Tenure challenges to implementing forest landscape restoration in northwestern Madagascar

Abstract

Madagascar has established ambitious goals for restoring its degraded forests under the Bonn Challenge; tenure rights and tenure security are likely to affect landholders’ willingness to invest in forest landscape restoration practices. • In northwestern Madagascar (Boeny region), tenure challenges in three major local land categories (forests, savannas and seasonally flooded bottomlands) need to be considered; each category has particular tenure issues associated with it. • The main sources of tenure insecurity for forests are: (a) the undermining of local forest management groups and (b) tensions between the Forest Service and communes over allocation rights to forested lands. • In the savannas, reforestation is emerging as a way for migrants to claim land through the state, thereby bypassing traditional authorities. While tenure security is strengthened for migrants, there is a long-term risk of conflict as the area available for grazing lands and upland crops declines. • In the bottomlands, women in some communities are working to obtain primary rights to land; having those rights will provide a greater incentive to plant trees since secondary rights holders are typically prohibited from doing so. • Tenure varies across the different land types; these differences and their impacts on landholders’ willingness to invest in land conservation are important to understand for the implementation of forest landscape restoration.