Reflections from a Vezo Village, Southern Madagascar

The Vezo people of south western Madagascar lead a simple life. Standing on a beach in Anakao, it is perhaps easy to be seduced - by the turquoise ocean and bright sailing pirogues - into thinking that this is an idyllic lifestyle.

But make no mistake, life here is very hard and survival is fragile. Consider the three fundamentals of life: Food, Energy and Water…

The Vezo people rely almost entirely on the ocean for their food. As if trapped in time, fishermen rely exclusively on the wind and paddle-power to reach their fishing grounds. Early mornings the fishermen will set out on the light offshore breeze, and as the wind freshens from the South during the day they are able to run downwind for home with their catch. For now, healthy fish stocks have managed to sustain these traditional fishing methods. But things are changing… Political instability at a national level has led to a proliferation of zebu (cattle) thieving bandits in the interior of southern Madagascar, forcing more people to abandon their pastoral lifestyles and move to the coast, placing more pressure on finite fish stocks. These land-lubbers from the interior, not skilled in the art of traditional fishing methods honed over generations, are turning to more destructive fishing methods.

The south west of Madagascar is a very dry and barren place. The combination of this harsh climate and Madagascar’s isolation from the African continent over the last 160 million years, has led to species adapting in strange and wonderful ways. The result is a highly unique ecological region with high levels of endemism. Whilst interesting to ecologists and lovers of biodiversity, the nett outcome for the Vezo villager is a landscape with very slow replenishment rates of fuel wood. Energy is major challenge. Urban and coastward migration is placing ever increasing pressure on fuel wood in the close surrounds of towns and villages, threatening this unique ecosystem. The thriving charcoal trade that has risen in recent years compounds the problem. Wood, harvested from nearby nature reserves, is burnt into charcoal in rural kilns at unsustainable rates.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of all is access to Water. The only local source of water is the highly saline groundwater. The Vezo dig their wells deep into the sand, but reliance on this foul-tasting water leads to a number of health issues, including intestinal, teeth and skin problems, especially among children. Alternatively people have to walk up to 6 km to buy clean water at $0.30 for 20 Litres – a substantial cost for people who in financial terms are some of the poorest in the world.

Protecting these distinctive ecosystems and the fragile livelihoods of the Vezo people requires a different approach and a team that is willing to work beyond the traditional realms of conservation. Domoima Rakotomalala is WWF’s landscape leader in the Mahafaly region. She leads a team that crosses the traditional divides between the social and ecological domains, as if these divisions never existed.  Solar powered desalination plants harness the unlimited renewable energy of the sun in this region to deliver clean drinking water to community.

A solar and wind powered desalination plant erected with help of WWF

Social liaison officers support communities in monitoring their fish stocks and negotiate voluntary closed areas for long term protection of their vital marine resources. In the interior, WWF supports the controlled development of plantations of faster growing tees that can supplement and eventually replace the demand on indigenous tree species for charcoal. WWF also supports infrastructure and tourism development in the nearby Tsimanampesotse National Park. Home to thousands of flamingos, ‘blind fish’ living in massive limestone caves and underground tunnels, lemurs, endemic birds, and ancient baobab trees; the park has a diversity of attractions that have the potential to contribute substantially to the income and wellbeing of the region.

An ancient baobab tree in the Tsimanampesotse National Park

 

There is good reason to be very positive about the work being done here. We are making good incremental progress in building greater social and ecological resilience in the Mahafaly landscape. But as I sit in the scruffy airport in Toliara, I am still uneasy…. Over the past days we have heard talk of the development of a large coal mine in the area, accompanied by a large deep water port to facilitate its export, to be located very close to Anakao. These are, in the words of Nassim Taleb,  ‘Black Swans’ - those single large events that have a disproportionate effect on the course of history. Preparing for, and dealing with, ‘Black Swan’ events is very difficult. They are so large and when they happen, play out so suddenly, that they do not allow one to scale up to the required level to be able to respond effectively. I am left wondering how the Vezo villagers will be able to organise themselves to respond to a threat of this nature and the well-practiced public relations wiles of mining and large infrastructure companies.

With global markets becoming ever more aggressive in seeking out diminishing global resources, competing pressures on these landscape will increase dramatically. The answer lies in a solid rational land-use planning in which the consequences of different development choices are well understood by all, combined with powerful civil society groups that are able to mobilise and influence development decisions.

As is so often in the work of conservation, progress is good and the taste of success so sweet, but there is so much more to be done to meet the exponentially increasing challenges of the future…