There are 11 posts filed in Madagascar (this is page 1 of 1).
A recent study looks at the costs to local communities of the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor REDD project in eastern Madagascar. “Conservation restrictions result in very significant costs to forest communities,” the study concludes.
The Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor “has long been regarded as one of Madagascar’s top conservation priorities,” Conservation International tells us on its website. Conservation International is running a REDD project there covering more than 371,000 hectares.
In 2016, Sara Peña Valderrama completed her PhD in social anthropology, where she studied a forest carbon project run by Conservation International in Madagascar. Her thesis is available on Durham University’s website: Entangling Molecules: an ethnography of a carbon offset project in Madagascar’s eastern rainforest. She submitted this Guest Post about what happened when the project changed to a carbon project. She is currently a Honorary Research Associate at Durham University.
Earlier this year, I wrote an article for the Forum Umwelt & Entwicklung, a German NGO. The article was published (in German) in the organisation’s Rundbrief. It’s available for download here.
In order for REDD projects to generate carbon credits, a “baseline scenario” has to be created. This is supposed to reflect what would have happened under business-as-usual, or what would have happened in the absence of the REDD project.
The Corridor Ankeniheny-Zahamena is a 382,000-hectare REDD project in Madagascar being carried out by Conservation International, with support from the World Bank. A new study shows that the project is not compensating many of the people whose livelihoods are impacted by the restrictions on forest use.
The UN climate negotiations that will take place in Paris are sponsored by a series of polluting companies. Among these companies are two that are also involved in REDD projects: Air France and BNP Paribas.
The Holistic Conservation Programme for Forests is a REDD project in Madagascar covering a total area of 515,000 hectares. It is funded by Air France and run by WWF Madagascar, with support from Etc Terra and the GoodPlanet Foundation.
In August 2013, the No REDD in Africa Network met in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. The members of the Network, which was launched at the World Social Forum earlier this year, produced a short statement, posted in full below.
Alcoa. ArcelorMittal. Barrick Gold. BG Group. BHP Billiton. BP Foundation. Bunge. Cargill. Chevron. Coca-Cola. De Beers Group. Giti Tire. Goldman Sachs. Kimberly-Clark. Kraft Foods. McDonald’s. Medco Group. Monsanto. MPX Colombia. Newmont Mining Corporation. Northrop Grumman Corporation. Rio Tinto. Shell. Toyota Motor Corporation. United Airlines. Walmart. Wilmar International.
“Many scholars conducting research in Madagascar have demonstrated that the livelihoods of Malagasy people have been negatively impacted by various natural resource conservation and extraction interventions which have burgeoned over the last two decades.” This comes from a report of a June 2010 conference that took place in the UK.
