The Forgotten Liferaft

Madagascar

By Dr Tom Corcoran

Oublished by ETHNOMAD

Madagascar is celebrated as a refuge for some of the rarest life on Earth. But what happens when protecting nature requires the people who live among it to remain poor?

Deep in the forests of northeastern Madagascar, I met a farmer who had recently discovered that he was poor.

He was sitting beside a small bamboo house with his two children when Henry Mani and I stopped to speak with him. We shared pieces of sugar cane while Henry asked about his family, his land, the forest and the animals he encountered there. “I know that I am poor,” the farmer told us.

A foreign researcher had visited the previous year. The researcher had asked him a series of questions and then explained that he was poor. Before that encounter, the farmer said, he had not known what poverty was. Now he thought about it often.

His words stayed with me. By almost every international measure, the researcher was correct. Madagascar remains one of the poorest countries in the world. In 2022, more than three-quarters of its population lived below the national poverty line, rising to almost 80 per cent in rural areas. Roads, schools, medical care and markets remain painfully inadequate, particularly in remote regions.

But the farmer was not making a statistical argument. He was describing something more unsettling: the moment an outsider’s category entered his understanding of himself.

This did not mean that his life was easy, nor that rural poverty should be romanticised. His family faced real material limits. A failed rice harvest, an illness or a cyclone could quickly become catastrophic. Yet before the researcher arrived, he had understood his circumstances through land, rice, kinship, work and the forest around him. Afterwards, he had been given a new identity: poor.

That encounter raised a question that has followed me throughout my work in remote communities. What happens when conservation and development arrive with the power not only to reorganise land, but also to tell people what their lives mean?

Madagascar’s baobabs rise like ancient sentinels over the western landscape. Celebrated as symbols of the island’s extraordinary natural heritage, they also stand within lived landscapes shaped for generations by cultivation, settlement and human memory.

The island we imagined

Over four decades of travel, I have regularly been asked to name my favourite country. The question is almost impossible to answer. Too many people and places have shaped my life. Yet my thoughts repeatedly return to Madagascar, an island as difficult and contradictory as it is beautiful.

For much of my childhood, Madagascar existed in my imagination through the photographs of National Geographic and the measured narration of David Attenborough. It appeared as a fragment of an ancient world drifting in the Indian Ocean: baobabs rising from dry earth, chameleons moving through the leaves and lemurs calling from forests found nowhere else on Earth.

The ecological story is extraordinary. Madagascar is the world’s fourth-largest island, covering nearly 587,000 square kilometres. Its long isolation produced exceptional levels of endemism. More than 80 per cent of its plant species and approximately 90 per cent of its reptiles are found nowhere else. It is home to more than 100 species of lemur, from tiny mouse lemurs to the indri, whose call carries through the eastern rainforest.

Yet this familiar image of Madagascar contains a serious omission. The island is usually presented as a sanctuary for nature rather than a human landscape. Its people appear at the edge of the picture, commonly as threats to biodiversity, recipients of development assistance or colourful representatives of traditional culture.

The human story is far older and more complicated than the standard account once suggested. Madagascar’s population carries connections across the Indian Ocean, particularly with East Africa and Island Southeast Asia. Archaeological evidence has also opened the possibility of human visits thousands of years earlier than the period associated with permanent settlement, although the evidence remains contested. Much of the island’s earliest human history is still unknown.

What is certain is that Malagasy societies created distinctive ways of living across dramatically different environments. Highland communities developed intensive rice terraces and powerful kingdoms. Coastal peoples built their lives through fishing, trading and seafaring. In the arid south, pastoralism and ancestral obligations shaped settlement and survival. Across the island, relationships between the living, the ancestors and the land developed through local histories that cannot be reduced to a list of ethnic groups.

French annexation in 1896 imposed another political and economic order. Colonial rule transformed land, labour, agriculture and authority until independence in 1960. It also reinforced an idea that has proved remarkably durable: that Madagascar’s landscapes could be classified, controlled and managed by institutions located far from the communities who depended upon them.

This photograph was taken after a long day traversing the hills, mapping the fields and forest. Near the village of Ambinantelo, the two farmers, father and son, stood at the edge of their communal lands, their gaze stretching over the landscape that has sustained the local populations for generations. They explain the intricate patterns of land use through the traditional practice of Tavy, a local method integral to their way of life yet one that presents a complex challenge to the environmental health of their region as populations and demand for economic wealth continue to drive change. Tavy, a form of slash-and-burn agriculture, involves clearing forested land by cutting and burning trees and underbrush. This method creates fertile, ash-enriched soil ideal for growing rice, Madagascar's staple crop. While Tavy has been practised for generations and provides essential sustenance for rural communities, it also contributes to widespread deforestation, posing a significant threat to Madagascar's unique biodiversity. The farmers' conversation, set against the backdrop of their land, reflects the delicate balance between traditional agricultural practices and the urgent need for sustainable solutions to preserve Madagascar's natural heritage. This image poignantly captures the struggle many Malagasy farmers face: maintaining agricultural productivity while confronting the environmental repercussions of age-old practices.

Drifting north

When I first stepped onto Madagascar’s red soil, the country was entering another period of upheaval. It was 2009. Andry Rajoelina was leading a movement against President Marc Ravalomanana, and the political struggle culminated in an unconstitutional transfer of power. Antananarivo was tense, its streets carrying the uncertainty of a capital waiting to see what would happen next.

The unrest cast an immediate shadow over the island I had imagined. Madagascar was not an untouched paradise. It was a nation living with political instability, weak infrastructure and deep inequality, while much of the outside world remained interested primarily in its wildlife.

From the capital, I travelled north to Maroantsetra, a seaport on Antongil Bay where the forested mountains descend towards the sea. The town is a gateway to some of Madagascar’s most important protected landscapes: Masoala National Park, Nosy Mangabe Special Reserve and the immense Makira Natural Park.

Makira covers more than 372,000 hectares of humid forest. Around it lies an even larger belt where local communities hold management responsibilities through formal natural-resource agreements. On paper, this arrangement recognises that conservation cannot be achieved by drawing a line around a forest and excluding everyone who lives nearby. In practice, the relationship between protection, authority and local survival remains far more difficult.

Life along the Antainambalana River revealed a Madagascar rarely encountered in wildlife documentaries. The river was not simply part of an ecosystem. It was a road, market route, food source and connection between villages. Moving inland meant travelling by canoe, walking difficult forest paths and negotiating roads that could become impassable. The beauty of the landscape did not lessen the physical effort required to live there.

In this region, I met Henry Mani, a schoolteacher from Ambodivoangy. Henry became my guide into a world that conservation reports could describe but never fully explain. He walked long distances to Maroantsetra for supplies and understood the daily calculations made by families living beyond reliable roads, health services and markets. His teaching gave him a modest but relatively stable income. It also allowed him to think about conservation beyond the demands of the next harvest.

Henry supported forest protection. But he did not confuse protection with prohibition, nor did he pretend that environmental commitment could substitute for food, education and opportunity. “Unless alternatives are introduced,” he told me, “the environmental conflict will continue.”

To understand that conflict, one must begin with rice. Rice is not merely a staple in Madagascar. It is central to subsistence, hospitality, labour and ideas of a proper meal. Madagascar is among the world’s highest consumers of rice per person, with estimates varying by year and method but commonly exceeding 100 kilograms annually.

Henry joked that every Malagasy person possessed a special rice pocket: however much food had already been eaten, there was always room for rice. The humour carried a deeper truth. Food security, household dignity and the cultivated landscape were bound together.

In many eastern forest communities, rice has long been cultivated through tavy, a form of shifting agriculture in which vegetation is cut and burned, releasing nutrients into the soil. Under conditions of low population density and sufficiently long fallow periods, such systems can form part of a wider cycle of cultivation and regeneration. But those conditions have changed. Population growth, shortened fallows, insecure land tenure, commercial extraction and rising demand for agricultural land have intensified pressure on remaining forests.

Henry often stated that there is no value in denying the environmental consequences. Madagascar continues to lose and fragment native forest through agricultural expansion, charcoal production, illegal logging, mining and fire. Wildlife habitat is shrinking, and many species face an increasingly precarious future. But blaming a farmer for clearing land is much easier than confronting the political and economic conditions that leave the farmer with few workable choices.

Projects around protected areas have attempted to develop alternative livelihoods through raffia products, wild silk, improved agriculture and other small enterprises. Some have helped. Others have struggled to survive once external funding ended or market conditions changed. When vanilla prices rose, for example, labour and attention shifted towards the crop that could provide families with meaningful income. A livelihood project may look convincing in a proposal, yet make little sense beside an activity that puts cash directly into a household.

This is where conservation can become a promise of sustainable poverty. People are asked to reduce their use of forests in the name of a global ecological inheritance, but the alternatives offered to them remain too small, too uncertain or too poorly connected to markets to change their lives.

The forest has global value. Its carbon, biodiversity and evolutionary history matter to humanity. Yet rural Malagasy families bear the cost of protecting it most directly. Conservation becomes unjust when those families are expected to absorb restrictions while distant institutions receive the funding, employment, scientific recognition and moral authority.

On the dusty village street of Amboadvoangy's, Henry Mani walks with optimism in his eyes, holding a wooden box adorned with the request "Please Kindly Donate." Crafted with care for his community gardens project, the box was specifically designed to collect contributions during a visit from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) team and a group of potential donors. Yet, as the day unfolded, not a single Malagasy Ariary found its way into Henry's hopeful creation. With a light-hearted chuckle and an easy smile, Henry shrugged off the moment. But I can't say I ever did; it was a real lesson in where the donors' priorities were focused. There was no goodwill, no attempt to connect with the community- just a message of who was in charge and how the future would unfold.

Who defines wealth?

The farmer’s statement in the forest exposed a deeper problem. Development measures deprivation through income, consumption, assets and access to services. These measures identify real inequalities and should not be dismissed. A community without reliable medical care is not made prosperous by describing it as culturally rich.

But economic measurements become dangerous when they are mistaken for complete descriptions of human life. In rural Madagascar, wealth may be understood through rice stored after harvest, productive land, zebu cattle, healthy children, reciprocal obligations and the ability to call upon relatives and neighbours. Knowledge of soils, seasons, currents, plants and animals also has value, even when it does not appear in a household survey.

The farmer’s life contained both wealth and deprivation. He possessed skills and relationships that the visiting researcher may not have recognised. He was also materially vulnerable and politically marginal. Both things were true. The problem was not that the researcher identified hardship. It was the apparent certainty with which an outsider’s category was delivered, leaving the farmer to see his own life differently. Knowledge had not simply been collected from him. A judgement had been returned.

That moment captured a pattern I had seen elsewhere. Researchers and development workers arrive with questionnaires designed around institutional priorities. People become data points within predetermined categories: poor, forest-dependent, vulnerable, food-insecure or resistant to change. The categories may be useful, but they also strip away history and agency. They tell institutions how to see people, and sometimes teach people how to see themselves.

Meanwhile, the knowledge flowing in the other direction is frequently undervalued. A farmer may understand variations in soil, fallow and rainfall that a short project cannot detect. A fisher may read currents and spawning seasons through generations of observation. An elder may hold the memory of land boundaries, famines, cyclones and past adaptations. Such knowledge is regularly documented, extracted and translated into professional reports. The institution gains evidence. The community rarely gains comparable authority.

In this photograph, a young girl in Ambodivoangy shows the careful braiding of her hair. She is a student of Henry Mani at the local primary school. Henry tells me that this girl’s formal schooling will soon end. Much of what she learns thereafter will come from her family, her community, the fields and the forest. Whether that knowledge can support her future will depend not only on conservation, but on who controls the land, who benefits from its resources and whether rural people are given a meaningful place in decisions about Madagascar’s future.

The forgotten life raft

Madagascar is often described as an ark, an island carrying plants and animals whose evolutionary histories disappeared elsewhere. That image is powerful, but incomplete.

The island is also a human life raft. It carries languages, memories, agricultural systems, seafaring knowledge and relationships with the land that developed across centuries of migration, adaptation and political change. This cultural inheritance receives a fraction of the attention granted to lemurs, baobabs and chameleons.

Culture, however, cannot be preserved by keeping people materially poor. Nor can forests survive indefinitely if young people see no future beyond extracting what they can from the land. Henry understood this clearly. His income as a teacher gave his family a degree of stability and allowed him to commit time to conservation. Yet he knew that speeches about biodiversity could not feed a household, treat a sick child or move a harvest along a broken road. Unless credible alternatives existed, the next generation would return to the forest and take whatever was necessary to survive.

The answer is not to abandon conservation. Madagascar’s forests are irreplaceable, and their continued destruction would be a loss to Malagasy communities as well as to the world. The answer is to reject a model in which local people carry the burden of protection while remaining at the margins of its rewards.

Conservation must begin with secure rights, functioning schools and health services, better transport, viable agriculture, access to markets and genuine local authority over decisions. It must treat rural people not as obstacles to nature, but as citizens whose futures are inseparable from the landscapes being protected.More than a decade after meeting him, I still think about the farmer who had been told he was poor. I wonder what changed after the researcher left, whether his children remained on the land and whether the forest beside his home still stands.

Madagascar deserves to be known for its astonishing wildlife. But it must also be understood through the people who cultivate its soil, navigate its rivers, remember its histories and negotiate the daily cost of protecting landscapes valued by the rest of the world. An ark that saves nature while abandoning its people is not a successful model of conservation.

The forgotten life raft will hold only if both can find a future upon it.

If this article resonated with you, continue with

When Conservation Hurts.

Editorial Sources

World Bank, Madagascar Poverty Assessment: Navigating Two Decades of High Poverty and Charting a Course for Change.
World Bank, Madagascar country data and population estimates.
IUCN, reporting on Madagascar’s endemic species and threatened lemurs.
Douglass et al. (2019), “A critical review of radiocarbon dates clarifies the human settlement of Madagascar,” Quaternary Science Reviews.
Wildlife Conservation Society, Makira Natural Park and its community-managed protection zone.
FAO and related studies on rice production and per-capita consumption in Madagascar.