SEED Madagascar

Towards a more adaptive co-management of natural resources – increasing social-ecological resilience in southeast Madagascar

Holloway, G., Short, S..

Situated on the southeast coast of Madagascar, Sainte Luce is a fishing village bordering some of the country’s last remaining littoral forests. Characterised by a combination of extreme poverty, the presence of highly - prized natural resources and feeble institutional structures, it is argued that Sainte Luce typifies contexts of social and ecological vulnerability found across Madagascar. The presence of the international mining giant, Rio Tinto, and the company’s role in managing a protected area bordering Sainte Luce, adds a complex dimension to this already highly vulnerable social - ecological context. Setting the case study within the context of recent natural resource management policies in Madagascar, the paper aims to highlight the need for innovative governance structures which match the complexity and dynamism of social - ecological systems such as that of Sainte Luce. We describe the approach taken by a local/international NGO partnership, Azafady, to build social and ecological resilience through a process of participatory and adaptive environmental action planning. The approach draws on concepts from adaptive co - management, which highlights the interdependence of human and natural systems and focuses on innovative institutional arrangements, social learning and cross-scale collaboration to manage the complexity and uncertainty of such systems. We examine the ways in which this approach has contributed to increasing social and ecological resilience in Sainte Luce and consider how progress made to date can be sustained and scaled up to wider geographical areas.

Key topics:

Sustainable Livelihoods

Year of publication:

2014

Published in:

Madagascar Conservation and Development, 2014 Jun, 9(1):36-48