Browsing by Subject "Madagascar"

Since the 1980s, international funding provided by diverse and changing donors has significantly changed Madagascar’s conservation landscape. The various challenges and development needs related to biodiversity conservation and its international funding have long been known to the international community and solutions have been sought. Despite this, deforestation and the destruction of the environment in Madagascar continue. The aim of this study was to identify the perceptions of various stakeholders on the current challenges and development needs for biodiversity conservation and its international funding in Madagascar by using qualitative methods. This study was based on 26 semi-structured interviews. The interviewees represented stakeholders involved in internationally funded biodiversity conservation projects in Madagascar. 14 of these interviews were conducted specifically for this study. The remaining, 12 interviews were from the material collected for the research project “Conservation Legacies: Understanding the Long-term Impacts of Private Foundation Investment in International Biodiversity Conservation”. The qualitative content analysis combining a deductive and inductive approach revealed a number of different challenges and development needs that were strongly interlinked. The identified challenges were related to, for example, weak governance and its different indicators, political instabilities, poverty and internal migration, donor requirements, insufficient amount of funding, funding gaps, dependency of international funding, donor-driven priority setting, lack of coordination, and the challenges posed by the operating environment. The identified development needs included the need for longer funding cycles, flexibility, stronger local participation, more holistic and cross-sectoral approaches, and involvement of private sector. Extensive cooperation across actors and sectors is still needed to tackle the challenges and put development needs into practice. Without this, there is a risk that the objectives for conserving biodiversity and making development aid more effective will not be achieved. Achieving these objectives would be supported by research into how the prioritisation and ownership of biodiversity conservation could be increasingly transferred to the local level, while ensuring that all aspects of sustainable development - social, ecological and economic – are considered.

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract In this Master’s thesis I investigate Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) involvement, experiences and outcomes in Madagascar, including the limiting and enabling factors for impact of conservation interventions driven by NGOs. The focal point of the research is the lived experiences from the field, including identification of processes and forces shaping the preconditions for NGO interventions. As part of the research I explore experiences of NGOs from their interventions and from engaging with local communities, government, policy makers and other NGOs in Madagascar. Many NGOs are active in biodiversity hotspots like Madagascar, but evaluation outcomes and lessons learned tend not to be extensively shared across organizations and thematic focus areas. This in turn affects preconditions to influence outcome determinants not only in isolated interventions but also across organizational borders. This study aims to define the situation and the issues faced by NGOs in Madagascar to suggest how the landscape could be navigated to improve the preconditions for long term intervention impact. The purpose is not to evaluate specific projects, but to assess the mechanisms through which the NGO sector can make a significant contribution to conservation, as well as the challenges in doing so. As the analysis seeks to broaden and contextualize the discussion of NGO involvement in conservation interventions, the theoretical framework for the research is based on theory on Non-Governmental Organizations and grounded theory. The theoretical framework facilitates the analysis of the findings, understanding of the results, as well as structuring and highlighting new insights. The theory is complemented with a background assessment of the environmental context in Madagascar, reviewing other research on conservation and its challenges in the country. This helps to understand the dimensions of the challenges, as well as the avenues open for exploration. Insights are gathered from representatives of long-term in situ NGOs to better understand the wider playing field in which they operate. The empirical research is based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 21 representatives from 12 international and local NGOs working with biodiversity conservation in Madagascar. The data was transcribed and analyzed through thematic network analysis and constructivist grounded theory analysis. The interviews were combined with a literature review, a group interview, a field visit to a project site, and more informal conversations with academic researchers and experts in the field. As part of the study, a two-week field trip to Madagascar was undertaken. To present the findings from this research, thematic categorizations were used to illustrate factors that affect outcomes of conservation interventions driven by NGOs. The categories are related to internal organization specific factors, cooperation with other actors (including other NGOs, government and actors in the local communities), as well as the Malagasy environment and politics (including government, laws and policies). The findings reveal challenges especially with systematic coordination of NGO interventions, NGO evaluation practices, resources, as well as issues with implementing sustainable community involvement in project design and decision making. Local community involvement is considered important, but in practice is not fully scaled up and inclusive in terms of decision making and consistent involvement. Findings indicate that the cooperation between NGOs and their key stakeholders works reasonably well from the NGO perspective, but still has potential to be better utilized in order to improve long-term sustainability. Consideration of external constraints is important to assess the potential of different types of interventions and approaches, allowing NGOs to focus their efforts according to the context and their capacities. While acknowledging and navigating the diversity of viewpoints, it is essential to be aware of the impact of structural challenges, the political complexity and the often-conflicting interests between conservation, the commercial and extractive sector, as well as local livelihoods and practices. Findings indicate issues with policy implementation and harmonization, and with conservation prioritization and law enforcement by the government. Local and national ownership and leadership backing is seen as essential for biodiversity conservation, pushing for stronger leadership from within the society. My research provides insights, recommendations and conclusions from which NGOs and conservation actors can gain better understanding of factors impacting interventions, as well as on the Malagasy playing field and its dynamics. This can be helpful in order to capitalize on opportunities and counter challenges, focusing actions on areas that make a difference. The findings can also be of value to other biodiversity conservation researchers, funding agencies, associations, communities and government stakeholders specifically focused on Madagascar. The research may also benefit NGOs and conservation actors involved in other countries, which confront similar challenges concerning conservation, governance, NGO involvement and interventions.

The study examines factors impacting the resilience process amongst youth growing up in an SOS- Children's village in Madagascar. The study uses the framework of the life-course approach to theorize and link exposures across the life course to possible future pathways and trajectories for the informants. It has involved the investigation of factors across life, geographical location, and social context. The study is an ethnographic study that has applied a mixed method design containing material from participatory observations, and life-narrative interviews. The research results involve factors from three dimensions, that of the informants' individual life, family life, and community life. The overall experience of overcoming hardship and the gratitude openly acknowledged by the informants for being a care-receiver is connected to geographical location and the Malagasy circumstances of being a society in deep poverty. In line with previous research findings, the youth take advantage of being in care to prepare themselves for the future. The ability to acknowledge the positive turn their life took is however strongly connected to the age of admission and is also context-based to be a receiver of SOS-Care. This might somewhat overshadow the youths' self-reliance on their own abilities to successfully transcend through the upcoming life stages. Nevertheless, personal attributes were found to also play a significant role regarding the outlook on the SOS's role in overcoming hardship, which may impact the resilience to transcend beyond SOS care into adulthood. Access to education also helps boost agency and self-reliance for the care receivers. The youth shape their identities in plural contexts which both challenges and supports the process of obtaining resilience. The SOS village has been found to have stable staff patterns which support the youth's development, however, due to the high number of youth placements per caregiver the youth may be at risk of being exposed to structural neglect. Further recommendations for SOS-care providers include the need to support wider cultural socialization for the youth during care. As well as to identify the type of interventions needed and the most appropriate time across the youths' life to intervene. This especially concerns the transition from the SOS village and for it to not only be determined by academic advancements but by when the youth feel ready in other aspects of life.