New project (MiRARI) continues the Forest4Climate&People’s impact activities
The Forest4Climate&People project has carried out several engagement activities to ensure that forest carbon programmes in Madagascar are more effective and pro-poor. For instance, the project team has contributed to the development of the national protected area social safeguard policy and helped draft a technical guide to social safeguard planning, implementation and evaluation at the request of the Ministry of Environment.
The project has also convened sharing workshops to ensure social safeguards for local people reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development. Participants at these workshops informed us that they lacked capacity to : i) comprehend the local costs of conservation and how to define project affected persons, and the different forms of compensation for the negative social impacts of protected areas (including on customary rights), ii) identify and apply tools and methods in monitoring and evaluating the social impacts of conservation and safeguard projects, iii) identify and implement (with appropriate governance) more effective social safeguards and sustainable development approaches within protected areas.
These workshops also identified an explicit demand from conservation partners and government for synthesis and sharing of knowledge on these issues especially effectiveness of compensatory interventions (disaggregated by gender, wealth etc), their impacts on drivers of biodiversity loss (e.g., migration).
A new 20-month project, funded by the Darwin initiative (UK) will aim to address these needs through training, evidence synthesis and ongoing specialist advice to government, NGO and community stakeholders. The new project is entitled MiRARI (Mitantana ara-dRARIny) in Malagasy which literally means “managing equitably”. MiRARI was launched last Friday 17 June in Antananarivo and aims to ensure that Madagascar’s PA network is equitably managed, avoids exacerbating extreme poverty, and enjoys better local support. You can see presentations from the launch here (in French), and watch a recording (in Malagasy) here.
The launch workshop of MIRARI was attended by 40+ participants and was honoured by an opening speech by the UK ambassador HEM David Ashley. Several conservation organisations such as Impact Madagascar, Madagascar National Parks and Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre as well as the Ministry of Environment have also officially expressed their willingness to collaborate with the project.
The ultimate (ambitious) aim of the project is to influence national and donor policies to result in more resilient conservation and restoration through more effective social safeguards, and improved rural livelihoods, and people’s rights to land.
Publication date: 17 June 2022