Livelihood strategies and land use changes in response to conservation: Pitfalls of community-based forest management in Madagascar

Abstract

Faced with the low success rates of protected areas in conserving natural forests and supporting rural development, the Malagasy government recently chose to transfer forest resource management to local communities. Feedback about the implementation of this new policy suggests that agriculture continues to drive deforestation. This article explores farmers' household livelihood strategies and land use changes in response to changing forest access rules arising from community-based land management. Based on studying in-depth surveys and participatory mapping in the eastern rain forest highlands, we outline patterns in farmers' responses, exploring the relationship between sociodemographic factors, livelihood strategies, and patterns of land use. Our findings suggest that heterogeneity in farmers' adaptation capacities is closely related to different land use patterns. Furthermore, both conservation and agricultural sustainability have suffered from unintended impacts: an increase of forest clearing, intensification in cultivated area, and an impoverishment of the poorest households. These detailed reviews of household adaptation processes suggest that the zoning-based management scheme would benefit from incorporating a more detailed farm level land use approach. Land use patterns have the potential to inform the design of improved conservation-development initiatives by revealing strategic indicators that could allow practitioners to target households for conservation measures according to their adaption capacities