This community-based reforestation project aims at implementing a plantation of 979 ha of forest species and fruit trees on degraded land that is unsuitable for agriculture in the following counties: Ankotrofotsy, Antsoha and Mangarivotra, within the rural community of Ankotrofotsy.
The project is a small scale CDM project under the Kyoto Protocol and adopts a community approach to reach local and regional development in partnership with devolved local authorities (CTD) and village associations.
With a few mango trees in the villages and along the fields as well as some eucalyptus crops, some plantations have been conducted on the initiative of a school, the villagers associations as well as some individuals. But the vast uncultivated areas on the hills within the project area are still treeless. The local needs for wood are covered by cutting wood in the savanna and in gallery forests.
The current lack of reforestation demonstrates that the inhabitants of the project area are not severely suffering from the crisis of wood supply yet. However, they have to collect the wood from farther away and they have to start cutting old mango trees in order to gain charcoal. As there is no economic incentive for the farmers to reforest, the forest density remains very low and may even decrease.
A unique institutional arrangement combining the traditional social institutions and the decentralized territorial administration promises an efficient basic insurance and a high public participation. The main result expected from the preparatory project is the establishment of 979 hectares of reforestation and the signing of contracts between the 3 local peasant associations with the support of external financing for permanent premium maintenance as well as for the protection of these plantations.
The purpose of these contracts is based on:
- The actual existence of 3 local associations comprising the social structure of clans and embracing all volunteer households, which will ensure a high level of social security and land tenure security.
- The physical demarcation and the mapping of reforestation areas, designated by responsible farmers, the validation of these maps as well as the rights and duties in connection with the implementation, the maintenance and protection of reforestation by local conventions and the registration of the areas of reforestation on behalf of the associations.
- The determination of species for reforestation, the establishment of nurseries in the vicinity of the lands to be reforested, planting, the maintenance and protection of the reforested lands by firewalls and effective surveillance mechanisms.
- The monitoring of implementation, the rate of survival and growth as a basis for the distribution of revenues between the beneficiaries and the integration of these data in growth models to estimate the potential of the production of emission reduction units, and the establishment of management plans supporting a sustainable exploitation while ensuring the maintenance of carbon stock.