Sitting under a tall tree in Ranomafana National Park in southeastern Madagascar, guide and ranger Jean Chri Rafidisoa waits for tourists to join a visit to one of the country’s last old-growth forests. The dense rainforest traversed by rivers and waterfalls is home to thousands of plant and animal species, including 12 kinds of lemurs.
The protected forest is a kind of time capsule, offering a glimpse into what the region looked like centuries ago. It stands in stark contrast to the bare, burnt land that surrounds it, where trees have been razed to make way for fields.
“People here … know it’s important to preserve the environment, but they sometimes have no other choice” than to cut the trees down, explained Mr. Rafidisoa during the Monitor’s visit last June. Since then, the forest has also battled large wildfires.
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Madagascar is losing its forests at an alarming rate. Its problem is one mirrored around the world. People here need their forests to survive, but poverty means they often have no choice but to cut them down.
Indeed, the forests that once covered a large portion of Madagascar are being decimated at an alarming rate. According to a 2018 study published in the journal Biological Conservation, the island has lost almost half of its natural forests since the mid-20th century. This unbridled deforestation is accelerating the effects of climate change and threatening an extraordinary ecosystem: Five out of every 100 plant and animal species known to science come from Madagascar, and 90% of those are found only on the island.
In 2021, at the COP26 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, the country of Madagascar joined a global pledge to “halt and reverse” deforestation by 2030. But while the government has named reforestation a national priority and a new generation of Malagasy youths is stepping up to protect forests, they are fighting an uphill battle.
Jonah Ratsimbazafy, a primatologist and lemur expert, estimates that the country’s natural forests could be gone in a generation’s time. “Here, we don’t have an Eiffel Tower or a Statue of Liberty,” he says. “Our lemurs, baobabs, and biodiversity are our world heritage, but they’re going up in flames.”
The forest paradox
Madagascar’s puzzle mirrors one faced by many countries in the world: People here need their trees. But they also often have no other choice than to cut their trees down.
Trees “attract rain, fertilize the soil, and produce medicinal plants,” explains Mr. Rafidisoa, who comes from Madagascar’s Tanala ethnic group, who are indigenous to these forests. More broadly, trees are essential to regulating rainfall, preserving underground water reserves, and protecting soil from erosion.
But many Malagasy don’t have the luxury of considering that big picture.
“The reason is poverty,” explains Judicaël Rabotvao, a dairy farmer from Reanambo, a hamlet of traditional mud houses 40 miles from Ranomafana. Most of the lush green canopy that he says hung over this village when he was growing up four decades ago has been cleared to make space for rice fields and other crops. The wood is used as cooking fuel or to make charcoal, which residents sell in the nearby city of Fianarantsoa. “People are just trying to feed themselves,” Mr. Rabotvao explains.
The situation in Reanambo is not an anomaly. With more than 80% of Madagascar’s population living below the poverty line of $2.15 a day, “communities are forced to clear land to survive, even in protected areas,” says conservation researcher Andriamandimbisoa Razafimpahanana, who has co-authored several studies on conservation in Madagascar.
The country’s population has doubled since the year 2000, which he says has forced many people to clear and burn forests to create farms and feed themselves. Meanwhile, firewood and charcoal remain the main source of cooking fuel across the country, and what he categorizes as “widespread corruption” facilitates illegal logging and poaching.
Against this backdrop, large-scale efforts to stop the clearing of Madagascar’s forests have often faltered. For instance, under the African Union-led “African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative,” Madagascar’s government has committed to restoring about 10 million acres of forest by 2030. Every year, ambitious tree-planting drives draw thousands of participants with a goal of replanting 185,000 acres yearly. But nearly 200,000 acres of forest were chopped or burned down in 2023 – placing Madagascar in the top 10 countries for forest loss globally.
Mr. Razafimpahanana says that while there was “euphoria” after Madagascar signed the global pledge to halt deforestation at COP in 2021, there has been little follow-through by the country’s leaders in the years since.
Still, many see hope in the fact that Madagascar is an extremely youthful country, with half the population under the age of 18.
“My motivation now is seeing these young people who want to restore and save what’s left,” says Dr. Ratsimbazafy, the lemur expert. “We need to educate them, to teach them not to give up.”
“A disaster”
On a recent sunny Saturday in Reanambo, that youthful grit was on display as a group of students from the nearby University of Fianarantsoa demonstrated how to mold red clay and cement into simple cookstoves they had designed. Because the stoves locked in heat, they required half the firewood of an open fire, explained a student named Jocelyne Rasoamaronarindra to the gathered crowd of about 30 people.
For her, this project is personal. She comes from the drought-stricken south of Madagascar, and says that with the weather changing and the forests shrinking, her father, a rice farmer, harvests 10 times less than he did a decade ago. “There are almost no more rains, and at night you see bushfires all over the mountains,” she says. “It’s a disaster.”
In Reanambo, she hoped to convince people to change their approach to the forest before it was too late. Already, the rolling hills surrounding the village were bare, and as she and the others molded their clay ovens, the thud of an axe rose from the other side of the village. A group of men were busy chopping down a lone tree. A small gray chameleon slithered away from the trunk just in time.
“Changing attitudes and habits is very difficult,” she admits later.
In Reanambo, she turned back to her group. Each person was now marking their ownership of their stove by carving their name into the unset clay.
