Trade Liberalization, Rural Poverty and the Environment: Two Studies of Agricultural Exports in Madagascar

Minten, Bart; Méral, Philippe; Randrianarison, Lalaina; Swinnen, Johan

doi:10.4337/9781849805193.00013

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A further explanation might be that cyclones discourage farmers from engaging in agricultural investments, such as conversion into more intensive land uses that are more vulnerable to these climatic extremes. As remarked by participants in our workshops and also suggested by other research in Madagascar (Danthu et al, 2014;Minten et al, 2006), this could be the case for irrigated paddy rice fields, which are highly susceptible to damage by cyclonedriven floods, or clove fields, which are very sensitive to heavy winds.…”

Section: The Role Of Discrete Events In Land Use Trajectories: Cyclonsupporting

confidence: 72%

“…In many cases, these crops coexist with subsistence agriculture in forest frontier contexts. The problematic of cash crop booms in the context of shifting cultivation leading to agricultural expansion into forests in Madagascar has been described in several regions (Minten, Meral, Randrianarison, & Swinnen, 2006;Scales, 2011). The persistence of these dynamics on the island has fed the debate on sustainable agricultural intensification in the country over the past decades.…”

Section: Sustainable Agricultural Intensification In Madagascar Amid mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Effects of protected area establishment and cash crop price dynamics on land use transitions 1990–2017 in north-eastern Madagascar

Llopis

Harimalala

Bär

et al. 2019

Journal of Land Use Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We applied a participatory mapping approach supported by very high-resolution satellite imagery to reconstruct spatially explicit, year-to-year land use transitions in two highly biodiverse, data-scarce forest frontier landscapes in northeastern Madagascar. We explored these transitions in the light of major continuous trends and discrete events highlighted by local farmers as influencing their land use decisions. Our results suggest that the process of establishing protected areas first reinforced ongoing deforestation, but later led to a significant reduction of forest loss rates. Recent cash crop booms appear to have induced agricultural intensification processes in our study landscapes, while also putting additional pressure on forests, as people may be encouraged to clear forest for cash crop cultivation. These findings are crucial to understanding rapid land use change processes in forest frontier contexts in the humid tropics, and especially to informing natural resource governance and development initiatives in complex mosaic landscapes.

show abstract

Section: The Role Of Discrete Events In Land Use Trajectories: Cyclonsupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Sustainable Agricultural Intensification In Madagascar Amid mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of protected area establishment and cash crop price dynamics on land use transitions 1990–2017 in north-eastern Madagascar

Llopis

Harimalala

Bär

et al. 2019

Journal of Land Use Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…People–nature interactions within the ecoregion take various forms, including pastoralism, timber and non-timber forest product extraction, charcoal production, and slash-and-burn agriculture ( hatsake; Seddon et al, 2000; Gardner et al, 2008). Although the hatsake system of agricultural production may have been sustainable at low population densities and under certain social institutional conditions (Elmqvist et al, 2007), increased rates of forest conversion because of changing macroeconomic conditions (Casse et al, 2004; Minten et al, 2006), population growth and increasing migration (Rabesahala Horning, 2003; Kaufmann & Tsirahamba, 2006) have led to the region suffering the fastest rates of forest loss in the country since 1990 (Harper et al, 2007). In the only existing study on the impacts of forest loss on biodiversity within the ecoregion, Scott et al (2006) found that species richness of lizards, small mammals and birds declined by 50, 40 and 26% respectively, and species turnover also resulted in shifts in community composition from habitat specialists to generalist species.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

IUCN management categories fail to represent new, multiple-use protected areas in Madagascar

Gardner

2011

Oryx

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The IUCN protected area management category system provides an internationally-recognized, unifying framework for the description and classification of the world's diverse protected areas. It includes six main categories, of which category V has attracted debate because of its emphasis on the role of harmonious people-nature interactions in maintaining biodiversity within cultural landscapes. Madagascar's new generation of protected areas comprises sites mainly proposed as category V, with the joint management objectives of biodiversity conservation and the promotion of natural resource use for rural development. Here, I use a categorization decision tool to investigate the categorization of 10 new protected areas proposed as category V, and find that these sites fail to meet the criteria for any management category. I argue that category V is inappropriate for these new protected areas because their associated people-nature interactions are largely negative for biodiversity. I further argue that management of these new protected areas differs fundamentally from management of category V protected areas in Europe, and recommend the modification of the management category system to account for such distinctions.

show abstract

“…However, we found that locusts destroyed ~80% of the maize harvest in 2014. In addition, maize is one of the major drivers of deforestation in southern Madagascar (Réau 2002, Minten et al 2010). This clearly shows that current development agendas suffer from a too limited view of how contemporary social-ecological systems on the Mahafaly Plateau operate.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historically, there are reports of good harvests in the 1980s and 1990s when large volumes of maize were exported from SW Madagascar to the neighboring French island of La Réunion (Klein et al 2008, Minten et al 2010). Thus, rather than being a region completely unsuitable for agriculture, the Mahafaly Region is an area where existing patterns of environmental variability make agriculture a high-risk business facing multiple uncertainties.…”

Section: Risk Trapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social-ecological traps hinder rural development in southwestern Madagascar

Hänke¹,

Barkmann²,

Coral³

et al. 2017

E&S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT. The semiarid Mahafaly region in southwestern Madagascar is not only a unique biodiversity hotspot, but also one of the poorest regions in the world. Crop failures occur frequently, and despite a great number of rural development programs, no effective progress in terms of improved yields, agricultural income, or well-being among farming households has been observed. In addition to the severe development challenges in the region, environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity are prevailing issues. This paper takes a social-ecological systems perspective to analyze why the region appears locked in poverty. Specifically, we address the socialecological interaction between environmental factors such as low and variable precipitation, the lack of sustainable intensification in agriculture resulting in recalcitrant hunger, and several environmental degradation trends. The study is based on (i) longitudinal data from 150 farming households interviewed at high temporal resolution during the course of 2014, and (ii) extensive recall surveys from the southwestern Madagascar project region. The analysis reveals a complex interplay of pronounced seasonality in income generation due to recurrent droughts and crop failures making local farmers highly risk averse. This interplay results in a gradual depletion of environmental assets and hinders the accumulation of capital in the hands of smallholder farmers, and improvements in agricultural production even where environmental conditions would allow for it. As a result, households are insufficiently buffered and insured against repetitive income and food security shocks. This can be understood as a set of interacting, partly nested social-ecological traps, which entrench the Mahafalian smallholder population in deep poverty while the productivity of the environment declines. We provide new insights on the interplay between hunger, poverty, and loss of environmental assets in a global biodiversity hotspot. Finally, we propose a set of key issues that need to be considered to unlock this severe lock-in and enable transformation toward a more sustainable development in southwestern Madagascar.

show abstract

Trade Liberalization, Rural Poverty and the Environment: Two Studies of Agricultural Exports in Madagascar

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Effects of protected area establishment and cash crop price dynamics on land use transitions 1990–2017 in north-eastern Madagascar

Effects of protected area establishment and cash crop price dynamics on land use transitions 1990–2017 in north-eastern Madagascar

IUCN management categories fail to represent new, multiple-use protected areas in Madagascar

Social-ecological traps hinder rural development in southwestern Madagascar

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About