tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45942240631743686742024-03-13T07:36:17.181-05:00Salama Madagascar!Biodiversity Conservation and Livelihoods in Madagascar and BeyondAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-45516989825200360222014-02-26T11:52:00.004-06:002014-02-26T11:55:12.350-06:00Free Malagasy Language ResourcesI can't believe it's been nearly a year since I have posted here. After months of digestive illness since returning from Mada last summer, I decided to take the winter break off, so while I think about Mada daily (you all know they have a new government. Right?), I haven't been actively involved.<br />
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I just wanted to let you all know about an incredible resource from RPCV Ray Blakney (Mexico 2006-2008). He has been collecting tons of language resources from Peace Corps volunteers around the world as part of his 3rd goal vision (3rd goal of Peace Corps: To inform Americans about the lives of those in other countries). Check out: <a href="http://www.livelingua.com/peace-corps-language-courses.php">http://www.livelingua.com/peace-corps-language-courses.php</a><br />
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Here is what he has to say about it:<br />
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I am working on a 3rd goal project with the PC regional offices and the main office in DC to try to create an online archive to keep the language training material made all over the world from getting lost. I have created a sub-section on the website my wife and I run...with all the information I have been able to get to date (from over the web and sent to me directly by PC staff and PCV's). I currently have close to 100 languages with ebooks, audios and even some videos.</blockquote>
There is actually over a hundred languages now. While it is somewhat buried in his pay service site (to which I have no opinion nor first hand knowledge of), this is a trove of language material open to the public. If any of you know somebody traveling abroad or soon to be a volunteer and they want to learn a more obscure language than you can find in the bookstore or on Rosetta Stone, send them to this site.<br />
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They could definitely use more Malagasy resources if any of you PCVs or RPCVs have scanned material.<br />
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P.S. Because you cannot talk about online Malagasy without mentioning another site. I hope you all already know about the <a href="http://malagasyword.org/bins/homePage" target="_blank">Malagasy World Dictionary</a> because it is an incredible resource as well.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-21703643616678530212013-07-21T16:02:00.002-05:002013-07-21T22:16:35.922-05:00Of rice and timber<br />
We were invited into the living room of the President of the <em>fokontany, </em>or municipality, where we would spent the next few days before heading back to our house in Maroantsetra. After two weeks spent visiting three villages in order to try to understand a bit about the diversity of livelihoods and forest management and use surrounding the newest and largest of Madagascar’s Natural Parks, this introduction to our fourth stop of the trip was notable. First of all, the fact that it <em>had</em> a living room was notable. The house itself, though larger than others we had visited, was not unlike the houses of the wealthier residents of various villages. It was made from hardwood from the forest surrounding the village,rather than raffia or bamboo, with a corrugated metal roof brought up river 6 hours by canoe from Maroantsetra, the main port and city in this corner of the island. We sat on furniture made of precious hardwood, the first sofas we encountered. In the corner stood two 2m long forestry saws and in the back room were goony sacks filled with unhulled rice, from the last crop to be harvested. Aside from farming, which is nearly everybody's first occupation, the president also works construction, building houses for residents of the town, buying his wood from residents who harvest it from the forest they have rights to, passed down through the last 2 or 3 generations or newly acquired.<br />
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The second set of sofas we saw were at the house of the man who owns the machine that hulls the rice. Most people in the surrounding area, and throughout much of Madagascar rely of large mortar and pestles to hull their rice little by little and sell what they can in the hulled form. In this town, though it costs a bit to use, people have access to a hulling machine, run on a generator with diesel brought up river again by canoe. In return for 50 ariary (2.5 cents), they receive rice that is fit for consumption and ready to be rebagged and either eaten or shipped back down on the canoes to Maroantsetra where it fetches about 400 ariary more per kilo than the unhulled rice.<br />
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The one person we met that didn’t see himself as a farmer first was the school teacher of this town. He had grown up in the area and had returned to teach there after studying. His wife runs a store in the front of their house to provide the necessities for everyday life in the village. In addition to the teaching and selling incomes, he also works as a carpenter, buying planks and rounds of hardwood trees from local loggers to fill his commissions for beds, chests and yes, sofas.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-1YpsDtAddww/UexDHH6UDkI/AAAAAAAAC_k/rR_e9Tp4cNE/DSCF0731%25255B6%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Ambodihazomamy" height="480" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-xvTSD-ZkYls/UexDLlwQqhI/AAAAAAAAC_s/3JLPrDqmRjs/DSCF0731_thumb%25255B3%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="display: inline;" title="DSCF0731" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ambodihazomami is well endowed with rice paddies and only recently have they began also cultivating the slopes surrounding the village.</td></tr>
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The above anecdote illustrates a number of aspects of the political economy of rural life here. A utilization of the forest for both commercial and subsistence purposes that is fueling both a local market for luxury goods and a transformation of agricultural technology that is allowing for export to the administrative hub. As apparent in the above photo, this town is surrounded by a significant amount of rice paddy. It was interesting to talk with folks about the changes in land use over time. I was told that up until about 20 years ago they had only planted rice one per year and that it sufficed. But as population has grown and inheritances of rice paddies being divided between the children has shrunk them, they moved to planting twice per year. As of three years ago or so, they began also farming rice on the hills, which requires cutting the trees and burning the soil. One of those that I talked to, who makes a living from timber, thinks that people should be trying to improve their techniques of paddy rice farming instead. And others worry that there just isn't enough land, and that the new protected area to their North will have to be used by the next generation.<br />
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This situation stands in contrast to the two other villages we visited during this mission, which had began working with the conservation NGO in charge of the protected area to create community managed conservation zones to act as a buffer. Neither of them had as much paddy land, being in narrower valleys. They both had extensive use of the hillside for rice farming such that the immediate slopes surrounding the villages were mostly cultivated rather than left as forest. In both villages they are no longer longer permitted to harvest timber for sale, and have to request permits to cut wood for their houses and to do agricultural clearings. In exchange, if they are diligent in their work, the conservation NGO provides development assistance in terms of latrines, metal roofs for schools, and nice, wood-paneled, metal roofed buildings for offices. There is some vanilla and cloves being grown and sold in all the villages but in a number of ways there seems to have been a basic trade off of timber for conservation in these two.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZcHze0YNSvM/UexLuMW3QEI/AAAAAAAADAM/BYeTHxIjbvY/s1600/DSCF0686.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZcHze0YNSvM/UexLuMW3QEI/AAAAAAAADAM/BYeTHxIjbvY/s640/DSCF0686.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hills around Andaparaty have been more heavily cultivated. The land in the foreground is newly returning to fallow.</td></tr>
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At the end of our first mission, we have learned a great deal about the diversity of uses and economies related to land and the forest in this area. Eli, my field assistant, Gerandine, our camp steward, and I are spending the week caring for gear and doing data entry before heading out tomorrow for another few weeks of visiting villages. On the first mission we piloted household surveys to understand livelihoods strategies, perspectives on conservation and knowledge of forest use rules. We also talked to a number of community and conservation leaders to begin stratifying communities based of governance systems. On this next trip we will continue with that work while piloting forest use transects and vegetation plots. Next year then, when our survey effort really cranks up, we should be able to connect livelihood strategies and land use institutions to levels and types of forest use.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-12352158910623621872013-07-19T22:54:00.000-05:002013-07-19T23:01:18.969-05:00Hard evidence of 2000BCE settlement of MadagascarUnfortunately, nobody yet seems to have picked up this story, and I'm in no position to do it justice, but it needs mentioning. The paper is behind a firewall so until somebody decides to to some science journalism on this (where's the press conference?), I guess you have to trust me.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HbBxZcIy93k/UeoHKb4XliI/AAAAAAAAC_M/rbiDKqEWtGY/s1600/stone+tools.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HbBxZcIy93k/UeoHKb4XliI/AAAAAAAAC_M/rbiDKqEWtGY/s320/stone+tools.PNG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chert flakes from one of two sites in N. Madagascar. From Dewar et al. 2013.</td></tr>
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While there has been some hints previously at pre-iron age settlement, this is the first unequivocal evidence. This rewrites Madagascar history.<br />
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The settling and subsequent ecological transformations (levels of deforestation, causes of holocene defaunation) of Madagascar have long been contentious and murky issues, it has been received wisdom for decades that Madagascar was settled not earlier than 500 CE. and that the first settlers were most likely from Indo-polynesia.<br />
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Dewar and associates have just published a paper relating archaeological finds at two sites in the north, where they have found stone tools dating back to 2000 BCE.<br />
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<i>"The stone tools from Ambohiposa and Lakaton’i Anja are unlike anything reported from Madagascar. The small assemblages were discovered in sites and contexts indicative of intermittent occupation by small groups engaged in foraging."</i></blockquote>
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This is a huge find that calls into question perceptions of the destruction that humans have wrought on Madagascar since it was first colonized. This is big. If humans had been living on the island for 2500 years or more before large lemurs and birds began going extinct, then it wasn't simply a matter of humans showing up in Eden and wrecking paradise. Complex shifts in modes of production, climate and trade require further unraveling.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Robert E. Dewar, Chantal Radimilahy, Henry T. Wright, Zenobia Jacobs, Gwendolyn O. Kelly, and Francesco Berna. 2013. Stone tools and foraging in northern Madagascar challenge Holocene extinction models. <i>PNAS.</i> published ahead of print July 15, 2013.</span><br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-65426370879916786512013-07-19T08:12:00.001-05:002013-07-19T08:51:18.315-05:00Child labor is rife in Madagascar<br />
Just wanted to call attention to this gripping statistic published (apparently) by the International Labor Organization.<br />
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<a href="http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/article_xinhua.asp?id=154361">According to the Shanghai Daily</a>, in an article about rates of child labor in the mining industry,<br />
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"The latest data published by the ILO bureau showed that 28 percent of children in Madagascar ranging from five years old to 17 are working."</blockquote>
I think the stat looks both startling and a bit fudgey - you aren't supposed to work before you are 18 but I bet that stat would be quite different if you looked at those less than 16 yrs. Nevertheless it is a major issue here. It is more than common to see kids in rice paddies, or acting as nannies for their siblings, fetching water and taking care of the house chores, especially young girls.<br />
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Child labor has long been a concern for those looking at demographics in the developing world. Madagascar has an incredibly high population growth rate of almost 3% <a href="http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=ma&v=24" target="_blank">(ranking in the 15 highest growth rates in the world</a>) and 50% of the population is under 18 yrs of age, <a href="http://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/factsheets/Child%20marriage%20country%20profile%20Madagascar-1.pdf" target="_blank">according to the UNFPA</a> (which also highlights the issues of child marriage). Many economists would link this to the tradeoffs of having more hands to work fields and do chores (especially during times of labor shortage like when the rice fields need to be prepared and planted) versus the costs of feeding and educating them - a very rationalist view, to be sure. The more appealing education looks, the less kids people tend to have. And the more perceived opportunities are available for high school and college grads, the more people are willing to pay to educate their children. With few high schools and colleges in the country, even though school fees themselves are kept low, the costs of sending kids to live in a far off city are not to be scoffed at here.<br />
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High child marriage and lack of opportunity (both for education and stable employment) equates to lots of kids who are forced to work - pretty much as simple as that. Of course, there are all sorts of complex cultural and global geo-political reasons why these issues continue to persist.<br />
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So though I am certainly no expert on the issue, I find myself drawn time and again, through my concerns with conservation and livelihood, to the issue of child labor. Just another example of how intertwined our social and environmental concerns are.<br />
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Anyone have more info on this?<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-74062539921551006272013-06-26T22:45:00.001-05:002013-06-26T23:02:43.728-05:00Locust Plague in Madagascar Continues Unaverted. First off, Happy Independence Day! 53 Years since Madagascar achieved independence from France in 1960. To celebrate on this blog I want to call your attention to an underreported and critically underfunded crisis that is happening here right now.
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I'd always imagined a locust plague, have never witnessed one, to be a huge cloud of millions of locusts that fly through an area eating their way before moving on and soon dying. Crop lost but that's it. Unfortunately, that isn't how these things work at all. Well, you can get the cloud, and it could be up to a hundred miles long, but if the plague isn't fought, if the locusts aren't stopped, they just keep breeding and multiplying and each year the plague continues. It doesn't just end.<br />
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Madagascar has been swarmed with locusts since early this year. In fact, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has been issuing warnings since August 2012. They have been trying to raise funds to be able to monitor and eradicate the insects but unfortunately got nowhere near the $11 million they required then.<br />
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The swarm has now grown to plague proportions. <a href="http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/178657/icode/">According to a recent FAO mission</a> "in parts of the country rice and maize losses due to the locusts vary from 40 to 70 percent of the crop, with 100 percent losses on certain plots." About two thirds of the island is affected, over half its population, and mostly poor subsistence farmers who have no fallback form the loss of their rice harvest. Given a still intransigent strongman in power and political and economic isolation, this problem can't be solved with market substitutes either.<br />
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At least today I can say that <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-26/locusts-in-madagascar-seen-by-fao-possibly-causing-food-crisis.html"> Bloomberg</a> and some other international media are finally picking up the story, because the window on keeping this from being a protracted, multi-year devastating tragedy beyond what it already is is closing. "“If we don’t act now, the plague could last years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said. “This could very well be a last window of opportunity to avert an extended crisis.”"<br />
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Is the international community going to come to the aid of those in need here, or just go on pretending Madagascar is an uninhabited island filled with talking cartoon animals?<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2KDyecfIvy4" width="560"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-40814734275796454382013-06-08T04:35:00.001-05:002013-06-08T04:38:27.969-05:00Dispatches from the Great Island - Take 5Just a quick post to re-boot this blog.<br />
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I arrived in Tana a couple days ago. I will be in Madagascar through August. One more summer to get to know this island (well, as the last two nights reminded me as I was trying to find more blankets - it's winter here)! While I am settling in and waiting for my bags to arrive (hopefully they are two days behind me...) I realized that there is plenty of interest going on that should have been utilizing this space for.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z4UFjEDWLDg/UbLwOHvcXdI/AAAAAAAAC-I/cH_j1zlAuIQ/s1600/Tana+Panorama+Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z4UFjEDWLDg/UbLwOHvcXdI/AAAAAAAAC-I/cH_j1zlAuIQ/s640/Tana+Panorama+Small.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from my balcony at Niaouly Hotel overlooking the East end of Avenue de l'Independence</td></tr>
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Over the last year, I've been settling into a PhD program at Berkeley in the<a href="http://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/"> Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.</a> During that time I finished up my thesis from Wisconsin and have been a co-author on two papers that stemmed from work around Ankeniheny-Zahamena. Id like to let you all know what that was about, but for an introduction to the field work that was involved, you can see<a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/09/anatomy-of-expedition-part-one.html"> this post.</a> Hopefully, those posts will be able to function as a wonderful epilogue in lieu of the second chapter that never materialized.<br />
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I have begun work on a new project that will be in Maroantsetra. You can check out <a href="http://www.chrisgoldenresearch.com/">Dr. Chris Golden's website</a> for tons of information about the area and the work that he has conducted there. I'll be collaborating with him and his team to expand efforts to take a deeper look at forest management institutions and access to forest resources.<br />
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I made a quick trip there in January with a couple of faculty members. Ill try to update briefly on my initial impressions from this first trip. I will be looking at issues of access to land and forest resources as they relate to conservation, people's livelihoods, and health outcomes. Ill try to provide some real-time impressions of what some of the points of contention are around<a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0817-makira-madagascar-wcs.html"> Makira Natural Park</a>. You can bet that the REDD funding mentioned in that article is going to be one, but I'll be very interested in what local people think on all things forest and farming.<br />
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Madagascar's political crises continues - it's high time to get caught up on some links. For a start, you should definitely be aware of the financial consequences, <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/06/05/madagascar-measuring-the-impact-of-the-political-crisis">as presented by the World Bank</a>.<br />
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That should take us through the summer. If there is anything in particular you'd like to see here, let me know.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-40127726835499005282012-07-05T11:20:00.005-05:002012-07-05T11:20:48.097-05:00Recent news stories from Madagascar...that aren't about the movieAfter a few weeks of my Madagascar news alerts being dominated by Madagascar 3 box office reports, there were actually a few relevant updates this week about conservation and other developments that have to do with the real island, people, and biota. Amazing.<br />
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Here is <a href="http://goo.gl/B4fjB">a blog from the New Internationalist</a> that bemoans just this and catches all of us up on the recent political history that has been blotted from our minds by cartoon zoo animals.<br />
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Centre Valbio, long an active force for conservation efforts and ecological science in Madagascar, has finally opened its research center. This will ensure that Ranomafana continues to be <i>the</i> research hub on the island, and will ensure that international collaboration continues to be fruitful, though I worry that it will keep attention focussed on a very well studied area that isn't necessarily emblematic of the rest of the island. For example, huge amounts of tourism dollars flow to Ranomafana, but how well can conservation efforts there be transfered to other parts of the island that are far of tourist's maps? <a href="http://goo.gl/27szc">This blog from Scientific American</a> has the story.<br />
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Along these same lines, International collaboration will be even easier, as the country has launched an online research network that, <a href="http://goo.gl/l5SI7">according to the Science and Developmnet Network</a>, "aims to boost science, technology and education in the country, as well as internationalise its science."<br />
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Madagascar recently signed an Economic Protection Agreement with the European Union. Under the agreement, Madagascar, along with several other nations will have reduced tarriff access to European markets. This would be awesome if it had happened before Madagascar lost a similar deal, AGOA, with the US and had to shut its textile factories down already, and if it didn't force the developing countries to open their markets to European goods as well. The African Development bank is already warning Zimbabwe that this is a bad deal <a href="http://goo.gl/za5dq">according to allAfrica</a> and it looks similar for Madagascar to me.<br />
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While they are at it, they should probably renegotiate their fishing access fees, since the European Union has been exploiting them and paying far less now then they were 2 decades ago due to fixed fees, according to a new study in <i>Marine Policy (</i>Check out<a href="http://goo.gl/vv1Nz"> the PhysOrg write-up on it</a>). Shout out to <a href="http://blueventures.org/">Blue Ventures</a> for their contributions to this research. They are an RPCV-managed NGO garnering major accolades for their innovative marine conservation and community development work.<br /><br />
And we all know music and aid go well together. Well, Razia is at it again, pulling together a great lineup to tour the US and Canada to fight illegal logging in Madagascar. At a time when Nashville is pissed with the Fed's for targeting Fender's alleged use of illegal rosewood and ebony, Razia has garnered support from many big named acts to abide by the Lacey Act. She is tireless and if you are in Minneapolis, Madison, or New York, be sure to go. Anyone is SF want to come out with me in a couple weeks? Check out the schedule <a href="http://www.wakeupmadagascar.com/">here</a>, and enjoy the promo video below.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vqycQuEEMEA" width="560"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-63297649328114316022012-05-17T08:01:00.001-05:002012-05-17T14:49:58.480-05:00Corruption on high: Journalistic freedoms squashed to protect lucrative illegal loggingA disturbing series of stories have been coming out of Madagascar about the crack-down on journalists and the erosion of free press. This is ironic because, as a former DJ and television station owner, Rajoelina stirred dissent against the former government for just this sort of behavior. Only this time, it is for investigating illegal logging, which happens to have ties to this government.<br />
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<a href="http://www.africareview.com/News/Malagasy+court+seals+off+media+house/-/979180/1407106/-/dr4omkz/-/">Africa Review - Madagascar court orders radio station sealed off</a>:<br />
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A court in Madagascar has ordered the sealing off of the main access road leading to a media house that aired a story on the illegal trafficking of precious woods allegedly by a billionaire chum of President Andry Rajoelina.</blockquote>
Not only are they arresting journalists and shutting down stations, they are also going after the investigators themselves, having fired the Environment and Forest minister over the story:<br />
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The sacked man made headlines when he alleged at a press conference that a young billionaire, who is a close ally of President Andry Rajoelina, was behind the illegal trafficking of precious woods in Madagascar.</blockquote>
Even this article has to suppress the name of the logger to not get thrown in jail....I recommend reading the whole, short piece.<br />
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This government, and Rajoelina himself have been tied to the illegal logging going back 2 years. Here is a video from 2 years ago of some investigatory work that was recently expanded for a BBC special called Lemurs and Spies (<a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2010/1105-rajoelina_eia_video.html">article about Rajoelina and logging here</a>).<br />
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How can you do conservation work with so much corruption up to the highest leves possible? Seems like an impossible situation.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-3019159685741629542012-04-29T15:46:00.000-05:002016-10-06T20:45:01.183-05:00New sapphire rush underfoot - this time in sensitive rainforest<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/madagascar/9223613/Sapphire-discovery-in-Madagascar-sparks-rush.html">An article in the Telegraph</a> sheds light on a rush to extract sapphires from the rainforest of Eastern Madagascar where I work.<br>
<br>
This follows in the wake of substantial gold mining in the area in recent years. The mining has increasingly become a problem in the absence of state enforcement and as local management groups are fighting to gain control over their forests. When I was there last July, I frequently heard the refrain that the law protects what's above the soil but not what's under it.<br>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zHdj2tLhGGo/T52nigH3V6I/AAAAAAAAClo/Jhnes6dPviE/s1600/Goldmining+Raboana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zHdj2tLhGGo/T52nigH3V6I/AAAAAAAAClo/Jhnes6dPviE/s400/Goldmining+Raboana.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artisanal gold-mining pits are rather small and though they may extend in a network over a square kilometer or more, the damage is far more localized than much larger open pit, organized sapphire mining. Photo © Sara Tolliver 2011</td></tr>
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Many local people were turning to mining to make a living because they didn't see any other alternatives. It is perceived as a way out of poverty despite the fact that many toil severely without finding enough gold to make it worth their while.<br>
<a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-sapphire-rush-underfoot-this-time.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-4128603409165478532012-04-24T14:16:00.000-05:002012-04-24T18:55:28.919-05:00Sowing justice in the most fertile soils of California’s East BayHow did you celebrate Earth Day? Did you
actively reclaim the last five acres of the most fertile soils in your
metropolitan area to utilize it for an agro-ecological demonstration farm for
and by the people in the face of a state-corporate partnership to develop it to
be able to sell luxury food to the wealthy? No? Well these folks did.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7p5fGR2CET8/T5b0pTbGcpI/AAAAAAAACkk/DXc47t77aco/s1600/IMG_0912.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7p5fGR2CET8/T5b0pTbGcpI/AAAAAAAACkk/DXc47t77aco/s640/IMG_0912.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rallyers marched through North Berkeley and Albany energizing the community around farming and food soveriegnty</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I think a lot about food security in
Madagascar. About the role of hunting in peoples’ livelihoods; about the different
forms that sustainable intensification of rice and other crops can take in
order to diminish the necessity to cut the forest for hillside rice; about the
benefits the forest provides in terms of soil fertility, water retention, flood
mitigation and a safety net to provide resources in the lean months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But what about here at home? The talk i'm hearing is less around food <i>security</i> and more about food <i>sovereignty</i>. Much of the large
tracts of agricultural land in the U.S. has been sucked up by corporate agri-business
to plant mono-crops to feed industrial food systems that American consumers are then dependent on for subsistence. Food sovereignty is the idea that we need not be yoked to this system for our right to food, that we can democratically
govern our own food systems. A working definition might be the ability of a community to control where its food comes from. Farmer's markets, small family farms, farmland protection, and Community supported agriculture (CSAs) are all essential elements of food sovereignty. <a href="http://www.growingpower.org/">Growing Power</a>, out in Milwaukee, WI is showing us one way that communities, can come together to utilize
small urban plots to intensively grow quality food where before little was
present, and how effective this can be in. <o:p></o:p></span>The occupy movement is engendering a more radically democratic vision for what food sovereignty can mean. It will be exciting to watch, participate in and learn from this emerging experiment. Raj Patel does a great job making this link over on <a href="http://rajpatel.org/2012/04/23/earth-day-and-occupy-make-a-baby-food-sovereignty/">his blog</a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e7ln4J78yMY/T5b0qzzopWI/AAAAAAAACks/fGrKypTw5LM/s1600/IMG_0918.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e7ln4J78yMY/T5b0qzzopWI/AAAAAAAACks/fGrKypTw5LM/s320/IMG_0918.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-GB">Inspired by the Occupy movement, which has
built widespread moral support for providing <i>with </i>those who were previously denied – the 99%, East Bay activists
held an Earth Day rally and marched to the Gill Tract, in Albany, a piece of
experimental farming land owned by UC Berkeley, who has been planning
development activities on the land to fill budget shortfalls. The rhetoric at the rally and march, as well
as the organizational structure of the fledgling farm are straight out of
Occupy – food for the people, daily community meetings, decentralized
management. They are showing us that democracy extends to all our systems and
people <i>can</i> take back that which is so primary in our lives: food and the cultural and ecological systems that we derive it from.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The activists are asking the University to
protect the land under a permanent agricultural easement. At only 5 acres, if
the farm is operated as a CSA it could only support about 250 families, but it
could serve thousands as an educational hub for how to run a democratic farm,
and millions as a symbol of democracy in action and the principles of food
sovereignty.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Em6aOGschxM/T5b0sGwAZeI/AAAAAAAACk0/juCkqo7mzaE/s1600/IMG_0919.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Em6aOGschxM/T5b0sGwAZeI/AAAAAAAACk0/juCkqo7mzaE/s400/IMG_0919.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First acre cleared and planted - at least 4 more to go!</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.takebackthetract.com/">Go to the movements website</a> to see whats happening out at the Gill tract and for opportunities to get involved and
support the effort. You can also find them on twitter at @occupyfarm and #occupythefarm. Better yet, head on down and get your hands in the dirt.
They have only planted about 1 acre so far and could definitely use more hands.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pMAdih4SBH8/T5b0tBBo58I/AAAAAAAACk8/mTrv6IE8CBg/s1600/IMG_0922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pMAdih4SBH8/T5b0tBBo58I/AAAAAAAACk8/mTrv6IE8CBg/s400/IMG_0922.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Info and literature tables are present, as well as food <br />
and medical stations</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Whether Madagascar or the USA, we all have
a right to food and should create and maintain the sustainable agro-ecological systems
that provide it. In Madagascar, food sovereignty is almost a given since it is mostly subsistence farmers disconnected from the global market, yet food security remains a major concern. Both here and there, though, visions trend toward the same solutions: diverse, democratic institutions to maintain social and ecological resilience amidst rapid global changes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-33642399303286795332012-04-09T14:05:00.000-05:002012-04-09T14:05:26.035-05:00How should we prioritize conservation action globally?<!--[if !mso]>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><i>Warning: technical material ahead...</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Driven by the agreement set by the
signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity to “significantly reduce
the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 (Jones et a 2011),” conservation prioritization became a
hot topic. In light of recent indications that the rate of biodiversity loss
has not declined and pressure on areas of high diversity has increased
(Butchart et al. 2010), this continues to be a pressing issue. Here I review a piece from 2006 by Brooks et al. entitled</span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-indent: -32px;"> "</span><span style="text-indent: -32px;">Global Biodiversity Conservation Priorities" which tries to sort out the most effective way of prioritizing conservation ahead of the 2010 assessment, and apply the lessons to what we see in Madagascar today.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Brooks et al (2006) looked at
prioritization schemes set by major conservation NGOs and classified them based
on axes of irreplaceability and vulnerability. Irreplaceability is usually
indicated by levels of endemism, but can include taxonomic uniqueness and rarity of habitat types but these are
hard to quantify. Richness is not of primary concern because “species richness
is driven by common, widespread species; thus, strategies focused on species
richness tend to miss exactly those features most in need of conservation
(Brooks et al 2010).” Vulnerability is not clearly defined here but is a
temporal indicator of threat. The most commonly used indicators are
proportional habitat loss and protected area coverage. The authors bemoan the
lack of consideration of demographic change, pressure from hunting, governance
and institutional weaknesses and (which I found hugely surprising that it wasn't present) cost. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">There is also a spatial component to these schemes and they all use overlapping “ecoregions” to define funding rather than a grid-based system. This has substantial effects on prioritization and the
authors suggest normalizing these ecoregions because they are biased towards larger
ones. Grid-based methods, however, like that used by Kremen et al (2008)
to prioritize nationally in Madagascar, should supersede this concern. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">By mapping the 9 most common prioritization
schemes the authors were able to find high overlap within two groups of
strategies, proactive and reactive, but not across them. Both proactive and
reactive strategies prioritize high irreplaceability but reactive strategies
also prioritize those with high vulnerability because these are the sites where
action is most urgently needed while the proactive strategies prioritize low vulnerability
because this is where conservation is most easily done(less politically charged
and often cheaper).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br />The authors judge the success of the prioritization
based on how much of the flexible funding available for conservation it was able to capture – the wrong
measure. Shouldn’t we judge success on conservation outcomes? If we are going to focus on finances we should be looking at cost-effectiveness, which isn't included at all here, rather than funds captured. This data is becoming more readily available and will be a factor of future prioritizations so as that data is incorporated, this is likely to
change. There are also political reasons why this is the wrong measure – CI appears to be moving away from the Hot Spot
approach (or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4BOEQkvCook">so
says Kareiva</a>, the head of The Nature Conservancy), lauded here for
garnering the largest share of the pie, and turning to a people-centered ecosystem service approach to prioritizing funding. If the "success" of these priorities are so transient they are not useful in making future prioritizations. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
Most of Madagascar, especially the highly diverse moist forests, is prioritized by most of the reactive schemes, while the dry deciduous forests of the west are also prioritized under proactive schemes that look for areas of low threat. The overlap here demonstrates the need to more deeply investigate the level of vulnerability of this ecosystem.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB">Corridor Ankeniheny-Zahamena (CAZ)
illuminates some of the complexity of prioritization. Madagascar itself was
identified under the Hot Spot approach by Conservation International, a
reactive scheme, but the particular site, an approximately 400,000ha area of
contiguous forest, was selected based on irreplaceability and <i>low </i>vulnerability (ie it was an easy
area to protect because of low human populations in the forest interior). Now,
an ecosystem-service narrative, rather than a biodiversity one drives continued
funding and discourse around CAZ. This shows the differences of scale and
discourse in prioritization, which aren’t captured by an assessment of global
schemes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">While there may be overlap between
biodiversity priorities and ecosystem service priorities in terms of carbon and
water quality, they by no means <i>must</i> overlap and we need to be clear about <i>what </i>it is that we are prioritizing. As
of now, while we are shifting toward a commodity view of how to protect areas,
there is far too often a lack of clarity. In fact, we still don’t have a strong
understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and specific ecosystem
services. This muddiness and ambiguity is yearning for clarity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Citations</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 24pt; text-indent: -24pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Brooks, T. M., Mittermeier, R. A., da Fonseca, G. A. B., Gerlach, J., Hoffmann, M., Lamoreux, J. F., Mittermeier, C. G., et al. (2006). Global Biodiversity Conservation Priorities. <i>Science</i>, <i>313</i>(7 July 2006), 58-61.</span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 24pt; text-indent: -24pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Butchart, S. H. M., Walpole, M., Collen, B., van Strien, A., Scharlemann, J. P. W., Almond, R. E. a, Baillie, J. E. M., et al. (2010). Global biodiversity: indicators of recent declines. <i>Science (New York, N.Y.)</i>, <i>328</i>(5982), 1164-8. doi:10.1126/science.1187512</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 24pt; text-indent: -24.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Jones, J. P. G., Collen, B., Atkinson, G., Baxter, P. W. J., Bubb, P., Illian, J. B., Katzner, T. E., et al. (2011). The why, what, and how of global biodiversity indicators beyond the 2010 target. <i>Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology</i>, <i>25</i>(3), 450-7. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01605.x</span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 24pt; text-indent: -24.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Kremen, C., Cameron, A., Moilanen, A., Phillips, S. J., Thomas, C. D., Beentje, H., Dransfield, J., et al. (2008). Aligning Conservation Priorities Across Taxa in Madagascar with High-Resolution Planning Tools. <i>Science</i>, <i>320</i>(222), 222-226. doi:10.1126/science.1155193</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<!--EndFragment--><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-36009699865843069812012-04-09T13:24:00.000-05:002012-04-24T19:02:50.965-05:00Has anything happened in Madagascar the last 6 months?<span style="font-family: inherit;">Re-revving the bloggin engine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here are a list of links that focus on Madagascar and/or conservation that I was considering reacting more fully to over the last 6 months. Oldest first.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://blog.cifor.org/5614/new-research-agenda-for-africas-dry-forests-defined-at-durban/#.T4MaX5r--9c">New research agenda for Africa’s dry forests defined at Durban</a> - CIFOR</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Back in December, in conjunction with COP17 in Durban, a 1 dy conference was held to discuss dryland forest. Despite covering much of the African continent, this ecosystem has been largely ignored by carbon politics because it is far less densely forested than humid forests. It also happens to support more than half the population of the continent. This piece highlights the take homes from the conference, dryland forest value and some of the challenges.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/madagascar-squares-up-to-extreme-climate-vulnerability">Madagascar squares up to 'extreme' climate vulnerability</a> - AlertNet<br />
Also at Durban, there was discussion of the vulnerability of Madagascar to climate change. "Maplecroft, an international risk analysis firm, ranks Madagascar third for “extreme” climate risk in the world, behind only Bangladesh and India, Rakotoarisoa said." FOlks are working on rice intensification through low-till processess and flood and drought resistant seeds. THey have also been developing early-warning systems for cyclones, which became very necessary as two major cyclones hit Madagascar in the months after this report.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/madagascars-lemurs-sacred-no-more/">Madagascar’s Lemurs, Sacred No More</a> - NYTimes<br />
There was a flurry of coverage in the wake of a couple of papers that came out around hunting and taboos in Madagascar. One of the things things that <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0027570">Jenkins et al (2011)</a> noted was that as traditional taboos were changing (due to migration and religious transitions amongst others) that endangered lemurs were becoming more culturally acceptable to hunt. This work was done very close to and found far higher rates of bushmeat consumption than we did.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0203-contraband_rosewood_sales.html">Caution urged in sale of Madagascar's illegal timber stockpiles</a> - Mongabay<br />
In light of <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/4/prweb9376163.htm">the recent announcement</a> that Gabon is set to burn its ivory stockpiles, this February discussion of how to deal with Madagascar's illegally harvested precious hardwood's gains some poignancy. "Done right, funds from selling timber at auction could go toward forest protection and poverty alleviation efforts. Done wrong, sales of confiscated timber could enrich traffickers, boost demand for Madagascar's rare hardwoods, and spur new logging."<br />
<a href="http://cplanicka.blogspot.com/2012/02/help-madagascar-silk-weavers-share.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HurryBoyItsWaitingThereForYou+%28Hurry+Boy%2C+It%27s+Waiting+There+For+You...%29">Help Madagascar Silk Weavers Share Their Experiences and Work Towards Sustainability</a> - Hurry Boy It's Waiting There For You<br />
Intrepid blogger and Madagascar RPCV Chris Planicka shares a story about the silk weavers of Madagascar and their (still current) efforts to get the cash they need to build markets in the US for their amazing scarves and hats. <a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0220-hance_interview_sepali.html">This effort is being innovated upon</a> by NGOs in the north of the island in their attempt to find sustainable incomes for folks living next to and within new protected areas. The PCV -partnered project that Chris talks about seems to have better footing to me.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://phys.org/news/2012-03-indonesian-eves-colonised-madagascar-years.html">Indonesian 'Eves' colonised Madagascar 1,200 years ago</a> - PhysOrg<br />
<div>
A recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society determined from genetic analysis that about 30 women (plus men, potentially) settled Madagascar from Indo-Polynesia about 1200 years ago. Women weren't found on trading vessels so the question is open as to how they came to arrive in Madagascar...</div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.livescience.com/19157-madagascar-biodiversity-explained.html?utm_content=LiveScience&utm">Species Hitched Ride to Madagascar on Floating Islands</a> - Live Science<br />
<div>
Madagascar has been seperated from the mainland for 80 million years and the species on the isalnd radiated after that time. So how did they get there? By comparing the times and locations that current species on the island would have separated from their nearest neighbors, Karen Samonds from the University of Queensland, Australia says we can conclude that it must have been on large rafts of vegetation floating across the Mozambique channel. "For example," she says, "DNA evidence indicates that just one primate species made it across, probably 40 or 50 million years ago, and that ancestral form gave rise to the 101 descendent species you can find in Madagascar today."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
and finally...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<a href="http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/learning-on-the-road-to-nowhere-in-madagascar/">Learning on the Road to Nowhere in Madagascar</a> - NYTimes Scientists at Work Blog<br />
<div>
An entomologist who has worked for years in Madagascar tries to reach a largely pristine forest in one of the remotest corners of the island during the peak of rainy season. What can go wrong. This exciting post shows how adventurous (and maybe a bit crazy) we have to be to love doing this kind of work.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-42308558528834574032011-10-03T13:25:00.000-05:002011-10-03T21:18:36.172-05:00Gibson and CITES: Attention finally being paid to Madagascar?If you know anything about socio-ecological issues in Madagascar, you know that exploitation of precious timber, especially rosewood, ebony, and polysandre, has been especially egregious since the 2009 coup d'etat. Even if you don't know anything about Madagascar, you might have heard recently of the ramifications of this through your rabid devourment of American political news. US Fish and Wildlife Service investigations of Gibson guitar have become a battleground between tea-party activists who think the government is over-regulating and environmentalists who see corporate greed ravishing the forests of impoverished nations like Madagascar. <a href="http://www.tennessean.com/article/20111002/BUSINESS/310020051/For-guitar-makers-wood-poses-quandary">Here's a link</a> to a fairly comprehensive article about the case from the Tennessean, published in the home state of Gibson Guitars.<br><a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/10/press-release-cites-extends-trade.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-27020351951421570872011-10-03T13:17:00.000-05:002011-10-03T21:23:21.518-05:00The Myth of the Virgin Forest<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10425.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110915">A new meta-analysis</a> of 138 studies across the tropics was published in the online edition of Nature a few days ago and found that, “primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining biodiversity.” <br>
<br>
I was drawn to this article because it has been picked up by the popular media. This piece is already being wielded to call from stronger protection of these forests. In interview, one of the first authors does just this. Luke Gibson tells us, “It is therefore essential to limit the reach of humans and to preserve the world’s remaining old-growth rainforests while they still exist. The future of tropical biodiversity depends on it.”<br>
<br>
What interests me is that it is never clear what forests they are talking about. Part of the problem is that the language is loose. Are “primary” and “old-growth” the same thing? Gibson seems to imply so. <br>
<br>
In a quick google search of the sources publishing about this article, nearly every one on the first page uses a different epithet for these forests. From the first 6 headlines we get: “Virgin forests,” “natural forests,” “old growth forests,” “primary forests,” “pristine forests,” and “rainforest.” All of these names seem to conjure an idea of an untouched forest far from humans where nature can thrive free from the negative effects of our species. They all embody the wilderness myth.<br>
<br>
To further highlight this let’s see what kind of land this pristine forest is contrasted against. “Degraded forests,” “disturbed forests” and “a re-modeled home,” and one piece from The Conversation tells us, “We live in an age of vanishing rainforests.”<br>
<br>
This is the conservation myth.<br>
<a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/10/myth-of-virgin-forest.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-75857028212688279242011-09-18T22:46:00.000-05:002012-04-24T19:01:51.759-05:00Anatomy of an Expedition. Part One.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">In August, two fellow grad students from UW-Madison came out to Madagascar to conduct fieldwork for a project to document the critically endangered Greater Bamboo Lemur, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Prolemur simus,</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> using trail cameras, and to gather interview data related to forest use and specifically the culture of hunting. They stayed for 2 weeks. Here is a log of our expedition (a word I do so love to use).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">August 4</span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I picked up Erik and Britt at the airport a bit after midnight. We headed back to the hotel to have a preliminary meeting with a preliminary THB (Three Horses Beer, the national beer of Madagascar), and to catch up and revel in the excitement of the impending expedition, before catching a few hours of zzzs.</span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bCGrHXZyIag/TnWFI9Myu0I/AAAAAAAACc8/-lFwBtGJqoc/s1600/DSCF0006.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bCGrHXZyIag/TnWFI9Myu0I/AAAAAAAACc8/-lFwBtGJqoc/s320/DSCF0006.jpeg" width="320"></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Erik and Britt still bleary-eyed from two days travel in the down-stairs part of our little loft at Sakamanga</span></span></td></tr>
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<a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/09/anatomy-of-expedition-part-one.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-43053085646714326642011-08-18T17:13:00.001-05:002011-09-01T03:19:46.948-05:00Toaka Gasy!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Just got back from an amazing two week expedition with colleagues from the CHANGE program at UW-Madison to find the critically endangered Greater Bamboo Lemur and to investigate the effects of hunting on this and other species in the region around my research area. Next time I will post an anatomy of the expedition, as a sort of digital field journal.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br>
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But, as there is nothing better than a cold beer to soothe the physical and mental exhaustion after such an endeavor I thought it would be appropriate to share short photo essay on <i>toaka gasy</i>, Malagasy moonshine, before heading back out for another 10 day field trip. Not that it is anywhere near as refreshing as beer...</div><a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/08/taoka-gasy.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-84583008911021749542011-07-19T10:49:00.006-05:002011-07-19T13:34:04.171-05:00Agroforestry Conundrums: Vanilla vs. Camphor<div style="font: 11.0px Courier; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://rafrogblogus.wordpress.com/?s=Madagascar"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A recent series of posts</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (Well, back in May, but still…) by Noah Jackson, over at Rainforest Alliance’s Frog Blog, focused on vanilla farming in Madagascar. He is an auditor for RA, travels the world meeting farmers and foresters, assessing the sustainability of their practices and compliance with certification standards. He makes the point about how important it is for vanilla farming to be sustainable. Especially in Madagascar:</span></span></span></div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Vanilla grows in the northern part of the country, where coastal and montane rainforests thrive. In a place as biodiverse as Madagascar, growing and cultivating crops like vanilla in harmony with nature is particularly important – irresponsible farming could threaten the integrity of this incredible landscape.</span></blockquote><div style="font: 11.0px Courier; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 11.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But if its like most of the crops in Mada very little is certified because of how expensive it is to do the audits and stay up to date with the latest requirements. There are, however, folks trying still export crops the right way. People like </span></span><a href="http://www.ftftrading.com/about.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">From the Field Trading</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, composed primarily of 2 rpcvs and the farmers that they have lived and worked with for years. </span></span></span><br>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></div><a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/07/recent-series-of-posts-well-back-in-may.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-67837462223769049042011-07-09T23:06:00.002-05:002011-07-09T23:12:25.921-05:00My (not so) Nightmare Third World Dentist Experience<div style="font: 11.0px Courier; line-height: 15.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 11.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I got off the <i>taxibe</i> 165 as if I was going to The Cookie Shop, a little cafe in the capital that is the closest thing you can get to America this side of Africa. Unfortunately, as soon as I neared the shop, I had to ignore the little latte fiend in my brain and turn down a side road instead. This road heads past a strip of chop shops that leads to an informal market surrounding the “stinky lake,” the most foul, putrescent cesspool of a pond in Tana (and people fish in it). I did this because I was headed to the dentist, having ejected a filling from a lower incisor and subsequently swallowing it while therapeutically biting my nails the week before. I think I should take up smoking instead - it would be better for my teeth.</span><br>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-not-so-nightmare-third-world-dentist.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com9Antananarivo, Madagascar-18.914872 47.531611999999996-19.8477565 46.791408 -17.9819875 48.271815999999994tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-43657267675361778942011-06-29T04:38:00.002-05:002011-06-29T07:08:27.687-05:00Searching for freshwater fish in Mada - what it can say about forest conservationIn a <a href="http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/changes-in-madagascars-rivers-and-lakes/">new blog post</a> from the field for The New York Times, John Sparks describes his search for an incredibly rare and recently discovered species (1990s) of Damba, a genus of fish endemic to Madagascar.<br>
<br>
He highlights the plight of freshwater fish on the red island: <blockquote>“It should be painfully obvious to the reader from my earlier posts that Madagascar’s native freshwater fishes are in very serious trouble — narrow endemism and widespread habitat degradation are a dangerous combination. Throw in competition with an array of exotic species, and you have the ingredients for a full-blown disaster. Essentially, freshwater fishes are afforded little protection within the isolated patches of protected forest that remain throughout the country, and within which one can still find relatively healthy populations of lemurs, chameleons and other native vertebrates. Most of these forest reserves are at higher elevation, where there is little suitable habitat for fishes other than rheophilic gobioids (gobies and eleotrids). In addition, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a watershed that has not been affected to some degree by deforestation throughout its course — and obviously, the negative effects of siltation persist downstream to the sea.”</blockquote>But its not just fish that are threatened in freshwater systems: The lac alaotran lemur is critically endangered and the Alaotra grebe has <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8702000/8702598.stm">recently been declared extinct</a>.<br>
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One thing in his post that intrigued me is his emphasis on tilapia and their importance to local livelihoods:<br>
<a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/06/searching-for-freshwater-fish-in-mada.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-79317726141391193562011-06-27T06:26:00.001-05:002011-06-29T06:42:16.446-05:00....And the Wheel Turns: A year in review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><style type="text/css">
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</style> </div><div class="p1" style="text-align: center;"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Well... I’m back! Both to Madagascar and to this digital weblog of my exploits. As I continue my protracted transition from Peace Corps volunteer to academic / conservation professional I am reevaluating the purpose of this blog and its potential (more on that in a future post), I realize many of you may not quite know what I’ve been up to. That may be exacerbated by the fact of my signing off of here so abruptly and then disappearing from normal human reality into my own personal malarially-feverish year of grad school. So in lieu of the malagasy folk-tale about how the gecko got its spots (also in a future post, you better believe), I’ll just do a quick picture post of some of the highlights of my last year to get us all back up to speed. Then i’ll be free to focus on Madagascar and conservation.</span></span></div><div class="p1" style="text-align: center;"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br>
</span></span></div><div class="p1" style="text-align: center;"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">After touring the North of the island with a bunch of amazing friends, going to places like this...</span></span></div><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RPJOH6wAo9I/TghcIOZaGXI/AAAAAAAACYE/7BxEd7mfMNQ/s1600/DSC_0922_2.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="209" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RPJOH6wAo9I/TghcIOZaGXI/AAAAAAAACYE/7BxEd7mfMNQ/s320/DSC_0922_2.jpg" width="320"></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br>
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">...and this...</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br>
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IONqdDBPEsA/TghcP8fZi6I/AAAAAAAACYI/ajrSUZ2OBU8/s1600/DSC_1023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IONqdDBPEsA/TghcP8fZi6I/AAAAAAAACYI/ajrSUZ2OBU8/s320/DSC_1023.jpg" width="211"></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br>
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">...and then my 6 months were up and it was time to come on back to Fremont for a couple</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2011/06/and-wheel-turns-year-in-review.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-77962651503552706632010-06-02T03:08:00.022-05:002012-04-24T19:10:12.607-05:00Photo Essay: How a vazaha tries to support community-based conservation in Madagascar[<span style="font-style: italic;">disclaimer: my 'w' key is quite broken; if any are missing from the following post, please blame the beer I spilled on my computer at the internet cafe</span>]<br>
<br>
After months of wrangling with the writing on the avowed blog post on the intersection of conservation and development; after venturing to begin stories in formats such as the academic essay, the travel log, and the fictional account; after starting and scraping a plethora of garbage stories all in an attempt to tell the story of what I am doing here in an informative and engaging way - I give up.<br>
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After fretting so profusely, I realized that I am in the capital now, have a decent internet connection (wireless!), have a bunch of photos and that it is easier for me and probably more enjoyable for you, just to post some pictures, with some minimal words to provide context. Why didn't one of you experienced bloggers clue me into this oh-too-obvious format earlier? For a funny and informative (and more frequently updated!) discussion on some of the frustrations of working on these issues nearby in Madagascar, you should totally read <a href="http://cplanicka.blogspot.com/">Chris Planicka's blog.</a> This post will be limited to explaining some of the work I have been doing. Maybe, in the future, but at this rate probably not, I'll actually write that other post I keep mentioning....<br>
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So here we go. What do I do?<br>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/TAZfy0rssEI/AAAAAAAACQU/5yHdA_TB5Do/s1600/DSC_0389.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5478171323482812482" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/TAZfy0rssEI/AAAAAAAACQU/5yHdA_TB5Do/s400/DSC_0389.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 266px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;"></a>I work with groups like this. It took me a day to ride the 55km or so that it takes to get out to<br>
<a href="http://marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com/2010/06/photo-essay-working-with-vois.html#more">Read more »</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-21858934843866877942010-04-02T05:30:00.008-05:002011-06-27T06:31:11.238-05:00Support CLIC!Bibliotheque CLIC (Centre de Lecture, d'Informtation et de Culture) is the new library in my community, Morarano.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/S7XIbSYKhTI/AAAAAAAACOU/kLoDJbs78-M/s1600/DSC_0399.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/S7XIbSYKhTI/AAAAAAAACOU/kLoDJbs78-M/s320/DSC_0399.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455486894744438066" /></a><br />
They just opened two weeks ago, and as you can see, they can certainly use some more resources.<br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/S7XJRpjDutI/AAAAAAAACOc/icRXtGnZoqo/s1600/DSC_0400.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/S7XJRpjDutI/AAAAAAAACOc/icRXtGnZoqo/s320/DSC_0400.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455487828677081810" /></a><br />
Their plan is to be a regional information hub and they hope to have the resources to promote language study and to act as a technical library for improved farming techniques. They are working on getting solar power to run a computer, photocopier, TV and VCR/DVD player in order to make multimedia available to the local community.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/S7XJ-pRqFfI/AAAAAAAACOk/pmSaTfVI5uc/s1600/DSC_0401.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2s7uKWT9ltc/S7XJ-pRqFfI/AAAAAAAACOk/pmSaTfVI5uc/s320/DSC_0401.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455488601698211314" /></a><br />
Right now they are requesting books!<br />
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Especially:<br />
- French/English dictionaries, textbooks, and other learning materials<br />
- Atlases and Travel Guides with pictures<br />
- Childrens Books<br />
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Materials can be sent to me or directly to the librarian:<br />
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Bibliotheque CLIC<br />
Tendry Maharavo Joël<br />
c/o Chez Meur. Le Chef ZAP<br />
EPP Morarano Gare<br />
Moramanga 514<br />
Madagascar<br />
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If you want to do anything else to help out, like organize a drive to cover the shipping costs on a box of books, let me know!<div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-7260921142132474882010-02-26T09:47:00.003-06:002011-06-27T06:33:33.276-05:00Respect My Boundaries!!<meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.1 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Call the doctors! (wait....on second thought, don't do that - he'd be pretty mad at me) I think I'm suffering from a failure of my creativity systems (how does a doctor treat one for that, anyway?) because for the life of me I can't figure out how to make my work sound interesting... I know, I know- I live in Madagascar and work in the rain forest helping local people manage their forest; how can it be anything but interesting!? All I have to do is describe my yard, or the chameleon I saw yesterday, or the national park I visited, or what species of tree is dwindling in numbers (no), or what I had for dinner last night, or the role of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">CIREF</span> in forest delimitation (no), or the funeral I went to, or maybe my life here with regards to coffee, or the training I'm developing on the statutes of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">VOIs</span> (no, no, no!), yet somehow I am having trouble.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As you can see, anything related to daily life here has some general appeal. I just read <a href="http://saratolliver.blogspot.com/">my friend Sara's blog</a> and was thoroughly entertained by her descriptions of the left-overs she ate for breakfast and her ride to site the first time. But somehow I feel compelled to use this blog to highlight the incredible complexities or working in the field of natural resource use and conservation on this ecological wonderland of a economically impoverished island – but the daily realities of it are so tedious and boring! What to do? Describe breakfast (some cocoa cereal and decent coffee – I <span style="font-style: italic;">am</span> in the capital right now after all), or write something only the most stalwart of my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">eco</span>-nerd friends will appreciate? Oh, how about this: I draw you in with big picture goodies about life in Madagascar to set the stage and then bring it down to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">nitty</span> gritty details in such an insinuating manner that you don't even realize you're being hit with science.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Scratch that. All of it. I'll save the professional-like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">sciency</span> stuff for a less <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">SalmanRushdie</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">inspired</span>-self-reflective-mess of a post and hit you with a couple anecdotes about the meaning of boundaries in Malagasy culture instead. </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">How do you like that? </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I don't care, I'm doing it anyway...</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One obvious boundary that has shaped the Malagasy psyche is that of the Mozambique channel. Being adrift in the Indian ocean has certainly created a disconnect with the rest of Africa. There is very much a sense of island isolation – difficulty in coming and going, for people and for goods, has created a strong sense of being Malagasy, as opposed to being <i><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">vazaha</span>,</i> or an outsider. This sense was heightened by French colonial power, engendering a sense of inferiority. So at one and the same time there is a pride in being Malagasy and a strange sense of cultural shame. Malagasy tend to hide their traditional practices, rather than flaunt it like many Africans. Being a tourist here is a different experience than in the rest of Africa: it would be very difficult to find a village here that encourages tourists to join their life for a day, sing their songs, see their traditional clothes and share their meals.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">That's my biased snapshot of the Malagasy view towards foreigners, but when you look within Madagascar, the Malagasy are just as adept at establishing that boundary between us and them. Are they from the highland or the coast? What tribe are they from (there's about 23 officially but they are constantly evolving)? Are you a newcomer to the village? Are you a family member? Male or female? Catholic or Protestant? All of these things will be ascertained quickly and often subconsciously as a way of defining one's role in society...</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Ok</span>, enough waxing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">psuedo</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">anthrolopological</span>... my point is that the Malagasy are very aware of the boundary between us and them, which makes it very curious to Western eyes how apparently oblivious to personal boundaries they are. Enough stereotypical baloney. I said anecdotes... </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One morning, soon after getting to site, I decided to take the taxi <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">brousse</span> the 30km from my village into the main town to do some marketing. Thus far I had gotten rides in private cars since my return from exile, I mean home, so I was rather happy to be riding in a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">brousse</span> for an hour, reconnecting with '<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">gasy</span> culture, reminiscing about the two day long <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">brousse</span> nightmares I had experienced in the past and musing about how many people they pack into these things and how interesting it is that nobody minds being squished in, butting up against your neighbor with a random baby's head on your shoulder and a chicken at your feet. At this point we were 5 across which accounted for all the butt-space available in the rather narrow row (5 random <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Americans</span> would not fit, I can tell you that). We were about half way to town by this point and full up, but there were more people clambering to get on. "Do six 6 across," the driver's assistant tells the bus. "um..," I'm thinking as people grumble and start shifting around to get cockeyed with one cheek on, one cheek off, to add an extra rear end in there. There is no way that we are going to get 6 of us in that row. I had the middle seat, which is a board that spans the aisle between the two benches, so naturally when we had to get another butt on the bench and couldn't, my thigh became the bench and I had a random girl sitting on my lap (this was one time I wasn't made to feel like a foreigner). Similar arrangements we being arranged in the other rows. We didn't talk. She just sat half-in-my-lap and the only time we communicated was for me to say "excuse me," as I reached my hand under her butt to extract my bus fare from my pocket. She didn't even feel the need to reply. Trying to imagine this scene taking place in America, I decided then that I needed to write a few remarks about boundaries.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One other incident, illustrative in another way of the Malagasy view on personal boundaries, was when a fellow volunteer got her camera stolen during a training. About 60 villagers (and 3 volunteers) were brought to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Tamatave</span>, the big port city on the east coast, for a 3-day training given by a big conservation <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">NGO</span>. On the third day we had coffee break around 10<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18"> o'clock</span> and shortly thereafter the volunteer noticed her camera missing. It had been really hectic, with people in and out during the break, so it easily could have been removed from the otherwise encapsulated training space. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Lockdown</span>! Was it because it was a volunteer's (i.e. <i><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">vahaza</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">'s) camera? Was it because it was a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">NGO</span> training and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">NGO</span> wanted to demonstrate it's concern for our wellbeing? Was it indicative of everyday life in Madagascar? I was told repeatedly by the people carrying out the actions to come that it is the latter: "don't worry, they're used to it!" </span> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">Whatever the impetus, for the next hour-or-so various searches were carried out. The doors were shut and the facility searched – had it just gotten misplaced? Then <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">everybody's</span> bag was taken to the front and searched in case somebody had stolen it and stashed it. People were asked to accuse the perpetrator. I think that in The States we probably would have made an announcement that the camera was missing, ask if anyone had seen it, maybe search the room, and then call it quits saying, "I can't believe someone took it..." or the like. It didn't stop there. Oh no. While bags were searched, men and women were lined up and pat-downs were carried out. Finally, we were all allowed to go to lunch, the victim apologizing that all this time had been taken up on her account, mortified about what was being done in her name (they really didn't seem to mind all that much though). Deliberations were carried out. It was decided that one of the participants was sketchy because he went to the bathroom and they agreed that his room at the hotel should be searched during lunch. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Woah</span> – just so you know, if <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">NGO</span> staff suspects you of stealing they can tell the hotel staff and get a key to your room. Yeah, there is no word from privacy in Malagasy...</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Coming back from lunch we got on with the training, sad to be missing the camera and glad to be moving on from the inquisition and to have that uncomfortable situation behind us. But was it done? Not yet! Before going home they brought it up again. New accusations were raised, inquiries made. It was decided that a box should be placed near the women's bathroom, which was behind a partition. One by one, with our bags, we were to go to the box and either put a piece of paper with information-which-leads-to-the-apprehension-of or the camera itself in to the box (you know, as an act of shame brought on by the extensive efforts made to wear down our souls). </span> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">No camera. Accusations were read. Nobody directly implicated. Debate drew to an end. It was over.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">Just like this blog. Now that I have worn down your patience you are free to go. Just after you line up and one-by-one deposit your comments in the form linked to the comment button below (really though, it would be wonderful to hear from all of you!). If you feel guilty for not having done so before, you can deposit goodies in your mailbox and send them to the address in the sidebar of this blog (the title of this should link to the blog if this was sent as an email to you). Just to make it easy: c/o Conservation International, BP59 Morarano 514, Madagascar <br />
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Maybe for next blog I'll get to that stuff that I care enough about to leave family and friends half a world behind in order to work on for 6 months. Maybe I can put CBNRM in the context of boundaries, to tie it to these fun stories and make it more interesting. Boundary to Development in Madagascar: Lack of Alternatives to Over-exploitation of Natural Resources! reads the headline... </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ugh...already sounds boring...</p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-2478486718522976142010-01-20T01:18:00.004-06:002010-01-20T02:56:10.284-06:00It's a Different World Up Here!Pardon the typos, but I'm back to having to use a French keyboard in a slipshod internet cafe. That's right, I'm finally back in Madgascar! It only took me 10 months of frustration to get here and I'm still not even sure this was the right decision, but I'm here for the next 6 months so hopefully soon I will feel like I belong again.<br /><br />Part of my difficulty is the rapidity of the transition. I arrived a week ago and had two days of orientation before being brought to site. Last time around I had 10 weeks of training and the opportunity to gradually get used to things. I certainly appreciate the confidence that everybody has in my ability to thrive despite any real idea what the hell I am doing but it would have been nice to at least see my friends first...<br /><br />Now I'll put away that grumbling voice that seems to have arisen in me some time in the last few months. Hopefully, next blog I will be able to post some pictures; I just have to find a place that I could plug in my own computer so I could prepare the next blog ahead of time while the clock is not ticking. For now, though, maybe I will just highlight a few of the similarities and differences between my old site in the South-East, and my new one, up on the plateau but still near the rain forest corridor.<br /><br />Similarity: I'm still working with community based management groups (COBAs) charged with managing swaths of a large new protected area. Again this time there are way too many (16) to work effectively with all of them during my 6 months but at least i can try to meet with them all and really benefit a few (which is the realization I came to after my first year in Vondrozo). The work should take me out into the forest again, though just like before, I live a few kilometers away (in fact, where I am now, I can't even see it for all the eucalyptus that has been planted).<br /><br />Difference: Before, I was working with a field team of 5 Malagasy WWF empoyees who were pretty knowledgable and quick to learn, who had connections and a good rapport within the communities already and who were dedicated to conservation and helping the locals develop. This time around my aim is the same, but I'm working with Conservation International and I AM the field team. That's right - just me. Melissa and Lety are doing the same job in nearby areas but we all work independently. So my hopes of accomplishment are much lower this time around, though I should be able to transmit enough insight about the reality of things on the ground to CI that they decide they aught to have a field team here (the local office closed during the political crisis). This time around though, there are federations that link the COBAs together. There was nothing like that in Vondrozo and I think it is a great idea. So maybe I can spend much of my time developing the federation instead of working directly with the COBAs. We'll have to see how this goes...<br /><br />Difference: People are really friendly here! I walk around my village and everybody smiles and says 'hi', they seem stoked to have me around and not put off by me. In Vondrozo, I was the first PC volunteer and they hardly ever get white people out there so they were scared of me and didn't really know what to do with me. Up here they are used to <span style="font-style: italic;">vazaha</span>, foreigners, and in fact called me "Aaron's replacement" for the first few days! I'm working hard on establishing my own identity and assuring them I wont leave after a few days (maybe thats why they seem so friendly - they are really trying hard to make me like them so they won't lose their <span style="font-style: italic;">vazaha</span> again!). It took a long time before I really found out who I could work closely with in Vondrozo and to build the trust needed to be effective. I've already here had the head of the Parent's association at the school come to me seeking advice on a grant proposal, right after she handed me the curtains and sheets she had offered to sew for me (I never even ahd curtains in Vondrozo!) Seems like folks are a little less kamo (lazy) here and ready to work. I better step it up!<br /><br />Difference: They are really good farmers up here. My village is on a fairly major road, 30km off the road to the most visited tourist site in the country and the main shipping thouroughfaire in the country. Im near if not in the breadbasket of the country and man do people know how to farm rice here! I've been walking around taking pictures (which i would have been self-conscious to do in Vondrozo) of rice fields, tractors, fertilizer, etc. because I am so struck by the knowledge base and ensuing wealth here. I won't subject you all to another blog on rice, don't worry, even though i do want to post the pictures. I'll just have to write my next update about some of the wildlife so I can show off the beautiful birds and moths that I have been seeing (all very commonplace but still beautiful).<br /><br />Ok, Im sure that's more than enough to sate your appetites for now. I do wish this computer's spellcheck wasn't in French...<br /><br />Miss you all! Mandrapihaona!<div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4594224063174368674.post-35843040324245554372009-03-27T09:57:00.004-05:002011-06-27T02:12:18.616-05:00Goodbye MadagascarI keep trying to write on paper the blogs that I want to post, about the political situation, how it has effected my work, my mentality, its root causes, the way it impacts peoples lives in the countryside, Malagasy people's takes on things, what its like being evacuated, what I'm doing next, etc. At first I couldn't really process things. I couldn't even keep a journal. Now, all these ideas and all my experiences over the last two months are all run together and I still can't make sense of things, nor write clearly about them. So rather than try to analyze it all or really share my experiences, I'll just give you a dry, blow-by-blow to bring you up to date. It'll be bare bones, but maybe after some questions from you all I will be able to elucidate matters a little more. I'll try to post some pics, too.<br />
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So late January I left my site to go to the capital and pick up my good friend Alex, who was visiting from the states. We had grand plans but unrest broke out the day he arrived. After driving through looting and general mayhem, we holed up at a Malagasy friend of mine's house. After a few days with no resolution in site, Alex left for South Africa to take his vacation elsewhere and I got consolidated with about 50 other volunteers. We stayed at a training facility for three weeks playing volleyball, reading, getting daily briefs on the situation, and generally going stir crazy. We all wanted to get back to our communities. During this time Liz was supposed to have arrived to come down and work in Vondrozo again with me, but WWF suspended volunteer activities so she couldn't come.<br />
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Finally, things were deemed face enough for us to go back to our sites under a heightened security protocol. I tried to get back to work on my way down to site. We had written a grant proposal before I left and I took it to a couple donors. It was clear though that things were pretty much at a standstill and agencies were waiting for things in Madagascar to get better before resuming normal operations. Then I got caught in town with some shooting and had to be moved with one other volunteer to a safe town for a couple more days.<br />
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I finally got back to Vondrozo in late February. The students I worked with were disheartened by the whole deal and not motivated to keep doing projects. My WWF agents were grounded and not allowed to go out in the field and do their work. So my work changed. I did some project planning with WWF and helped a friend to plant rice using improved techniques. It was a productive week of work, all in all. But then the military factionalized and the security situation in Tana degraded substantially. Peace Corps decided to pull out.<br />
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A week later I was in South Africa, with all 120 or so of us who had not chosen to leave earlier. We had a rushed conference to either get reassigned or separated from Peace Corps. I was not done and really wanted to transfer, but my medical exam turned up some things that Peace Corps was not comfortable with, so they want me to go back to the states and get healthy. Immediately after finding out I couldn't transfer, I booked a flight to Cape Town and the next day was here.<br />
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I've been here a few days and love the town. Tomorrow a few friends and I will rent a car and do an overland journey through southern Africa. We are all really excited for the trip but still stressed and sad to see others go.<br />
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Next month Ill go to Malaysia for two weeks with Liz before returning to Africa. I want to make it up to Cairo and into Europe. We'll see how far the money lasts. Eventually, I'll get back stateside to have these medical check-ups while I wait for things in Madagascar to right themselves so that I can return. <br />
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Damn, I miss that island so much already...<div class="blogger-post-footer">Be sure to visit marshinmadagascar.blogspot.com for links to other Mad blogs as well as news updates and all my old posts</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625300917671180704noreply@blogger.com1