health services.
Effective management of forests, improved livelihoods, and food security result in reduced deforestation rates, protection of globally threatened biodiversity, and a net increase in carbon storage.
Knowledge of an improved approach for community-based PA management is built and shared throughout the SAPM network and all its stakeholders.

About Kew Science

Kew Science is the driving force behind RBG Kew’s mission to understand and protect plants and fungi, for the well-being of people and the future of all life on Earth. Over 300 Kew scientists work with partners in more than 100 countries worldwide to halt biodiversity loss, uncover secrets of the natural world, and to conserve and restore the extraordinary diversity of plants and fungi. Kew’s Science Strategy 2021–2025 lays out five scientific priorities to aid these goals: research into the protection of biodiversity through Ecosystem Stewardship, understanding the variety and evolution of traits in plants and fungi through Trait Diversity and Function; digitising and sharing tools to analyse Kew’s scientific collections through Digital Revolution; using new technologies to speed up the naming and characterisation of plants through Accelerated Taxonomy; and cultivating new scientific and commercial partnerships in the UK and globally through Enhanced Partnerships. One of Kew’s greatest international collaborations is the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, which has to date stored more than 2.4 billion seeds of over 40,000 wild species of plants across the globe. In 2020, Kew scientists estimated in the State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report that 2 in 5 plants globally are threatened with extinction.

About the Missouri Botanical Garden

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s mission is “to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life”. Today, 163 years after opening, the Missouri Botanical Garden is a world-renowned center for science, conservation, education and horticultural display and a National Historic Landmark.

About the Durrell Wildlife Conservation

Trust Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is an international charity working to save species from extinction. Headquartered at Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands, Durrell focuses on the most threatened species in the most threatened places.

About Madagascar Voakajay

Malagasy biodiversity organisation dedicated to the conservation of endemic vertebrates and their habitats in Madagascar. Our mission is to promote the conservation and sustainable use of Malagasy ecosystems, habitats and species by mitigating key threats to this unique biodiversity through targeted action and applied research

About The Peregrine Fund

The mission of The Peregrine Fund is to conserve birds of prey worldwide. Its vision focused on ensuring raptor populations and their ecosystems thrive, human communities are enriched by our work and raptors are valued by all humans. We serve as the global expert on birds of prey and their conservation.

About CARE International UK/Madagascar

CARE International first opened offices in Madagascar in 1992 with the aim of tackling the root causes of poverty, including social exclusion, lack of access to basic resources and services, poor governance, and gender inequality. Today, CARE International’s work in Madagascar focuses on;

disaster risk reduction
women’s economic empowerment
village savings and loan associations
food security
strengthening governance and civil society.