Our Pilot Site: Manambolo Forests

Context

Located in the Ihorombe region, in the rural district of Ranohira Menamaty-Iloto, the forest of Manambolo is composed of 3 fragments of dry forest (about 8 000 ha in total). The area is inhabited by over 1500 people, mainly distributed in 3 main villages Iloto, Itoha and Isoalaza. With a subtropical dry climate (below 500mm rainfall per year), agricultural activities are focused on cattle, or non irrigated crops (cassava, maize, groundnuts) and fruit trees.
Unfortunately, soil erosion, once the forests have been  burned, is particularly important, and lands have very poor performances. The drinking water is a major problem. People rely mostly on water springs, or more generally on water from the rivers which cause a high prevalence of diarrheal diseases. The area is particularly isolated. Access to education is problematic for the hundreds of children in the area, as the nearest school is at several hours of walk.

A Reserve of Biosphere implementation

The population is already surprisingly sensitive to the interest of forest conservation as an essential asset to their development. Anxious to preserve their "forest capital" and aware of the increase in traffic of illegal wood and fires this year, they have appealed to the NGO Vakanala for the establishment of a sustainable management of their resources. In order to meet the national objectives by 2012 to triple the size of protected areas of the country, Vakanala team proposed the approach of the program "Man and Biosphere (MAB) of the UN. This form of protected area propose as objective to integrate into a single process, the conservation and sustainable management of natural resources, and hence biodiversity, and sustainable development of local populations. We have therefore presented the communities with an action plan, based on 3 axes, and received their endorsements, along with the one from the village elders (customary authority) and the mayors of three main villages.

Reforestation

    To develop a sustainable management of natural heritage of this area, we agreed with the communities to start a reforestation program to restore the land fallow, whose soils have been badly degraded by erosion. Based on permaculture methods, we combine various endemic species, fruit and fast-growing species to recreate, in stages, ecological conditions for sustainable agriculture on the one hand, and the restoration of primary forests indispensable to the preservation of biodiversity on the other hand.

Basic infrastructures

In order to best meet the needs of the communities, Vakanala has chosen to prioritize first the following actions, which correspond to the needs expressed during the meetings:
•    establishment of standpipes in each village;
•    building of a school for children in the area.

Itoha village (Madagascar),  August 2010, Photo /Daniella Rakotomamonjy

Status  of Protection

Alongside these initial actions, Vakanala will take over the ecological studies, the socio-economic studies, the intercommunication at the level of the communities level, the region and the Ministry of Environment to obtain a classification of this area as an  'Biosphere Reserve' Protected Area, and also the drafting of a Plan of Arrangement and Management of the future protected area, and the establishment of long term  funding mechanisms to continue and sustain the present and future actions of Biodiversity Conservation and Rural Development.