A puzzle: the environment/development constellation in Madagascar

ABSTRACT

In this article, I take up the case of the build-up to Madagascar’s 2009 political crisis in order to provide a critical account of the politics of sustainable development from the ground up. Madagascar has been positioned by the international community as a HIPC, and by virtue of its geographical and ecological situation as a ‘biodiversity hotspot’. Against this backdrop, I focus on efforts by USAID, the World Bank, international investors, and local actors to facilitate land-titling reform as part of a range of measures to encourage the influx of FDI. Drawing out the ecological and the socio-political implications of these plans, which were all advanced in the spirit of ‘sustainable development’, I show that the 2009 coup d’etat was as an expression of the failures to integrate both. The case example of Madagasy experiences with ‘sustainable development’ affords us, I argue, with important lessons about the scope, premises, and political implications of dominant approaches to the ‘governance’ of the ‘development-environment constellation’.

KEYWORDS:

• Madagascar
• biodiversity
• sustainable development
• governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Indicative for these routine configurations is the topical context of the SDGs. See the discussion in Martinez and Mueller (2015).

2 I use SDD as a shorthand for the routinized usages of sustainability as a qualifier in policy thinking and making.

3 Current live interests range from precious metals through to petro-chemical exploration. See, on the latter, Walker (2012).

4 The 2003 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for Madagascar cites ‘extremely low agricultural productivity linked to limited use of modern inputs’ as a main contributor to persistent rural poverty (World Bank, 2004).

5 The 64% figure is cited in the CIA World Factbook, and the World Bank’s report on trends in urbanization.

6 The World Bank’s recent IDA Project Appraisal Document for an ‘Agriculture Rural Growth and Land Management Project’ in Madagascar lists, in that order, Institutional Sustainability, Financial and Economic Sustainability, Social Sustainability, and Environmental Sustainability. See World Bank (2016b).

7 See World Bank (2016a); Item 1. Available at: https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/988621468328212136/text/ICR3742-P074235-P074236-P113976-Box396273B-OUO-9.txt (accessed September 2017).

8 For a critical take on this premise, see McMichael (2008).

9 Critically about this, see Blaikie’s classic text (1985).

10 Cf. the critique of the approach in Shiva (1991).

11 In the US, these transformations are associated with the tenure of Earl Butz as Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture; for his views, see Butz (1975).

12 For a position supporting precisely this kind of thinking for environmental politics, see Pennington (2001).

13 See Blaikie (1985); see also Forsyth (2003); and, specifically for Madagascar, Kaufmann (2006).

14 Agencies involved include USAID, Germany’s GIZ (GTZ/KFW), AFD, the GEF, UNDP, and a range of ENGOs.

15 The bark of Prunus Africana, or ‘African Cherry’ is sought after for proven medicinal properties, and this has rendered the trees ‘endangered’. A detailed write-up of this and the ecological implications of incentives to forage is provided in Neimark (2010).

16 The WSC ins particular is an excellent example of the ‘transnationalization’ of ENGOs in the context of the ascendancy of environmental sustainability in the development industry. From its beginnings in the ‘parks and recreation’ landscape of late nineteenth century US conservationism, the WCS, as a non-profit organization is today holding total assets of over 1 billion dollars, and maintaining presences in over 60 countries worldwide. Its work in Madagascar is a showpiece in constructing public-private partnerships, mainstreaming voluntary emissions trading and facilitating the ‘zoning’ approach. See Holmes et al. (2008) in general, and for carbon offset marketing, pp. 32 ff. The WCS is also the exclusive member of a company created for the purpose of marketing carbon emission offsets on behalf of the government of Madagascar (Makira Carbon Company LLC).

17 See World Bank (2016a).

18 For a discussion of the ‘corridor approach’, see Ramiadantsoa (2015).

19 For a critical take on this, see Adams (2005).

20 Sodikoff (2009), provides an excellent account of the ‘integration’ of conservation work with the prepping of Protected Areas for eco-tourism in Madagascar’s ‘integrated conservation and development projects’ (ICDPs).

21 For a critical take, see Neimark (2012).

22 Read next to one another, Duffy (2006), and the WCS/USAID Report produced by Holmes et al. (2008), provide a vignette on what is at stake.

23 See Graeber (2007).

24 On this, see Byamugisha (2014).

25 Specifically a, see World Bank (2012).

26 See on the wider use of the approach, Abraham et al. (2014).

27 Graeber (2007).

28 One of the more delicious ironies of this case is that in the months just preceding the coup-d’etat, the World Bank proudly announced that Madagascar had made significant gains. See World Bank (2009).

29 See the in-depth analysis of this in Burnod et al. (2013).

30 Both, Daewoo and Varun sought large-scale deals, in typical fashion as long-term leases; Daewoo’s targeted volume was quoted at 1.2 million hectares, and Varun’s at 400.00.

31 Note that the other potential source of major FDI in Madagascar, the extractive industries, operate on notoriously long time-scales; from licensing through planning to mine-and-infrastructure construction, the average period of time for a mine to become productive lies somewhere between 5 and 10 years.

32 The ‘everywhere’ aspect was brought home by the scale of the deal: Between one 1/5 and 2/5 of all arable land for only the two deals was enough to prospectively affect a large number of people directly. That further, similar deals were envisaged, or rumoured to be in the pipeline, simply compounded the impression of an underhanded sell-out of rural livelihoods.

33 See Graeber (2007), Sodikoff (2009).

34 This is reported with reference to specific case studies in Burnod et al. (2013), especially, pp. 567, ff.

35 Graeber (2007).

36 Despite this compelling explanation for the depth and spread of support for the toppling of Ravalomanana, the community of foreign policy analysts stuck with a completely different script, which portrayed the coup instead as a ‘stand-off’ between two strong-men as in the case of (ICG, 2014); and Ploch and Cook (2012).

37 See OECD (2009).

38 On this, West et al. (2006).

39 H. Weber (2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Weber

Martin Weber’s main research clusters are in International Social and Political Theory, in International Environmental Politics, and in PE/IPE. His work has focused on contributions that Critical Theory can make to developments in normative International Political Theory, and to the ‘social turn’ in IR theory in general. His theoretical interests are complementary to the more empirically oriented other clusters, informs these, and are in turn informed by them. In Environmental Politics, and PE/IPE, his work has focussed on the political analysis of global governance.