Research overview:

If protected areas (PAs) are surrounded by impoverished, nature-dependent communities, they will be vulnerable to increasing pressures. Our work has shown that PA managers in Madagascar (including government, NGOs, and local communities) lack capacity to tackle these social dimensions as required by international commitments and national policy. We are providing training, follow-up support, and a synthesis of the evidence on social impacts of environmental and development interventions to empower each of these stakeholders to work better towards resilient PA management. In particular, we are currently developing policy and practice to help Protected Areas and local communities negotiate Community Management Agreements (Convention de Gestion Communautaire, CGC). We are also conducting research to evaluate the impact of these agreements.

Planned activities:

Activity 1: Establish a database of evidence on social safeguards

We will collate evidence on what works best to ensure that local people affected by PAs share equitably in the benefits generated by them, and on the determinants of success or failure into an open-source database.

Activity 2: Conduct two field training workshops plus follow-up support

We will provide field training for key stakeholders in collaboration with other specialists and people whose lives are affected by conservation and restoration. The rationale for these trainings is that those involved in designing and implementing policy are detached from the reality of people’s lives at the forest edge. By bringing Malagasy policy makers and implementers out to the forest frontier and encouraging direct discussions of difficult issues with some of the people most affected, we expect to achieve a transformational change in the views and understanding of key people. We also aim to ensure communities involved in hosting the event feel empowered by the experience to contribute to co-management of PAs.

Activity 3: Train local communities on the “Convention de Gestion Communautaire”

Our review of Malagasy PAs found that very few had a “community management agreement”  which is a formal agreement between protected area managers and local communities, fundamental to co-managed PAs. We will work with communities in three PAs to build their capacity to understand and develop an agreement.

Activity 4: Support ongoing reform of Madagascar’s national PA safeguard policies

Government agencies made it clear that while they recognise the importance of addressing social issues in conservation and restoration, they lack capacity to do this effectively. We have been providing support for the reform of PA social safeguard policies since 2020. These are intended to assist PA managers, government agencies, NGOs and communities to ensure that PAs fulfil their potential as cornerstones for biodiversity conservation and as pillars for achieving sustainable development. We will continue providing this support throughout this project. 

Partners:

We partner with Natural Justice Madagascar, three conservation organisations (Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre, Impact Madagascar and Madagascar National Parks) and government agencies (such as the Environmental governance department of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development).

We also work with our long term colleague and advisor Dr Neal Hockley, from Bangor University, UK, who has a long-standing commitment to supporting evidence-based policy in Madagascar.