HAY_TAO_-_PEA_REPORT.pdf

DISCLAIMER

The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.

MARINE BIODIVERSITY AND FISHERIES IN

MADAGASCAR

A BIODIVERSITY AND EXTRACTIVES POLITICAL ECONOMY

ASSESSMENT

September 2016 This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by Integra Government Services International.

DISCLAIMER

The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.

i

MARINE BIODIVERSITY AND

FISHERIES IN MADAGASCAR

A BIODIVERSITY AND EXTRACTIVES POLITICAL

ECONOMY ASSESSMENT

SEPTEMBER 2016

SEPTEMBER 2016 ii

CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS V

GLOSSARY VI

1.0

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

1.1

OVERVIEW 1

1.2

DISCUSSION 3

1.3

KEY FINDINGS 4

1.4

RECOMMENDATIONS 5

2.0

RESEARCH DESIGN 7

2.1

OVERVIEW 7

2.2

RESEARCH QUESTIONS 7

2.3

METHODOLOGY 9

2.4

TEAM COMPOSITION 10

2.5

FIELD SITES AND TIMING 10

3.0

COUNTRY BACKGROUND 12

3.1

POLITICAL INSTABILITY 12

3.2

CHANGING CLIMATE 12

3.3

FISHERIES DECLINE 13

3.4

FISHERIES RESTORATION EFFORTS 13

MARINE BIODIVESITY AND FISHERIES IN MADAGASCAR

iii

4.0

MARINE MANAGEMENT IN MADAGASCAR 14

4.1

MARINE MANAGEMENT REGIMES 14

4.2

LEGAL FRAMEWORK 14

4.3

LEGAL PLURALISM 15

4.4

COMMUNITY MANAGED MARINE AREAS 16

4.5

DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR COMMONS 16

5.0

FINDINGS: ANSWERING THE PEA QUESTIONS 17

6.0

PROGRAMMING WITH PEA FINDINGS 23

6.1

APPLYING FINDINGS 23

6.2

SUMMARY OF KEY FACTORS THAT ARE DRIVING THE

ACTION/ACTORS UNDER STUDY: 24

7.0

THEORY OF CHANGE 25

8.0

KEY PROGRAMMING RECOMMENDATIONS 27

9.0

KEY ACTORS 31

10.0

MONITORING AND EVALUATION 31

11.0

LIMITATIONS 34

11.1

PROGRAMMING CONSTRAINTS: LIMITATIONS IN

PROGRAMMING THAT MUST BE CAREFULLY WEIGHED: 34

11.2

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS 35

12.0

ANNEXES 36

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ANNEX A: SUMMARY TEMPLATE OF FIELD-BASED NOTES 36

ANNEX B: REFERENCES 37

v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

APGL Aire de Pêche Gérée Localement

AMPA Agence Malgache de la Pêche et de l’Aquaculture

COAP Code des Aires Protégées

CIRPRH Circonscription de la Pêche et des Ressources Halieutiques

CITES Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species

CRGIZC Comité Régional de Gestion Intégrée des Zones Côtières

CPR Common Pool Resources

CSP Centre de Surveillance des Pêches

DREF Direction Régionale des Eaux et Fôrets

DRRHP Direction Régionale des Ressources Halieutiques et la Pêche

EU European Union

FAMARI CSO platform in Madagascar working on combatting wildlife trafficking

FIMIMANO Fikambanana Miaro sy Mamprandoso an’i Nosy Ve Association

GAPCM Groupement des Aquaculteurs et Pêcheurs de Crevette de Madagascar

GELOSE Gestion Locale Sécurisée (Management Transfer Arrangements)

IHSM Institut Halieutique et des Sciences Marines

IUCN International Union for the Conservation of Nature

IOT Indian Ocean Trepang

LMMA Locally Managed Marine Area

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MIHARI Madagascar Locally Managed Marine Area Network

MNP Madagascar National Parks

MRHP Ministère des Ressources Halieutiques et la Pêche

PACP Projet d’Appui aux Communautés des

PCDDBA Plateforme de Concertation pour le Développement Durable de la Baie d’Antongil

PIC World Bank’s Project for Information Coordination

SAGE Société d’Appui de la Gestion de l’Environnement

SPSM Société de Pêche de Sainte Marie

SWIOFISH2 Southwest Indian Ocean Fisheries Governance and Shared Growth Project II

WCS Wildlife Conservation Society

WWF World Wildlife Fund

GLOSSARY

Dina Customary law subject to government approval and enforcement

Fokontany Smallest administrative unit; village

Fokolonana Strong cultural norms

Fokonolona Traditional council of elder

SMARTFISH European Union-supported marine resource management project

1.0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.1 OVERVIEW

Supporting conservation efforts of Madagascar’s biodiversity is a high priority for USAID.

Madagascar went through significant political and economic turmoil in recent decades, which resulted in a sudden stop of funding for development assistance from the United States and many other donors in 2009. As stability has returned, USAID has worked closely with the government of Madagascar, donor partners, and conservation groups, to identify areas where assistance is most needed from USAID. The protection of marine biodiversity has been identified both as an environmental priority, and equally as a food security priority. This island nation is threatened by overfishing and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Accordingly, this report is based on a rapid field-level political economy assessment (PEA) conducted to support programmatic design in relation to USAID’s biodiversity funding. It outlines findings and an analysis of effective approaches in support of areas where USAID can provide the most value.

In 2014 at the IUCN World Parks Congress, Madagascar’s newly elected president pledged to triple Marine Protected Areas in the country, with explicit inclusion of a community-based management model for marine areas. Since 2004, important marine areas were already operating under these Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs), and some of these were already associated with Marine Protected Areas though they were operating in relative isolation.

In 2012, Madagascar’s first national forum of LMMAs came together to form a network called MIHARI. The government welcomed this network given its limited financial resources to oversee large-scale marine conservation. Capitalizing on the Government’s momentum on marine conservation, the USAID/Madagascar Mission began exploring ways to support the marine sector, a new programming area.

USAID/Madagascar’s Program Office (PO) and Environment and Climate Change Office (ECCO) took the lead in identifying opportunities for USAID address needs in marine conservation. A multidisciplinary research team was deployed to two distinct geographical locations to collect information. Marine biodiversity in both locations is threatened despite the existence of Marine Protected Areas. In both areas the concept of dina, or customary law, used by communities to govern resources at the local level was highlighted as an important feature upon which to build stronger local resource management regimes.

1.1.1 OVERVIEW OF NORTHEAST MADAGASCAR

In Antongil Bay, in Northeast Madagascar, a Marine Protected Area project managed by Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has involved LMMAs in marine biodiversity conservation efforts since 2008. This area was the site of one of Madagascar’s first Marine Protected Areas, formed in 1997 to protect the rich numbers of crustaceans, finfish, sharks, humpback whales as well as extensive coral reefs stretching up to 100 kilometers in length. In addition, it is the first region in the country to have a marine resources management plan. The vast majority of local fishers fish for subsistence, but some of the catch reaches local markets. While fishing is an important source of protein in the local diet, it is far from sufficient. Malnutrition is widespread. By all

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accounts the fishery has collapsed, with multiple informants reporting far lower yields in recent years, when compared to historic levels. The involvement of LMMAs is more recent and coincides with increased Government conservation legislation in the area, including the creation of new marine reserves, parks and sanctuaries within the bay and its environs. In 2015, the Government established the bay as a shark sanctuary, defining exclusive local fishing rights and barring entry of international vessels to the bay. Enforcement of traditional zones against Malagasy commercial operators remains problematic. Although there has been progress delimiting boundaries and establishing local jurisdictions there is as yet no agreement on limits to access for commercial prawn fishers. Consequently, local fishers are in frequent conflict with commercial shrimp trawlers. Antongil Bay’s management plan and steering committee however could provide a mechanism for addressing those disputes and proposing the conditions required for improved management.

1.1.2 OVERVIEW OF SOUTHWEST MADAGASCAR

Southwest Madagascar is a much larger geographical area than the Northeast research site and is not isolated. It is also the most important commercial fishing area in the country despite dwindling fish stocks. The Southwest a longer history of LMMAs, with numerous donor interventions that have tried to address depleted fisheries, high levels of poverty, malnutrition, pressures from drought-affected inland populations, and wildlife trafficking. Many local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working with coastal communities in the Southwest under an array of different types of management regimes allowing the research teams to see how community resource governance and management effectiveness overlay with different levels of government commitment. In the Southwest, management regimes include:

formal Marine Protected Areas, co-management arrangements (called Management Transfers), and community-managed reserves. Although all three involve communities, the first two options provide some government oversight and establish permanent or temporary reserves managed by communities with formalized plans with the involvement of NGOs including international organizations like WWF and WCS, and Reef Doctor, a national network known by the acronym SAGE, and a local organization known as Honko which means mangrove in Malagasy. There is also a regional civil society network on combatting wildlife trafficking. The network is part of a national civil society platform.

The NGOs in the Southwest coordinate their work informally through regular meetings with the Regional Directorate of Fisheries. These NGOs are primarily supported by private international foundations, European donors, and other international assistance agencies. They work closely with the Regional Directorate of Fisheries through support from the EU and the World Bank’s PIC II Project (Pôle-Integré Coordination or PIC). The Regional Directorate of Fisheries told the team that they are in the process of coordinating research findings and information from all the different projects of NGOS through PIC II to be housed at the Regional Directorate of Fisheries in Tuléar. This coordination is particularly important as a means of providing better information locally about the regional variation of livelihood opportunities and fisheries pressures. The Directorate acknowledges that because it is under-resourced, it works closely with and relies heavily on the work of NGOs and Institute of Fisheries and Marine Sciences (Institut Halieutique et des Sciences Marines—IHSM) to monitor changes in fisheries.

1.2 DISCUSSION

IHSM is one of the nation’s premier research institutes; it has been working for over two decades on developing and scaling up alternative livelihood options for coastal communities. In addition to improving harvests of shrimp, crab, and octopus through annual closures of temporary reserves, the IHSM has encouraged private sector/parastatal investment in two common near-shore products with high export value, seaweed and sea cucumbers. These can be harvested for sale by fishers. The investment costs, which might otherwise be prohibitive, are typically covered by the NGOs or the company. Copefrito, the largest marine product company in the Southwest has been active in the area for 20 years. It sources 70 to 75 percent of its marine products from the Southwest. Copefrito and Murex both work in the area and have storehouses or resident agents in some villages. Both companies work closely with NGOs and LMMA associations.

The seaweed, which fetches a modest supplementary income, is fared mostly by women, harvested every 45 days and sold to company agents. Sea cucumber (trepang in French) farming requires a larger up-front investment in materials to construct netted pens to hold in the tiny juveniles. They also have to purchase the juveniles, which are bred by the Indian Ocean Trepang (IOT) company based in Tuléar. These juveniles are placed in pens in the near-shore waters for 9 months, until they are mature. A pen will hold thousands of sea cucumbers. The farmers can sell sea cucumbers for export at US$2.50 a piece, contrasted with daily incomes from fishing, which averages around US$1.50. Unfortunately, not all communities are suitably located for these livelihood options. Currents and nutrient flows in the water dictate the quality of the seaweed, and the relative protection of the sea cucumbers. However, the largest challenge for sea cucumbers is guarding against theft. Communities that produce sea cucumbers have reported that the entire stock had been stolen by armed bandits. Crime has caused many smaller companies that had been working with IOT to pull out of these vulnerable communities.

As a result, active sea cucumber farming was not apparent in any of the communities the research teams visited. Asian demand for sea cucumbers is high and many communities in the Southwest reported being offered substantial sums to assist Asian vessels to hunt for wild sea cucumber which is illegal, unreported, and unregulated. Other illicit products such as turtle shells are also sought by these unspecified Asian vessels. Seaweed has a low-value but an almost limitless demand exists for industrial uses as carrageenan.

None of these options exist in the Northeast. Temporary marine reserve closures, however, have improved size and number of octopus found in both the Northeast and Southwest. The closures are enforced nationwide at least once a year and often twice a year by LMMAs. These earlier restoration efforts played an important role in convincing fishers to join together to manage the fisheries with dina, or customary law, through LMMAs. The Northeast’s 25 LMMAs are part of the nationwide network of LMMAs called MIHARI and play an important role in the network. The network is supporting fisher communities committed to protection of their marine resources. Community associations have vastly different levels of organizational capacity, something that MIHARI is trying to address. The effective use of dina to establish and enforce local management varied across communities as well. Closer study of the communities around Antongil Bay revealed important insights into the nature of dina. For example, if dina is imposed upon a community, it is not likely to be enforceable. Dina emerges from the horizontal accountability of customary institutions and from community recognition of a need for regulation.

Yet, dina is not always enforceable on outsiders and the majority of conflicts over resources that occur in both North and South are related to outsiders with commercial vessels. The power

SEPTEMBER 2016 4

imbalances make conflicts difficult to resolve. In the South, fishers reported boats with armed gangs on board could fish with impunity and LMMAs had little recourse. Criminality in the Southwest puts livelihoods at risk. Likewise, in the Northeast, commercial vessels destroy fishing equipment routinely with impunity threatening livelihoods. The inability to resolve these asymmetrical conflicts has implications for food security and nutritional health as well as livelihoods.

1.3 KEY FINDINGS

This PEA provided important first-hand qualitative evidence about the state of fisheries resources and insights into effective management regimes, including the use of dina. The PEA also offers a better understanding of research needs for exploring how to strengthen and measure the effectiveness of local marine management in Madagascar. The team found widespread recognition by government institutions and conservation organizations that fisher communities themselves have a critical role to play in marine management. Further, the emergence of MIHARI created huge potential for fundamentally reorienting and strengthening the marine sector in Madagascar.

Our analysis found that any programming in the marine sector must not only consider how to strengthen the LMMA network, but must also seek to address the external systems within which the LMMAs operate. Because many other donors and partners are working to strengthen these broader systems, however, USAID should strategically focus on developing ways to monitor and support the internal dynamics and principles that make LMMAs effective. An important dimension of these internal dynamics for USAID to develop through programming is how dina can be used to support LMMAs.

Our field research also highlighted the importance of food security and nutrition, mainly through small-scale fisheries, in coastal areas with few if any livelihood alternatives In Madagascar over 50% of children under five years of age are suffering from malnutrition, and over 65% of the population is affected by persistent food insecurity.1 The decline of Madagascar’s fisheries resources, as evidenced by the leveling off of total catches, declining commercial landings and declining small-scale fisheries catch rates is an important factor in food insecurity.

The Northeast team met with researchers studying micronutrient deficiencies in Antongil Bay.

Recent analyses by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of British Columbia-based organization Sea Around Us find that “deficiencies in the micronutrients fish provide including vitamin B12, iron, and zinc, can affect maternal mortality, child mortality, cognitive defects, and immune function. Some 45 percent of mortality in children under five years old is attributable to undernutrition.”2 In Antongil Bay, studies indicate a 30 percent

1 Frédéric Le Manach, Charlotte Gough, Alasdair Harris, Frances Humber, Sarah Harper & Dirk Zeller (2012) Unreported fishing, hungry people and political turmoil: the recipe for a food security crisis in Madagascar? Marine Policy Volume 36, Issue 1, Pages 218–225 2 Powell, A. “Fishing Gaps Called Malnutrition Threat: After peak in global catch, analysis points to health as a growing concern,” Harvard Gazette: Science &Health: Environment & Sustainability, 15 June 2016.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/06/fewer-fish-give-rise-to-nutrition-worries/ [Accessed: 2 July 2016] stunting rate among children also correlated with this undernutrition. Researchers who have worked in Madagascar conclude that better management of fisheries through control of unsustainable fishing practices and commercial fishing fleets could be beneficial not only for the marine environment but also for food security and nutrition.

Although USAID may not, in the near term, be able to directly address the degree to which fisheries decline is affecting food security at the national level, by strengthening the protection and management capacity of sustainable small-scale fisheries, it can help to address the triple threat to marine biodiversity, food security and nutrition problems locally. Essential to addressing food security is enhancing protection of local reserves from commercial fishers, establishing clear guidelines for commercial fishers entering coastal waters, and providing increased monitoring and enforcement of these and all fishing activities within the coastal management zones wherever feasible. Building mechanisms within Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) to manage resources within communities is important for resolving internal conflicts. Resolving disputes among competing stakeholders, however, (e.g., between commercial and local fishers in the Southwest and between commercial, artisanal and traditional fishers3 in Antongil Bay) particularly where power asymmetry is present will require building the resources and the political clout of regional fisheries directorates to intervene.

Further analytical work is needed to determine how to build on existing working relationships between regional fisheries directorates, the private sector, marine science institutes conducting research, and conservation groups engaged in field level implementation. Programming may include addressing the need for legally binding boundaries protecting the coastal fisheries of Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) and strengthening the ability of LMMAs to enforce community level management rules on outsiders, as well as supporting conflict resolution mechanisms. USAID’s should consider building conflict resolution mechanisms and work with donor partners and government to strengthen enforcement of zoning to minimize future conflicts and build enforcement capacity to regulate foreign and domestic fleets that threaten food security.

Criminality from outside a community might also be addressed by uniting private sector actors in the aquaculture sector, with the Tuléar based Institute for Marine Sciences and the Directorate of Fisheries, to consider how to improve security around high value aquaculture products.

Copefrito and Murex are both eager to collaborate with communities through NGOs and with MIHARI. These companies recognize the importance of the local level management and of the power of locally defined dinas. Donors, MIHARI, and NGOS working with LMMAs may be able to play a supportive role in addressing criminality.

1.4 RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Support Uptake of Research – Recognizing that there are a number of donors engaged in research coordination, USAID should focus on supporting MIHARI and others to integrate research finding into better LMMA management

3 Artisanal fishers are defined as having boats (either dugout or fiberglass) with motors of 25-horse power or above. This classification exists in the Northeast with a total of 8 licenses but only 4 or 5 active boats and only 2 fiberglass boats. We did not find any “artisanal” fishers in the Southwest, only traditional fishers with dugouts and sails.

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2. Build LMMA Effectiveness through MIHARI – Improving marine management will require strengthening not only the existing internal functioning of LMMAs, but also the institutions that support them. USAID should support the coordination efforts of MIHARI, strengthen MIHARI’s ability to provide technical training and analysis, and identify incentives mobilizing LMMA effectiveness.

3. Strengthen Community Based Management Efforts – USAID should focus efforts on local learning and evidence based conservation approaches associated with dina. This would enable the program to coordinate closely with the government, donors and partners to identify gaps and focus on ways that dina can be supported and strengthened.

4. Explore Alternative Livelihoods –Viable alternatives are needed to deal with declining fisheries and food insecurity as well as poverty and climate change. Developing scalable alternatives is so important that any new biodiversity project should consider incorporating partners with this expertise.

5. Increase Market Transparency – Engagement with private sector, NGOs, and key stakeholders would work to improve transparency around aquaculture and fisheries livelihood activities.

6. Build Conflict Resolution – Bolster existing structures that effectively and credibly resolve conflicts at the local and regional levels, where they exist. Building capacity for effectively and credibly resolving conflict beyond local level disputes means building enforcement capacity of regional fisheries directorates with increased resources, access to information, and the political clout to pursue offenders.

7. Explore New Forms of Commercial Licensing – Support improved transparency in fishing vessel licensing so that information is accessible at the district level. USAID, working with other donors, may consider new approaches for commercial licenses to plan more strategically around food security and long-term support of policies that allow fishers some form of exclusive rights to pelagic waters. This work would be coordinated through LMMAs and in partnership with the Ministry of Fisheries, district and local government and MIHARI to shift away from the reef and toward west coast pelagic waters (Pêche au large) in the Southwest while focusing on clear enforceable boundaries for LMMAs in the Northeast.

8. Increase Monitoring and Enforcement of IUU fishing – USAID may need further study and collaboration with government and partners of how to best address this issue, but it is the key to ensuring sustainable marine biodiversity resources as well as food security with long-term impacts on human and ecosystem health.

2.0 RESEARCH DESIGN

2.1 OVERVIEW

Madagascar is a high-priority country for marine conservation. The severity of threats facing its resources, including weak governance, corruption, illegal and unregulated extraction, climate change, and poverty, create the need to think beyond traditional conservation approaches. With Madagascar’s commitment to tripling marine protected areas in the country, explicitly including locally managed marine areas, USAID/Madagascar wanted to investigate in greater detail how to best support marine biodiversity conservation and local fishing communities by undertaking a political economy analysis of the sector. The Mission selected two very different marine conservation environments with contrasting local management regimes to examine: the Northeast around Antongil Bay and the Southwest around Tuléar. Both teams met with national level actors and/or donors before moving to the field.

Because the marine sector is a new programming area for USAID/Madagascar, a Political Economy Assessment (PEA) was viewed as a useful way to gather important detailed information that could lead to more informed programming around key constraints to marine biodiversity conservation, key openings for effective engagement with government, and a greater understanding of how the high level issues play out for local fisher communities in different parts of coastal Madagascar.

2.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The research was designed to gain detailed information about the political-economic context for marine management options to identify openings for programming biodiversity support. The emergence of locally managed marine areas (LMMAs) in Madagascar in recent years and the network of LMMAs called MIHARI has huge potential for fundamentally reorienting and strengthening the marine sector in Madagascar. However, in order to build more effective programming, more information was needed to contextualize the natural resources governance environment within which the LMMAs operate, and on how well communities are currently able to manage their LMMAs.

• What are the incentives and disincentives and external drivers surrounding community-managed marine resources generally and specifically LMMA associations?

• Why are some LMMAs functioning well while others are not?

2.2.1 SUBQUESTIONS

In order to get a deeper understanding of how these dynamics and principles are working in existing community managed reserves, we applied a modified set of Dr. Elinor Ostrom’s (1990:90) eight common pool resource (CPR) design principles. We used these as sub-questions for the PEA:

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1. Are the boundaries of the resource clearly defined? How is membership in the group defined? What rights do members have? What responsibilities do members have?

For an LMMA to function the boundaries need to be clearly defined. This allows for individuals to know who has a right to participate and where and what are the physical limits to the resource to be governed.

2. How are limits set on fishing (time, place, fishing modality, quantity, etc.…)?

Communities must set the limits on how the resource is extracted (what nets and techniques are allowed) and where and when extraction is allowed. When possible, the quantity of extraction might also be limited. Establishing rules on the time and place that fishing is allowed, how fish are caught, and quantity of fish taken are all rules that allow the resource to be managed in a way that can protect fish stocks, creating a means to match extraction to local needs and conditions of the resource.

3. How are rules made? How are rules changed? How often are they changed? Who can change them?

Procedures for rules matter but so does the enfranchisement of those using the resources to make the rules that govern it. Are most of those fishing in the community members? Can members of the LMMA take part in making, changing, or amending the rules that govern the LMMA? This matters because participation and inclusion are key pieces to giving legitimacy to the rules and are likely to lead to their success.

4. Who monitors compliance with the rules? Are monitors primarily accountable to the LMMA?

Since the rules are developed by the LMMA it is important to have a subset of members taking part in monitoring compliance and that these monitors are accountable to the LMMA and its members.

5. What happens when members break the rules? Are sanctions graduated based on the severity of the offense?

Penalties for rule breaking need to be severe enough for deterrence, but should also be graduated depending on degree of the offense. Since LMMAs are also nested within the boundaries of fisheries management plans, as well as fokontany and local communal boundaries, these levels of government and personnel can be called on as well to help enforce and provide sanctions depending on the severity of the offense.

6. How are conflicts resolved?

Having a means to manage and decide disputes is important. A means to handle disputes needs to exist internally to the LMMA as well as external to it such as a means to resolve conflicts with commercial fishers and allow for the redress of the destruction of equipment.

7. Are the rights of the LMMA to set their own rules respected by government officials and outsiders or are they challenged?

Throughout the world we frequently see common property rights undermined by local, regional and national officials. Common property regimes are frequently been seen as a challenge to central government, or simply viewed as backwards. At the same time, governments frequently do not have the capacity to establish the rules governing appropriation and means of harvesting, as well as to monitor the resource, enforce laws, and resolve conflict. LMMAs are much more likely to function well if they are understood, respected, legitimated, and supported by government officials.

8. Are other forms of government nested above the LMMA providing support in terms of provisioning, monitoring, enforcement, and conflict resolution?

LMMAs do not exist in a vacuum, but are a form of micro-governance4 to ensure horizontal accountability5 amongst the members. It is vital that other layers of government support the functioning of the LMMA and provide a means to ensure its legitimacy as well as resolve disputes particularly with outside entities.

2.3 METHODOLOGY

The methods used for the research are detailed in the USAID Framework for Applied Political Economy Analysis.6 The team scoped and honed the PEA research question prior to the start of field research activities. To prepare for the field research, the international PEA team members reviewed background documents and then worked in-country with the two USAID/Madagascar team members and two Malagasy research assistants to develop questions that could be used in key informant interviews to collect qualitative data using unstructured and semi-structured interviews with small groups and individuals with expertise on the topics. Because research was carried out in two different part of the country, the team was divided into two sub-teams.

Coding frameworks were employed to facilitate information exchange and synthesis of findings across groups. Sub-teams used a simple coding framework after every interview to categorize key findings that fall into one of four categories: Foundational Factors, Rules of the Game, Here and Now, and Dynamics. This helped with the daily synthesis of the findings.

4 Microgovernance refers to the creation of institutions in a community that can enable collective action to address problems being faced. The concept views governance as substantially different from government in the sense that it is outside the formal government institutions but can be applied in this case to govern resources more effectively than, or in the absence of, government.

5 Horizontal accountability refers to the ways in which members of an association can be held accountable to each other and hence follow rules that they set as a group. This is particularly important in locally managed resource management and proves to be more effective than vertical accountability, when rules are imposed and sanctioned from above, by those in authority.

6 Brown, A. “What is This Thing Called ‘Theory of Change’?,” USAID’s Learning Lab, 18 March 2016.

https://usaidlearninglab.org/library/applied-political-economy-analysis-field-guide [Accessed: 24 August 2016]

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The Southwest team also used field-notes. Information from field notes was entered daily into a summary template of field-based notes that identified the stakeholder and bullet-pointed findings from each interview for easy reference (attached in annex).

2.4 TEAM COMPOSITION

One of the team members was a trainer for USAID’s PEA Framework and four additional team members were trained on the Framework. Two of the team members are Foreign Service Nationals with USAID/Madagascar based in Antananarivo; they will build local USAID PEA capacity. The sub-teams were evenly divided in terms of multidisciplinary backgrounds and PEA experience.

Although the team initially intended to include representatives from the Fisheries and Environment Ministries of the Government of Madagascar, this was not possible to achieve due to the fact that the fieldwork coincided with a period of government restructuring.7

2.5 FIELD SITES AND TIMING

The fieldwork occurred from May 9 to 20, 2016. Two sites with very different characteristics were identified by the mission to enable a study of the range of coastal management options in operation at the present time in Madagascar. Before heading out to the field sites, teams met with donors, private sector, and NGOs in Antananarivo.

The Southwest team confronted an array of different management regimes in that region where a variety of local and international conservation partners are actively engaged with communities. The Southwest team met with these communities and with conservation partners. The Southwest team learned about the degree to which these partners coordinate efforts and share information among one another and with donors and local government. They noted an abundance of potential resources for strengthening marine conservation efforts, such as the Tuléar-based Fish and Marine Sciences Institute (IHSM) and as many as five private sector actors involved in aquaculture. They also identified some key stakeholders such as the civil society platform on combatting wildlife trafficking, FAMARI, and the national coordinator for the network of locally managed marine areas (LMMAs) mentioned above, MIHARI, both champions of biodiversity conservation. At the community level, the team noted constraints such as drought and climate change as well as high levels of criminality, a lack of access to information and markets, and resource depletion among the key factors affecting the lives of fishing communities.

The Northeast team had the opportunity to focus more intensively on the management structures of the LMMAs supporting fisheries management in Antongil Bay. The team interviewed stakeholders around sites where Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been working with the Government and local communities to protect important terrestrial and marine biodiversity under a set of protected areas, parks and reserves. Antongil Bay, in northeastern

7 The change of government resulted in a shift of the Ocean portfolio from the Environment Ministry to a Secretariat d’Etat in charge of the Ocean under the Ministry of Aquatic Resources and Fishing.

Madagascar is a biologically significant marine biodiversity area and forms a key part of a larger landscape/seascape that includes threatened moist tropical lowland rainforests in Masoala National Park and critically endangered coastal forests in Makira Protected Area possessing some of the country’s most important terrestrial biodiversity. WCS manages the Masoala National Park, declared in 1989 to protect 1,583 square miles of critical coastal watershed for the Antongil Bay.8 Since 2008 WCS has supported marine conservation efforts in 24 of Antongil Bay’s 104 communities. In 2010, the entire bay and its outer reaches were put under temporary full protection by an interministerial decree (no.52005/2010) and since that time Antongil Bay’s management plan explicitly works with 25 LMMAs around the bay and includes marine protected areas or no-take zones as well as exclusive community fishing use and management rights. The 1,438 square mile Makira Park, was declared in May 2015 by the Government of Madagascar for its astounding levels of biodiversity and lemur populations.9 Together the Bay and the two terrestrial parks are now referred to as MaMaBay.10 In 2015, the Government of Madagascar established the country’s first marine sanctuary for sharks in Antongil Bay as part of an effort to safeguard marine resources and the communities who rely on them. The new law also restricts international fishing boats from entering Antongil Bay, a 1,446 square mile body of water.11 In the absence of agreement on limits to access for commercial prawn fishers, local fishers are in frequent conflict with commercial trawlers. Despite existing legal guidelines, enforcement is weak and current power asymmetries between traditional and commercial fishers in Antongil Bay do not favor local community managers.

The Northeast team traveled to Maroantsetra by air. The area is only reachable by air or sea as the only road, Route 5, is little more than a forest track and is frequently impassable. The communities are largely isolated, with little access to markets. The team learned about the conflicts over depleted resources among commercial shrimp trawlers, artisanal fishers and local fishers; they identified constraints on livelihood alternatives to fishing, and they evaluated some of the key principles behind what enables local marine management associations to function well.

8 Rübel, A. Hatchwell, M., MacKinnon, J., and P. Ketterer (2003) Masoala: Eye of the Forest: A New Strategy for Rainforest Conservation in Madagascar, Zoo Zurich.

http://www.nhbs.com/title/131845/masoala-the-eye-of-the-forest?bkfno=143243 [accessed 13 September 2016] 9 Wildlife Conservation Society, News Release, ”Government of Madagascar Inaugurates Makira Natural Park,” WCS, 29 May 2015 https://newsroom.wcs.org/News- Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/6770/Government-of-Madagascar-Inaugurates-Makira-Natural- Park.aspx [accessed September 13, 2016] 10 Wildlife Conservation Society, News Release, “MaMaBay environmental campus will help implement conservation programs in the epicenter of Madagascar’s biodiversity,” WCS, 11 December 2013.

https://newsroom.wcs.org/News-Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/5256/Madagascars-Masoala- National-Park-Interpretive-Center-Inaugurated.aspx [Accessed September 13, 2016] 11 Wildlife Conservation Society News Release “Government of Madagascar Creates Country’s First Shark Sanctuary,” WCS, 4 February 2015. See https://press.wcs.org/News- Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/6563/Government-of-Madagascar-Creates-Countrys-First- Shark-Sanctuary.aspx [accessed 13 September 2016]

SEPTEMBER 2016 12

3.0 COUNTRY BACKGROUND

This section lays out foundational factors for understanding the institutions and dynamics shaping marine policy in Madagascar.

With an area of less than half a percent of the earth’s landmass, Madagascar is known as a mega-diversity country, with high levels of terrestrial and marine endemism. Madagascar’s biodiversity has come under intense threat due to overexploitation, illicit trafficking, and rent-seeking behavior of the elite political class, particularly with regard to natural resource exploitation. Recent analyses point to a systemic lack of political accountability as a driver of these behaviors.

3.1 POLITICAL INSTABILITY

Madagascar has struggled with chronic levels of political instability and dysfunction since the 1960s. The recent five-year long political crisis (2009-2013) has had devastating economic, social, and humanitarian impacts on a country that is already one of the poorest in the world.

Despite its abundance of natural resource wealth, some 92% of households live in poverty, the highest rate in Africa (World Bank, 2011). The election of President Hery Rajaonarimampianina in 2014 has afforded some political and economic stability, but the economy remains fragile and is highly dependent on official aid.

3.2 CHANGING CLIMATE

Since 2013, one of the most prolonged and deepening droughts ever observed has gripped southern Madagascar, where over one million people cannot get enough food to eat. Due in part to an exceptionally strong El Niño event, the coming year is expected to be the driest in 35 years. International relief workers are already pre-positioning food aid; 80 percent of rain-fed crops in the south are expected to fail this year. The southern part of Madagascar is already the poorest part of the country, with 90 percent of the population earning less than $2 per day.

Informants told the research team that people are eating clay and rice husks to fill their stomachs. Farmers in search of food and livelihood are migrating from the dry interior to the coasts to take up fishing and frequently engaging in unsustainable fishing practices.

By contrast the Northeast is not suffering from drought, and is one of the wettest places in the country with an average of 3-4 meters of rain per year. The region has recorded up to 7 meters in a single calendar year. The Antongil Bay is situated in this moist tropical rainforest zone where agriculture is supported along with fisheries; although fishing still plays an important role in local diets, average catch has declined in recent years without a real alternative source of protein for many of the region’s population. Health researchers are recording a level of thirty percent stunting among children as a result of declining nutrition levels, particularly of micronutrients. These researchers, associated with Harvard, are measuring and recording everything the family members are eating in an effort to get better details on the micronutrients in the diet and their effects. Communities living around Antongil Bay have little access to markets with no functioning roads. They also have high levels of conflict with commercial trawlers, which fish in near-shore waters, competing with local fishers and destroying their fishing equipment in the process.

3.3 FISHERIES DECLINE

Of concern for this PEA are the decreasing fisheries stocks in coastal Madagascar where poverty rates are high and implications for fisher communities are severe. Fish is a major source of food security that has rapidly declined in recent years. IUU fishing, including by commercial and artisanal longlines, illegal use of fish aggregating devices (FADs), trawlers, and inappropriate nets, have depleted fishing stocks. Increased sedimentation and climate change effects have a role in the changing fisheries as well. Program responses must grapple with a number of difficult issues that span the political and economic terrain. They will also need to support the existing momentum of ongoing marine biodiversity conservation work in Madagascar.

3.4 FISHERIES RESTORATION EFFORTS

Recent studies of community-based marine management efforts indicate that fisheries can be restored through improved management. The removal of fishing pressure has been shown to increase average size, diversity, abundance and biomass of invertebrates and fish within protected areas. There is also evidence that these benefits may have positive consequences for fisheries outside protected areas. In particular, a combination of new management approaches to simultaneously allow restoration of fisheries and the development of alternative incomes for fisher communities is shown to be effective and, therefore, of critical importance for sustainable development in coastal Madagascar. Specifically, from 2004-2010, octopus closures are said to have improved fisher incomes by 461% in median recorded catches per closure, resulting in an enhancement of catch per unit of effort (CPUE) of up to 120% following the resumption of fishing.12

Introduction of temporary octopus reserves in Southwestern Madagascar, since 2004, have demonstrated the effectiveness of annual closures of even 3 months duration. The temporary “reserves,” with locations determined by the local communities, has increased both the size and number of octopus harvests following the closures. These measures have been adopted by the national government and have improved incomes along the west coast of Madagascar. This PEA verified that these closures are widespread and well understood by fisher communities in the Southwest. Recent changes in the administration of oceans and fisheries management appear to favor a strengthened relationship between research institutes, conservation NGOs, practitioners in the field, and local fisher communities. USAID and other donors will want to build on these kinds of concrete steps towards greater involvement of communities in the management of their resources with the support of the government.

12 LeManch, F. (2015) op cit.

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4.0 MARINE MANAGEMENT IN

MADAGASCAR

4.1 MARINE MANAGEMENT REGIMES

Three forms of management of marine resources are found in Madagascar:

• Marine Protected Areas (Aire Marine Protégée or AMP)

• Management Transfers (Gestion Locale Sécurisée or GELOSE)

• Community-Managed Marine Areas (Aire de Pêche Gérée Localement or APGL)

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can consist of temporary or permanent closures. For the purposes of this study, MPAs will typically consist of a “no-take” area(s)13 with some type of buffer or other nearby zones within which extractive and non-extractive uses are regulated.

Management Transfers closely reflect this same level of regulation, which is established by the management committee or community association through short-term leases from the government; an initial 3-year contract which can be renewed. After renewing twice, the community can apply for a 10-year contract. Community-Managed Marine Areas can take many forms. In general, more discretion is left to communities when they are managing outside of the MPA or Management Transfer arrangements.

4.2 LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Following the president’s first pledge to triple protected areas at the World Parks Congress in Durban in 2003, at the time a new decree (Décret d’Application No 848-05) for the existing protected area policy (COAP) was issued. The COAP is now a law. The last approved version of the law 2015-005, dates to February 26, 2015. (See USAID/Madagascar’s 2014 Environmental Threats and Opportunities Assessment for a complete list of regulations and legislation relating to environmental policy). The law set up a System of Protected Areas of Madagascar, or SAPM, which simplified and redefined the legal process used in protected area creation. Under this more flexible model, organizations other than Madagascar National Parks, the state protected areas agency, are allowed to manage protected areas. This includes NGOs, community organizations, and the private sector. This policy change enabled international and local conservation NGOs to engage directly with communities to support them in managing their resources. At the World Parks Congress, in Sydney Australia in November 2014, the pledge was made by the government of Madagascar to expand marine protected areas with the involvement of communities. This set the stage for innovation in Locally Managed Marine Areas

13 For MPAs, the no-take zone is the core zone or conservation zone. Sustainable use of resources is allowed/regulated within the buffer zone and peripheral zone.

(LMMAs). Already actively lobbying on behalf of traditional fishers at the Congress, MIHARI pushed to allow LMMA representatives discuss the challenges they face in local management and identify opportunities for improved government support.

4.3 LEGAL PLURALISM

Government support for LMMAs is an important part of the legal pluralism that defines functioning common property resource management regimes. Legal pluralism and the policies that support it are concerned primarily with regulation and a focus on the institutions, like dina, for governance. Legal pluralism also provides a framework for people to deal with more than one system of rules at a time, and the relationship between these rules can explain people’s behavior. For example, how rules are established might influence people’s compliance. We found that a rule that the government imposed on communities regarding the use of certain fishing nets was less effective than a rule that communities established themselves. The challenge for dina in the case of resource management is to what extent broader policies can balance the interests of the state against society, in ways that can allow flexible and adaptive management under dina for diverse and changing contexts. For resource management, the context and local power relations may influence which laws take precedence and to what extent dina is enforced.

Dina can operate in both formal and informal ways. Madagascar’s GELOSE (Management Transfer) contracts with communities require both a formal legal component—communities must be legally declared—and a common law component—referring to ordinary agreements that regulate rights and responsibilities in society and the use of dina in the event of disputes and enforcement.14 Within the legal framework of the state, legal pluralism falls along a spectrum from a hierarchical, nested scheme that aims…