Arison’s is one of more than 70 villages on the periphery of Makira Natural Park in northeastern Madagascar, an expanse of rainforest larger than the U.S.’s Yosemite at 3,725 square kilometers (1,438 square miles), with the highest density of endangered primates anywhere on the planet. When Makira launched in 2005, it seemed to present a solution to one of the most intractable problems in conservation: finding a source of funding that could be counted on year after year. Makira’s sponsor, the New York-based NGO Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), pledged to protect the forest’s vast stores of carbon for a generation, using a model called REDD+, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (the “+” is for conservation and sustainable forest management). With support from another international NGO, Conservation International, WCS would fund the project by selling “carbon offset credits” on behalf of the Madagascar government to corporations and others looking to compensate for their outsize carbon footprints. Revenue would be collected by the government, which would retain 20 per cent to support its REDD+ programs. Thirty per cent would go to WCS for managing the park and offset program, and 50 per cent would go to local communities like Arison’s for forest protection and sustainable development projects meant to bolster their support and curtail deforestation. In this arrangement, any development and conservation benefits from Makira would flow from the main objective of avoiding 33 million tons of carbon emissions over 30 years. (..) WCS’s website touts 6,000 hectares (60 square kilometers, or 23 square miles) of “saved” forest, a figure based on the fact that deforestation rates have been cut in half compared to the period just before Makira began, from 2000 to 2004.
Rakoto dans NewsMada
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