{"id":10662,"date":"2022-01-15T01:04:41","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T00:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afabego.fr\/?p=10662"},"modified":"2022-04-18T18:37:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T16:37:54","slug":"la-deforestation-a-madagascar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/actualites\/la-deforestation-a-madagascar\/","title":{"rendered":"Deforestation in Madagascar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Jacky Duruisseau<\/em><\/p>\n

Why deforest?<\/h4>\n

Madagascar is unlike many African countries whose inhabitants congregate in large cities. In Madagascar, rural life is very important. Small villages dot the entire countryside. Only national parks, high mountains, and deep forests escape human occupation.<\/p>\n

In this country, women have on average five children, so demographic pressure is very high, with three constraints:<\/p>\n

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  • The family must be fed<\/u><\/em>\u00a0<\/i>, which most often has no income: the staple food of these peoples is rice; in the \u201ccountryside\u201d there is no other solution than to create \u201cfields\u201d to grow rice, and only one way to do so: burn the forest (this is mountain rice, which does not require flooded paddy fields), since the valleys have long been occupied by fields and flooded paddies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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    • The food must be cooked<\/u><\/em>\u00a0: Bottled gas is out of reach and far too expensive, and electricity has yet to reach rural areas. Even where it is available, electric power is far too costly for these people. Thus, charcoal must be made from felled trees whose wood cannot be used to build houses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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      • The family must have shelter<\/u><\/em>, therefore houses must be built. These are made of wood for the most part. Thus, more trees must be felled, and boards and beams must be sawn!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Cleared plots are exposed to erosion from run-off, which is very strong in the rainy season; the thin layer of topsoil is washed away very quickly, so the plots soon become unusable for crops \u2013 and so the next patch is burned.<\/p>\n

        As already stated, rural families have little or no income; some grow cloves, vanilla or pineapples to earn a little money, which is used to buy additional food; others raise zebu. In every case, land must be cleared and forest cut down to establish plantations or feed livestock.<\/p>\n

        Another problem!<\/h4>\n

        Very worrying, and already denounced by the European media: the trafficking of rosewood (and palisander); the elites are said to be complicit in this trafficking, reselling the precious woods to the Chinese, who are very eager buyers!<\/p>\n

        In fact, corruption reigns at all levels in the country. Bribes ensure that eyes are closed to the wood trafficking and to the creation of farm plots in national parks (Masoala).<\/p>\n

        When uncorrupted park rangers (there are some) come upon cleared plots, the site is banned from further exploitation and abandoned as it is. Within a few years, an almost impenetrable secondary growth emerges there.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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        The state of things, some examples:<\/h4>\n

        In 2001, at Vodiriana, a small village on the Voloina river (which flows into the Bay of Antongil, on the western side of the bay, in north-eastern Madagascar), Henri Laporte entered the Makira forest as soon as he left the village: an immense mountainous plateau covered with primary forest not yet fully explored. In 2013, 12 years later, it took a two-hour walk through burnt areas, rice fields and crops to reach the forest! In 2015, the primary forest was 10 km from Vodiriana! The entire shore of the bay has been deforested. When leaving Maroantsetra by plane in the dry season, you can see numerous columns of smoke\u2026<\/p>\n

        In April this year (2015), we had the opportunity to fly over the Masoala peninsula (on the eastern shore of the same Bay of Antongil); the strip lying outside Masoala Park has been deforested; the flight shows that even within the Park, where normally no cultivation is permitted, there are \u201choles\u201d in the forest, cleared and even cultivated areas. This is perfectly visible on Google Earth!<\/p>\n

        Between Maroantsetra and Ambanizana (a Masoala village situated on the Bay of Antongil, halfway between Maroantsetra and Cape Masoala), we explored, in 2013, one of the two Ambilosy rivers, the smaller one, called Ambilosykely.<\/p>\n

        We found an extraordinary site there, right beside the stream: erosion had exposed rocks, including a huge one on which four species of begonia grow; on the nearby bank grows another species (B. masoalensis<\/em>): five species of begonia in an area of 200 m\u00b2. We returned this year. Unable to find the forest path that led to this spot, we asked the people of Ambilosy village where it was: the answer was \u201cthere is no path along the river\u201d!! Strange! We tried an approach higher up, then cut back south towards the river; the GPS allowed us to find the site again: a rice field on the right; a large tree felled and cut into planks on the left! The farmers were not very keen for us to see this disaster! The huge rock is no longer in the shade and the neighbouring banks are in full light. The five begonias are still there, but for how long? The humidity of the site is now insufficient. In six months, in a year, not a single begonia will grow here any more!<\/p>\n

        Solutions?<\/h4>\n

        There is clearly a need for a political initiative for change, in support of rural people and populations.<\/p>\n

        NGOs are proposing alternative solutions that allow farmers to cultivate deforested areas for several years in a row by incorporating \u201cgreen\u201d products; in these villages, deforestation is now much more limited. I know this exists, but I do not have any details.<\/p>\n

        A catastrophic situation, then \u2013 not only for the begonias, but for everything this loss represents for all of us.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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        \n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"par Jacky Duruisseau Pourquoi la d\u00e9forestation\u00a0? \u00c0 Madagascar, contrairement \u00e0 de nombreux pays d\u2019Afrique o\u00f9 les gens de la brousse viennent s\u2019installer (s\u2019entasser) dans les grandes villes, l\u2019occupation rurale est tr\u00e8s importante\u00a0; de nombreux villages existent presque partout, sauf dans les parcs nationaux, les montagnes \u00e9lev\u00e9es ou les for\u00eats profondes. Dans ce pays, les femmes [...]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10662"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12367,"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions\/12367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afabego.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}