AUTHORS: Mamitiana Andriamanjato, BNC-REDD+ Madagascar; Deny Christian Zafindramiadana, Zo Hasina Rabemananjara, Patrick Ranjatson, Harifidy Rakoto Ratsimba* – Department of Water and Forest, School of Agronomy
ABSTRACT: The challenge between continuous increases of demand on natural resources and the need of balancing the interests on ecosystem services to support rural livelihoods becomes today more and more critical in developing countries. In Madagascar, despite its worldwide known richness in biodiversity, policies and strategies have failed until now to develop a sustainable management of natural resources. Our study is focused on a socio-ecological analysis of the landscape in the North East of Madagascar based on institutional analysis integrating all stakeholders (resource users and decision-makers) to observe the behavior change (logical process of decision) based on landscape changes (land use and land use change perception). The observation from quantitative analysis has been added to a natural resources management role playing game to understand the weight of each actor in the arena. Thus, the process has shown that the interest of stakeholders is not only based on economic factor (especially for cash crop investment), but also, on social interaction of all stakeholders with a specific power management which is created inside the arena itself (land tenure issue). These findings have shown the complexity of driving changes inside the arena without having any driving vision based on the stakeholder’s perception themselves. In this way, to be more effective, the policy making process has to be more participative and based on the perception of local communities.