Aurélie Toillier

Farmers' Adaptation Capacities in the Eastern Rainforest of Madagascar From Forest-Clearers to Environmental Managers

Since 1996, contractual forest management involving the local population has been proposed as a solution to deforestation and poverty in Madagascar. This article highlights the way in which two contrasting farming systems can be adapted to conservation constraints without threatening sustainability. The authors show that farmers adaptation capacities are heterogeneous among local communities and that a knowledge of the factors influencing this variability can help in the design of guidance for farms to enable them to develop sustainably in line with current perceptions of agricultures role in land management and forest conservation.

An environmental governance support tool: community-based forest management contracts (Madagascar)

This article reports on the implementation of community-based forest management contracts in Madagascar as part of a national environmental action plan designed to strike a balance between rural development and conservation of natural resources. The article highlights how these systems offer an outstanding opportunity to observe the negotiation processes and shifts in relationships between the actors involved, and thus to learn more on the conditions governing sustainable management of conservation and development. A single, specific management system like community-based management cannot be expected to resolve every single issue, but analysing the interplays between different management systems provides insight into the specific features of target cases. They would appear to be promising decision support tools for environmental governance issues as they promote social and territorial reforms and generate new flexibilities for all the stakeholders involved.

Institutional and Historical Analysis of Payments for Ecosystem Services in Madagascar

This chapter aims to analyse the emergence of PES in Madagascar, a country recognised as a biodiversity hotspot where conservation policies have occupied a central place for over 25 years. Due to the relevance of institutional analysis in the international literature, this chapter illustrates the analytical method of an institutional path dependency approach taking Madagascar as an example. We begin with the history of environmental policy in Madagascar, highlighting the influence of international donors and resulting international standards and norms applied to a multitude of recent PES schemes. We then examine four water-related PES schemes and show how a historical analysis can provide relevant inputs for a PES analysis.