Cutting down protesters and forests in Madagascar

NY Times outlines how the situation in Madagascar has deteriorated:  a shaky government more interested in corrupt personal enrichment than in law enforcement is letting the country's forests be decimated and sent to China.  Meanwhile, my parents tell me that their church, which supports a tree planting-program in Madagascar, has learned that a Malagasy pastor associated with their program was killed when he attended a demonstration in the capital.


I don't have a well-defined opinion about the current government and president.  He unceremoniously deposed the prior president, but the prior president's democratic credentials were shaky at best, and many people joined the protests that drove him out.  So while that's unclear to me, it is clear that the government shouldn't be shooting protesters.  And obviously it should be preserving the last bits of Madagascar's irreplaceable nature instead of taking bribes to destroy it.  I can't forget the incredible lemurs we saw there, and how few Malagasy ever see them.  It would  be tragic to lose them. 


The church members are asking people to contact the State Department and Congress and asking them to pressure the Madagascar government.  I think that's a good idea, and I'll suggest one other:  modify the Kerry-Lieberman bill so that countries facing tariffs for their failure to act on climate will face additional tariffs if they're buying illegal wood and aiding climate-harming deforestation.  Those monies could then be used to help fix the problem 

Madagascar, Part 3: Wrapping Up

(Female indri in a duet with her mate, Andasibe-Mantadia National Park.)

A few Madagascar-related odds and ends: The rainy season started a month late, according to the people there. One of our guides said that climate change is already affecting them. But who knows, could be natural variation, so we should leave the poor innocent greenhouse gas emitters alone.

Speaking of which, I still haven't purchased carbon offsets for our travel contribution to the problem. I keep meaning to do a fairly intense amount of research on what offsets work the best, and haven't gotten around to it.

I've upgraded the wikipedia entry for Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, and created an entry for Man and the Environment where we did our volunteer work, so I hope that gives a little back for the experience.

Finally, I'm putting a trip report below, which is probably of interest only to people who might be travelling to Madagascar in the near future.

General info:

Our guidebook - Lonely Planet Madagascar. It was acceptable, getting a little old. Prices are now in ariary, not the Madagascar francs. Prices in general were 50-150% more expensive than listed in the book, but I'm not sure how the dollar's fall in value affected that. Some roads are in better shape than listed - in particular, Ranomafana Park is now an easy drive on a well-paved road.

Costs - our hotels cost between $7 and $70 for a room for two, meals between $5 and $20. Both of those could have cost much less if you're willing to stay at sketchier places and try your stomach out on food not prepared for foreigners.

Timing - we went in mid-December for 3+ weeks, which is in the beginning of the rainy season and the start of the low season for tourists. On the bad side it meant we had rain most days and were occasionally pelted, and were on the periphery of two cyclones. On the good side, we could almost always stay anywhere we wanted, and finding guides and transport wasn't a problem. Some things will be easier or harder for other visitors depending on when they're there.

Language - we took a very basic French course before we went. It was very helpful, although I think a fluent French speaker would get much more out of the experience. We found English-speaking guides almost everywhere, although none were fluent enough to have really complex conversation.

Annoyances - bed bugs and fleas almost everywhere. They irritated me and tormented my wife. Only one (expensive) hotel, Residence Lapasoa, didn't have them. We learned to put on DEET before getting into bed. Travelers might consider treating a bedsheet with permethrin and bringing it along. On the other hand, we had almost no trouble with mosquitoes, so our malaria prophylaxis was probably unnecessary.

Other: Our best guide was our driver, Andry, who we hired through Tany Mena Tours. Tany Mena did not have all the special offerings that the Lonely Planet guide described, but Andry was great and highly recommended.

I'm also happy to answer any questions in the comments, or just email me.

Madagascar Part 2: the society

So we were short term visitors with just a superficial understanding of the place, but it's hard to understand why Madagascar is one of the fifteen poorest countries in the world. It's not overpopulated, so far - we drove and hiked for many miles through areas that weren't desert with absolutely no one there. Socially, it doesn't feel like a violent or crime-ridden country either, not compared to the rest of Africa or Latin America. And compared to India and Muslim countries I've visited, women seem to have more opportunities and exposure to the real world (far from equal, though). My wife and I both noticed the uncommon-elsewhere sight of men carrying and taking care of babies and small children. And even in rural areas, we saw children going to school, although not in the off-road villages.

I guess part of being a resource-extraction dependent economy is that resource price determines everything. Vanilla can only take Madagascar so far, the original forest is almost all gone, and the replacement eucalyptus and pine might not be very valuable.

Then there are ethnic issues I barely understand. Madagascar was first settled by Polynesians and is culturally and linguistically more Polynesian than African. Genetically it's a mix of African and Polynesian traits, a very striking people. The 18 different tribes have their conflicts, and slavery was abolished later there than in the US, so that is bound to be related to desperate underclass we saw in Tana, the capital city.

And while it's not overpopulated yet, that's changing, with 40% of the population less than 14 years old. They have a lot of challenges ahead.

Economic issues aside, the society is very interesting. Our guidebook said the Malagasy were reserved - I don't know what it's talking about, we thought people were extremely nice and cheerful. The French influence is extremely strong, however much it's resented. The people's striking features, and maybe the low HIV incidence, has the unfortunate result of a lot of sex tourism by French men.

The most unusual societal feature was "famadihana" ceremonies - exhuming and reburying the dead. Initial burials are usually sad affairs, but after several years, the body is exhumed, bones are cleaned and wrapped, and a large party is held during which the dead person is told about all that's happened in the meantime and then reburied. Practices differ by tribe, but it seems like a good way to deal with grief that the rest of us could learn from.

I never saw the ceremony, although we did see the cliffside crypts and caves that are used in the south, and the tombs in the north. There's always something more to see.

Back, back, back from Madagascar

So we're back from the honeymoon - 25 days in Madagascar, the first week doing some volunteer work, and the rest checking out the sights. An amazing country, well worth visiting.

The lemurs were the same highlight for us as for everyone else. They seem otherwordly in a way that monkeys don't. Part of the reason is the big eyes on the small face looking at you. The large lemurs in particular seemed strangely even more like us than monkeys, as they move bipedally through trees, leaping 30-feet gaps while standing upright. The ghostly white lemurs (sifakas) in the south, and the tailless, crying indris in the east were the most striking.

Environmentally though, the vast majority of the country is nuked. A naive observer might not notice it, thinking the countryside has always been rice paddies, grasslands, and scrubby forests. What we see is what replaced the original forests, and even the scrubby trees are Australian eucalyptus and Chinese pine with no ecological value. One of our guides said "Madagascar used to be the green island, but now it is the red island from all the erosion."

We volunteered with a Malagasy NGO, Man and the Environment, which is participating in efforts to develop ecological buffer reserves around national parks where resource extraction is compatible with the ecology. We tried to do some GPS mapping of clearings in the reserves - I hope it'll be helpful but I'm not sure it will be. In the middle of nowhere we came across land owned by Genentech. Even more strangely, it was a clearing instead of virgin land that I'd guess would have more biotech prospects. More mysteries.

The good news is that the forest does grow back aggressively if given a chance. We saw lemurs in 20-40 year old secondary forest. All that's needed is the economic opportunity.

One place in particular raised an interesting carbon offset question. We did a five-day trek in the country's largest national park, l'Isalo. In past centuries it had been 80% forested, but now was only 10% forested, a figure that our guide said had not changed since the park was established in 1961. It seems that more manpower to patrol the park to stop illegal burning is all that's needed to help the forest grow back, and manpower is cheap in Madagascar. Arguably they should be doing it anyway, but they're not and haven't for nearly 50 years, so it seems like spending money on better management could meet the "additionality" test of offsets. I'm sure l'Isalo isn't unique in developing countries in this regard.

I'll do another post or two about the people, and on the standard, we-went-there-and-did-that stuff that's all so fascinating.