SEED Madagascar

Madagascar: A Land Out Of Balance (Preface)

Ed Kashi, Samm Short, Helena Drysdale.

The Prix Pictet Earth Commission catalogue presents Ed Kashi’s photographs that show the compromised beauty of Madagascar. Pictet & Cie supported Azafady’s Voly Hazo project, which aims to preserve forest soil from degradation and to halt the progress of desertification.

The photographs are accompanied by texts from Ed Kashi, photographer and photojournalist; Samm Short, writer and project development specialist working for Azafady; Helena Drysdale, author of Dancing with the Dead, a journey through Zanzibar and Madagascar; and Peter Aspden, Arts Writer at the Financial Times.

Helena Drysdale writes of Madagascar, ‘In the south, the failure of the rains has speeded up the desertification. The Masoala Peninsula has become a national park, but this has not prevented the pillaging of the rainforests by illegal loggers – aided by French shippers and the Malagasy government – or the subsistence farmers’ slash and burn. Madagascar’s soil continues to bleed unquenched into the Indian Ocean, and the Great Red Island slowly but inexorably dies.’

Key topics:

Environment

Year of publication:

2010

Published in:

Madagascar: A Land Out Of Balance