Hundreds of Farmers become Charcoal Producers in South Madagascar due to Drought
14 June, 2010 via WWF website
Toliara – Field staff at WWF Toliara in Southwestern Madagascar have reported a substantial increase of charcoal production in the last couple of months in their zones of operation. Due to the missing rainy season, farmers abandoned their fields by the hundreds and try to make a living producing charcoal. The lack of regulations and control makes the charcoal business an easy one to work in.
This charcoal production boom could affect-the new protected area PK-32 Ranobe near Toliara and be a serious threat to its unique biodiversity. This protected area, which is co-managed by WWF and an inter-communal association, received temporary protection status in December 2008.
“Charcoal production in the South of Madagascar is particularly unsustainable as people cut the natural spiny forest, a unique ecosystem which exists nowhere else” says Bernardin Rasolonandrasana, Spiny Forest Eco-regional Leader for WWF in Toliara. “We are horrified to see the amount of charcoal currently coming out of those forests.”
WWF agents have investigated the amount of charcoal on the main road North of Toliara. They assessed how many people are currently trying to make a living by producing charcoal. Proportions look similar in most villages. The number of so called “charbonniers” has almost tripled since the beginning of the rainy season in December. Read more.
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This is devastating news, indeed. It the midst of all this, it would be a silver lining if WWF could produce more quantitative assessments of the situation. In addition to the unsustainable harvests that have been mentioned, it would be good to find out what proportion of the farmers have experience with making charcoal. I say this because, here in Mexico, we are about to compare kiln efficiencies of full-time experienced charcoalers versus those who produce charcoal as a lucrative activity when times are hard (as is the case now in Madagascar ). Making charcoal efficiently is difficult, and it requires experience and patience, virtues that are usually absent from a desperate people. Hence, for Madagascar the issue may by many times larger than a tripling of the number of charbonniers if we assume many of the farmers are inexperienced producers. Low efficiency kilns, short-term plans, and a lack of incentives to conserve are the likely mix here, and they spell more danger than we want to imagine.