Forest Transition in Madagascar’s Highlands: Initial Evidence and Implications

Abstract

Abstract:Madagascar is renowned for the loss of the forested habitat of lemurs and other species endemic to the island. Less well known is that in the highlands, a region often described as an environmental "basket-case" of fire-degraded, eroded grasslands, woody cover has been increasing for decades. Using information derived from publically available high-and medium-resolution satellites, this study characterizes tree cover dynamics in the highlands of Madagascar over the past two decades. Our results reveal heterogeneous patterns of increased tree cover on smallholder farms and village lands, spurred by a mix of endogenous and exogenous forces. The new trees play important roles in rural livelihoods, providing renewable supplies of firewood, charcoal, timber and other products and services, as well as defensible claims to land tenure in the context of a decline in the use of hillside commons for grazing. This study documents this nascent forest transition through Land Change Science techniques, and provides a prologue to political ecological analysis by setting these changes in their social and environmental context and interrogating the costs and benefits of the shift in rural livelihood strategies. OPEN ACCESSLand 2015, 4 1156

Regional Socioeconomic Changes Affecting Rural Area Livelihoods and Atlantic Forest Transitions

“…Forest transition (FT) theory predicts that, after a period of deforestation, the declining stock of forest tends to stabilize leading to a period where the gains in forest area are greater than losses to deforestation [20]. To explain this transition process, many researchers worldwide have used national and global data, as well as regional and local analyses [7,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. FT and LULCC are processes intrinsically connected through land allocation dynamics, rural and urban socioeconomic changes, urbanization, policies, and cultural aspects of human decisions.…”

Introduction: The Continued Importance of Smallholders Today

“…Geographer William J. McConnell and colleagues [61] use LSS informed by political ecological contexts to critically re-think dominant narratives of smallholders as deforesters and land degraders in Madagascar's highlands. In particular, remote sensing analysis reveals increased patchy patterns of tree growth on mainly smallholder farms and village lands, illustrating that increasing land pressures elsewhere have led to tree planting of mostly exotic tree species as a means of adopting more resilient livelihoods.…”

Forest transitions: a new conceptual scheme

“…For instance, in our work on highland Madagascar (e.g. McConnell et al, 2015), we clearly indicate that increased tree cover consists not of native forest but of exotic species. We then argue for the importance of these trees to people's livelihoods and for this to be seen as a forest transition.…”

“…That some tropical countries are moving from forest loss to forest gain (as did many temperate industrial countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries) is thrilling and has provided much scope for investigation (for instance, Rudel, 2002;Perz and Skole, 2003;Rudel et al, 2005;Meyfroidt and Lambin, 2009;Hecht et al, 2014;de Jong et al, 2017), particularly given that the news is usually about tropical deforestation and the loss of valuable rainforests. I too have jumped on this bandwagon, writing about the forest transition (or potential ones) in places like in places like Costa Rica, Madagascar, and Vietnam (Cochard et al, 2017;Kull et al, 2007;McConnell et al, 2015). However, the forest transitions literature is predisposed to focus on forest quantity (that is, on tree cover, as measured in hectares or square kilometres), with less attention to forest quality (that is, the characteristics of the forest).…”