Project overview:

This project aims to inform the prevention and resolution of environmental, political and economic crises by providing better understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods and food security and its knock-on impacts on biodiversity in northeastern Madagascar. The project team will first carry out key informant interviews and focus groups to identify the various mechanisms by which COVID-19 has altered food security and livelihoods, and they will also explore farmer livelihood coping strategies during COVID-19. 

Using a choice experiment survey, we will then examine farmers’ preferences for regenerative agriculture as an alternative to practices that are reliant on input markets (such as monoculture forest-derived vanilla crops) or the need to engage in forest clearing. 

We will also conduct innovative experimental games with farmers to examine i) how shocks (such as COVID19 or vanilla price collapse) affect farmer willingness to diversify crops, and hence increase resilience, ii) whether monetary interventions (conservation payments) encourage biodiversity conservation (by decreasing forest clearing for production-oriented landscapes).

Partners: 

Duke Lemur Conservation SAVA, 

Centre universitaire régional de la SAVA (CURSA)