TWENTY-FIVE
Where are we now?
January 14, 2014.
I will never go back to Madagascar. I’m home in England surrounded by loving and worried family. Somehow dying doesn’t worry me at all, at least not yet. I’ve had lots of fun and excitement in life. Richard and I have just celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary! I told our 12-year-old granddaughter that now I feel I’m lying in a small boat that drifts with the current down a calm stream, maybe with willows overhead. I might sit up and find an oar and try to paddle the other way, but why bother? Only I still wish I knew what happens next…
Russell Mittermeier is going strong, ricocheting round the world for his brainchild Conservation International. This year he and his collaborators brought out a comprehensive strategy for what would be needed to save all lemur species. At least we know now what ought to happen.1
This past Monday Russ had dinner with the equally indefatigable Patricia Wright at the Carleton (ex-Hilton) in Antananarivo. Pat has since zoomed back to Ranomafana with yet another television team. You will soon see her and my dear friend Hanta Rasamimanana standing three storeys tall on an IMAX film, Madagascar, opening near you in April. At least, if you live in the developed world. Madagascar itself does not have IMAX. Ranomafana’s research goes from strength to strength. In August it held the last of the congresses that frame this book: an International Prosimian Congress. The big change is that most papers are by Malagasy speaking on their own biodiversity, eager to advance their own careers in conservation. A contrast to the continuing bewilderment of so many other Malagasy as to why anyone would want to visit forests! And a huge swing from all the meetings in the past dominated by foreigners.2
Hanta, who was a program chair for the August conference, is gearing up for yet another major research blitz on Berenty this coming April, with three other long-term researchers and half a dozen students, Malagasy and Canadian. This time it is vegetation and a management plan to maintain the forest, requested by Claire de Heaulme Foulon. Claire and her husband Didier have taken on the family responsibility of conserving the Berenty Reserves for all their different peoples and trees and lemurs, while Claire’s sister Bénédicte runs the sisal plantation. Hanta also carries on the Ako project of storybooks for Malagasy children on top of everything else she does!
Frans Lanting is recognized as one of the world’s great photographers. His vision is so unique that when a page of the National Geographic falls open you recognize his work in an instant. His Life: A Journey though Time is a thrilling performance, where Frans’s photos trace the rise of biology from the first bare rocks to the exuberance of the present day, while a whole live symphony orchestra plays music composed by Philip Glass.
Léon Rajaobelina continues as director of Conservation International’s Madagascar branch in Antananarivo. This has been his base as an éminence grise in politics, and in mining policy, and dozens of other activities. Since he knows absolutely everyone who counts in Madagascar, I don’t expect he’ll ever stop.
Joe Peters left development practice in anguish after the debacle at Ranomafana. He became an academic, then a performing songwriter. His farewell concert was last Friday along with his and Dai’s thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Then on Monday Dai left for an early morning flight to her latest agricultural consultancies, this time in Haiti and Nigeria. Dennis del Castillo, agronomist, has worked for the World Bank, USAID, and is now with the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute.3
Alison Richard has retired as vice chancellor of Cambridge University and is now back at Yale. She and Joelisoa Ratsirarson have emerged from Bezà Mahafaly as I write. The summary:
Just back in Tana. LOTS of rain, sifaka, maki, greenness, wasps, mud, lots MORE rain, scorpions, sira tany [salt of the earth], the forest bursting with life, fields full of maize and manioc, wading across the Sakamena waist high, even more rain STILL, hot nights in my tent, much accomplished, everyone of good cheer.4
And this is good cheer all across the south. Good rain in January means food for all this year.
Most of the other people I’ve named are retired, though they go right on being involved with Madagascar, whether Malagasy or other. Jean-Jacques Petter died in 2002 full of honors, survived by Arlette whose own studies of lemur reproduction has been the foundation of so much later work. Wonderful Madame Berthe has also died, mourned and honored by the whole GERP, the Groupe d’étude et de recherche sur les primates de Madagascar, the Malagasy primatological society she founded, which hosted the International Congress of 1998.
As for what happens next, all of Madagascar is waiting for the presidential election results. No, to tell the truth, it is January so most Malagasy are into the serious business of planting rice and manioc in the rains. Meanwhile the politicians enter their end game…
For the last five years Madagascar has waited for elections. When the final round of votes are counted, promised for January 22, 2014, the country will have an internationally recognized government. At least, if the loser accepts defeat and does not choose to plunge the country again into chaos.
The Transitional (post coup) Government had no incentive to agree to elections while their fingers were in the till. They used the ancient Malagasy ploy of saying ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Then they fixed meetings with the opposition and cancelled them at the last moment. Or else they imposed conditions which made others cancel, such as: ‘If you set foot in Madagascar we arrest you.’ Foreign pressure toward a real government grew more and more intense. A committee from the Southern Africa Development Community tried to bring the government to heel with increasing frustration. However, the pressure continued. When foreign aid was abruptly cancelled after the coup in 2009, it amounted to a loss of 40 percent of the government budget, which gives a good deal of leverage! Now at last there is the promise of stability.
Magistrate Béatrice Atallah took on the responsibility of organizing elections. If it weren’t so serious, it could play as farce. First round April. No, July. No, October.
But then, I am American. I have no right to be sarcastic coming from a country which amply demonstrated in 2013 how to play politics as farce.
Much has changed already. A recognized government means it is worth signing agreements that will be honored. The World Bank and other donors have re-engaged. The Chamber of Mines, described in the last chapter, which had long existed, is now reactivated.
All agreed that former presidents Marc Ravalomanana and Andry Rajoelina could not be candidates. But that did not exclude Ravalomanana’s wife or Didier Ratsiraka. Rajoelina, leader of the coup and president of the Transitional Government, announced that if those two stood he would put his own name down as well. Amazingly, Magistrate Atallah and some tough negotiators cleared them all away. She is a lady of presence. (I met her only once in an airport: black dress, rakish black hat and masses of gold jewelry. Presence felt in all directions by those who backed away in respect and those who rushed up to claim acquaintance.)
The first round in October posted forty-one candidates, all orating on their own radio stations to a populace that does not read posted campaign papers—because most don’t read. Still, international electoral observers conclude the election itself was carried out fairly.
This led to a run-off on December 20th between the two leading candidates: Jean-Louis Robinson and Hery Rajaonarimampianina. Robinson was the candidate of Ravalomanana’s party, pledged to continue his policies of an open economy, environmental support, and health and education. Rajaonarimamapianina (call him Hery) carries on the Transitional Government. However, since his party has caved in enough to hold elections the economic policies are predictably also going to appease investors and donors.
On January 7th, 2014, the Electoral Council announced Hery the winner, by 53 percent versus 47 percent. A series of questions about who financed each candidate has ricocheted round the Malagasy press. No one has actually fingered rosewood profits, but in every previous election rosewood exports rose, though never to the levels of 2009 and 2013. Outside observers may declare an actual election fair, but they cannot trace the tortuous paths that led to the final rolls.5
Naturally Robinson wants a recount, alleging fraud by the ruling party, but he has announced he will abide by the Council’s final decision if Hery’s side will promise the same. We do know that when the dust settles, Madagascar will have a new recognized government but be facing the same old problems.
January 20, 2014.
On Friday, January 18th, the Electoral Commission confirmed Hery Rajaonarimampianina as president. Questions remain: where did he get $43 million in campaign funds? Was it legal for him to block his opponents’ Land Rovers and T-shirts at the port, let alone past presidents’ entry into the country? Was it indeed legal for Andry, excluded from presidential campaigning, to appear on the campaign posters for Hery and his party? Now it seems to be legal.6
Well, let him rule legally and well. This is his chance.
Not all is good. There is widespread breakdown of law and order, or feared breakdown. This is wildly exaggerated by the foreign press if it involves a visitor. The stoning to death of a tourist on the vacation island of Nosy Be sent shudders. Villagers accused him of causing the drowning of a local boy. I suspect this is an isolated case of fear turning to paranoia. That has happened sporadically before. It is exactly the kind of reaction that Eleanor Sterling feared so long ago on the idyllic beach of the aye-ayes. But violent robberies have clearly increased. The underpaid and undisciplined police are more likely to arrest people rich enough to bribe their way out of jail than to go after killers.
Zebu rustling in the south has robbed the people of their bovine bank accounts. I haven’t been able to find out where the cattle go. Traditional roots are deep: a century ago, one of a man’s wishes to his newborn son was ‘May you go strong and steal many cattle.’ Now, though, it is on an industrial scale: someone is buying up thousands of cattle on the hoof. The increase in gun crime has led some embassies to recommend no one takes the Route Nationale road to Fort Dauphin!
In the south as well the 2013 rains were topped off by a cyclone—ideal for breeding migratory locusts. Again it is foreign donors who find funds for anti-locust campaigns. Famine does not arrive on the black horse of the Apocalypse. It descends from the sky on glittering wings.
Rosewood cutting and smuggling have soared to the levels of 2009. Guy Suzon Ramangason, director of Madagascar National Parks, this week stated publically that the final destination is China, while the government fails to intervene. ‘There is a network of Mafiosi of bois de rose. Money in this type of network is very very powerful.’7 Do you remember his namesake Guy Razafindralambo declaring ‘If we destroy Madagascar and turn it into a desert, what will we do? We’d have to swim!’
But many Malagasy keep working for the good of their country in the civil service and other positions. The reinvigorated Chamber of Mines is one kind of hope. Besides the stories I have already told, people and organizations who have been working in the country for decades are still there: WWF, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Foundation, Missouri Botanical Garden. Many newer ones have appeared: Mitsinjo, which plants trees in Andasibe where the indri sing; Fanamby, founded by Serge Rajaobelina (son of the inspirational Léon); Blue Ventures, which works with octopus fishermen to set up no-take zones; Madagasikara Voakazy, which started as Bat Conservation; the Japanese Croix du Sud, which works with villagers to replant spiny forest trees cut for timber; and a host of others. The GERP itself, the primatological society, undertakes consultancies.
The biggest mind-change though: in September the Wildlife Conservation Society and the government of Madagascar announced that 705,588 carbon credits are certified for sale from carbon stored in the 375,000 hectare Makira Forest. That is 32 million tons of CO2 potentially saved as rainforest, if firms looking to offset their carbon emissions actually buy the carbon credits! The Makira is a huge tract linking the Zahamena Park of rainforest on the eastern mountain chain with the Masoala Park, home of the red ruffed lemurs where this book began in young Martial’s slash-and-burn clearing. Some 240,000 people live or depend on the Makira. It continues to be their home. It is called a Natural Park, not a Reserve. The project has long been in the making: mooted in 2001, agreed in 2008 just before the coup, and now at last triumphantly placed on the carbon market.8
Furthermore, Conservation International is looking for carbon credits for two more great swathes of eastern rainforest: from Sahamena southwards to Andasibe, and the Ranomafana National Park corridor to the mountain massif of Andringitra.
REDD, ‘Reducing Emissions from Forest Destruction and Degradation,’ is controversial. For many, this scheme, where companies buy credits and pay for forest saved, is the best hope to actually recompense owners of forests for conserving a resource that is precious to the whole planet. The catch is the word ‘owners.’ If an organization wishes to buy carbon credits, it needs assurance that the sellers have secure, verifiable tenure. That means in turn that only large companies or umbrella organizations are in a position to sell. No way could 240,000 villagers cobble together the right to pledge conservation of their own land. The government is backing the carbon credits, but WCS and CI have to negotiate the deals.
In fact this raises every question we have faced in the course of this book. WCS has spent decades working with the Makira communities as well as calculating forest carbon stocks and ongoing forest degradation. Will this huge project resemble Bezà Mahafaly, where years and years of personal contact have generated real trust? Or do the villagers accept WCS as they do QMM on a whole range from resentment to collaboration, because the outsiders are clearly not going away? Even worse, I am always dubious of huge top-down schemes in Madagascar. Too often they never reach the people at the bottom they were designed to help! Worse, might an influx of quick cash to both villages and government generate the local greed of a dysfunctional family squabbling over a will?
As you will have gathered, I am convinced that development is necessary. The counterfactual of no development is a downward spiral of degradation for environment and society. However, it all depends how development is done.
At the beginning of this book I wrote of the continuing battle between three views of nature: the aesthetic/scientific; the traditional; the economic. Economic arguments win, at least so far—perhaps with REDD to support them. Nonetheless the scientific and aesthetic idealism of foreigners and Malagasy alike lies behind all the efforts. Love of nature is a deep river, flowing under its turbulent surface.
I admit that Madagascar isn’t important. It isn’t important to the whole earth like the vast swathes of the Amazon or Indonesia with their carbon stocks, their millions of interlocking species, and their rampaging palm oil plantations. It isn’t important even symbolically like the greatest living land animal, the elephant, butchered for Asian trinkets.
It is important, though, as its own alternate world of evolution: how to build a rainforest or a spiny forest or a baobab forest. It is the ecological theater and the evolutionary play with an entirely different cast of characters.9 It is important as the only home of its forest species, birds and trees and insects and frogs and the hundred-odd kinds of lemurs that live only here, from the red ruffs of the rainforest to white sifaka leaping among the spines, from Madame Berthe’s tiny mouse lemur to the indri who sing from hill to hill. And, of course, my very own swaggering, pugnacious and ever so maternally doting ring-tailed lemurs.
Madagascar is important above all as a test case for any ideal of sustainable peace between humanity and nature. If humanity, Malagasy and outsiders together cannot save Madagascar, what hope is there to save the planet?
1. C. Schwitzer, C.G. Mittermeier et al. Lemurs of Madagascar: A Strategy for Their Conservation 2013–2016 (2013).
2. Valbio, ‘ICTE–Centre Valbio publications’ (2013).
3. Joe Peters, email to Alison Jolly, January 8, 2014; www.reverbnation.com/joepeters, http://amazonecology.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/connections-profiledennis-del-castillo.
4. Alison Richard, email to Alison Jolly, January 24, 2014.
5. Anglo Malagasy Society Newsletter, December 2013.
6. M. Andriamananjara, ‘Madagascar finally has a new president, but uncertainty remains’ (2014).
7. T. Ford, ‘Madagascar’s trees vanish to feed rosewood trade’ (2013), p. 1.
8. Wildife Conservation Society, ‘Madagascar puts first-ever government-backed carbon credits on open market’ (2013).
9. G.E. Hutchinson, The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play (1965).