klein 2002 - deforestation in the madagascar highlands

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GeoJournal 56: 191–199, 2002.

© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.191

Deforestation in the Madagascar Highlands – Established ‘truth’ and scientific

uncertainty

Jorgen Klein Hogskoleni Hedmark LUH, 2321 Hamar, Norway E-mail [email protected]

Received 21 May 2002; accepted 15 January 2003

Key words: deforestation, environmental narratives, Madagascar, natural resource management

Abstract

The Madagascar central highlands with their red soils and erosion gullies are often held up as a frightening example of

the consequences of deforestation. They are also used as a model of how the entire island will look if so-called ‘forest

unfriendly activities’ of local people continue. This insight is based on a narrative that describes the highlands as totallyforested by the time of human arrival and gradually deforested as a response to human activities. This paper questions

the deforestation narrative of Madagascar and points at alternative explanations for present day land cover. By the use of

alternative sources of information the paper presents a counter-narrative that sees the treeless rolling planes of Madagascar

as a result of several abiotic and biotic changes and not as the work of one single agent. The paper points at the political

nature of the deforestation narrative as an explanation for its hegemonic position. On a theoretical level the paper makes

an attempt to investigate the epistemological implication of a social constructivist approach to environmental discourses in

Third World settings.

Introduction

The Madagascar central highlands, with their species-poor

grasslands and extreme gully erosion, are often held up as

a terrifying example of the consequences of deforestation.

Further, they are used as a model of how the entire island

will appear if forest-unfriendly activities such as slash and

burn agriculture continue. This perspective is based on a

narrative that describes the highlands as totally forested at

the time of human settlement and gradually deforested as a

response to human activities. This paper considers the sci-

entific arguments that form the foundation of this narrative,

discusses the motives behind the narrative and addresses its

policy implications.

The relationship between humans and the environment

is highly complicated, and explanations tend to be biasedby the position and agenda of the observer. Often a simpli-

fied set of widely perceived images about the relationship

between human agency and natural processes becomes the

motive power for environmental policy. One of the most

interesting developments in the social sciences over the

past 15 years has been the exposure of ‘narratives’, ‘dis-

courses’, ‘orthodoxies’ and ‘myths’ within the field of en-

vironment and development. These are ruling stories about

the environment-society relationship that have been repeated

over and over again until they have become institutional-

ised as facts. According to Foucault (1972), it is through

discourse that we construct what we experience as reality,

and when we learn to think about reality in a particular way

we block our ability to think in other ways. The ideas that

make up the discourse are held to be correct by a social

consensus that can be termed as the ‘establishment’. Lately

several researchers have focused on analysing the complex

relationship between the discursive construction of nature

and natural processes and the actual impact of these very

constructions on the environment. (e.g. Blaike and Brook-

field, 1987; Leach and Mearns, 1996; Fairhead and Leach,

1996; Peet and Watts, 1996; Bassett and Koli Bi, 2000).

The issue of environmental change in developing coun-

tries poses great epistemological challenges to the analyst.

On one hand it is essential to understand the natural pro-

cesses that are involved in the production and reproduction

of natural resources in the physical environment. On the

other hand one must acknowledge that different people per-

ceive these matters differently through their cultural filters.

Thus, the environment must be considered socially construc-ted, and its scientific study represents only one of several

social constructions. By accepting a social constructivist

view on deforestation and environmental change, one runs

the risk of being accused of relativism: that every statement

about the relationship between humans and the environment

has an equal claim to truth. In particular, post-structuralism,

with its focus on the role of language in the construction of

reality, tends to treat language not as a reflection of reality

but as a constituent of it. This would be pushing the re-

lativistic point too far. A social constructivist approach need

not include the post-structuralist break of any link between

an external reality and human knowledge, which can lead

to extreme positions, such as radical relativism, nihilism

or neo-Kantian constructivism1. As several contemporary



192

theorists have shown, there exists a golden mean between

radical relativism and common-sense realism, where obser-

vations refer directly to a pre-existing, independent and ob-

jective reality. Demeritt (1998) points towards social object

constructivism and artifactual constructivism as a middle

course2, and Proctor (1998) argues for the use of critical

realism and, to same extent, environmental pragmatism.Both critical realism and environmental pragmatism dis-

tinguish between epistemological relativism and ontological

relativism. This means that individuals’ constructed know-

ledge of phenomena differ, even though the phenomena

themselves are acknowledged as ‘real’. This position is com-

patible with social constructivism, but not with strong forms

of relativism. In a context where both real biophysical pro-

cesses in nature and nature’s discursive construction have to

be acknowledged, this could be a fruitful position to take

(Klein, 2002).

By focusing on how various perceptions of the environ-

ment develop into discourses that guide policy, importantaspects of the relationship between humans and the environ-

ment can be illuminated. Roe (1994) points out that stories

commonly used in describing and analysing policy issues

are a force in themselves and must be considered explicitly

in assessing policy options. According to Roe (1991) these

stories, or ‘policy narratives’ as he terms them, often res-

ist change or modification in the presence of contradictory

empirical data. This is because they underwrite and stabilise

the assumptions for decision-making in the face of uncer-

tainty, complexity and polarisation and enable policy makers

to act. Even when their truth-value is doubtful these nar-

ratives are more programmatic than myths because they are

employed with the objective of getting people to believe or

to do something. Fairhead and Leach (1995, p. 1023) state

that the narratives have strength and credibility because they

have ‘an incontrovertible logic which provides scripts and

justification for development action’. Hoben (1995) adds

to the argument by stating that environmental policies in

Africa rest on historically grounded, culturally constructed

paradigms that both describe a problem and prescribe its

solution. Many of the policies are rooted in a narrative that

tells us how things were in an earlier harmonious time, how

human agency has altered that harmony, and how disaster

will befall people and nature if action is not taken soon.

The specific case considered here is the deforestationnarrative of Madagascar, in particular the narrative of the

central Madagascar highlands. Madagascar is often presen-

ted as a land totally forested before human intervention and

then gradually deforested as a response to human agency.

This story can be read in many of the pivotal environmental

organisation’s publications and policy documents about the

island. This is despite the fact that there is uncertainty in

the scientific community about the pre-settlement land-cover

and about possible agents of change. The dominant narrat-

ive describes a harmonious, almost Edenic, forested island

2,000 years ago. Then humans enter and, through slash-and-

burn activities, convert the forest into grassland and desert,

which in turn leads to soil erosion and the extinction of

endemic species. The end of the narrative is a totally de-

forested and infertile island unless action is taken to halt

the unsustainable production systems of the expanding local

population. The picture is viewed through a Malthusian

lens, which highlights population growth as the underlying

explanation for degradation.

In the following sections I describe the establishment of

the deforestation narrative and question the scientific evid-ence that the narrative is built on. This is partly done by

regarding the validity of the arguments per se and partly by

drawing on alternative evidence and explanations for present

highland vegetation. Then I point out possible motives for a

deforestation narrative and the effects of its use.

The deforestation narrative

The Madagascar highlands, defined as land between 1,000

and 2,700 m above sea level, cover about 120,000 km2,

which represents about one fifth of the island. The topo-

graphy is very varied with hills, large plains, volcanic cones

and narrow valleys forming important features. Highland

Madagascar has a tropical climate tempered by attitude and

a distinctly seasonal rainfall. Cool dry winters average 12–

15 ◦C and hot and humid glimmers average 19–23 ◦C.

Annual precipitation ranges from 1,200–1,400 mm and falls

largely from December through March.

It is easy to perceive the Madagascar highlands as defor-

ested. The vegetation is largely grassland, and it can appear

especially sparse in the dry season when fire often burns

off the grasses. The highlands are almost totally devoid of

trees except for small stands of evergreen forest restricted to

valleys or protected sites and scattered plantations of exoticpines and eucalypts. The grassland has a limited flora and

fauna compared with the savannahs of, for instance, East

Africa. Erosion in the landscape is severe and is manifes-

ted by an unusually large number of gullies, called lavaka,

which generally occur on hillsides or on slopes. The gul-

lies of Madagascar’s highlands are unusual in that they have

erosion rates about 7 times the global average and they form

in mid-hillside, without initially being graded to the valley

floor (Wells and Andrianimihaja, 1997).

The early European travellers, scientists and missionaries

differed in their views on the original vegetation cover of

the highlands. In the late 1800s and early 1900s one factionseemed to believe that the lack of forest was natural and a

response to highland climate, especially what they regarded

as low annual precipitation values (e.g., Baron, 1890; Gau-

tier, 1902; Grandidier, 1905). Muntz and Rousseaux (1901)

supported this argument with their claim that the soil was not

forest-derived. Even though the most influential geographer

on Madagascar’s natural history, Grandidier, supported this

view, several other groups argued that the highlands had

been forested before human intervention. The leading figure

of the Norwegian Missionary Society, Lars Dahle (1876),

writes that the forest originally covered the entire island, and

he suggests that internal warfare must have been the reason

for its clearance. The view of a totally forested island beforehuman colonisation is supported by James Sibree (1896) of

the English Missionary Society. Despite these controversies



193

the view of a natural grassland was widely accepted for more

than two decades (Gade, 1996), and can be recognised as the

first scientific orthodoxy on the subject.

In the 1920s this orthodoxy was replaced by a new theory

which has remained dominant to the present day. The main

proponents of this theory, the botanists Perrier de la Bathe

(1921, 1936) and Humbert (1927, 1949), are by far the mostcited on these issues and are regarded as the main author-

ities on the subject. They concluded that the highlands had

been generally covered by closed forest formations, except

for the highest mountains (over 2,600 m a.s.l.), that wildfire

had been completely absent, and that the by then extinct

mega-fauna were forest-adapted. They also believed that an-

thropogenetic influence through the introduction of fire was

the cause of deforestation. The view that the highlands had

once been forested and then deforested as an effect of human

agency was to be confirmed by several scientists in the years

to follow. Gade (1996) is the latest researcher to adopt this

positional stance. He points to the work of several research-ers (e.g., Francios, 1937; Battistini, 1965; Aubreville, 1971;

Chauved, 1972; Rossi, 1979; Graniere, l979; Jolly, 1980;

Tatterall, 1982) that support this view, and he builds up a

chain of arguments culminating in the conclusion that:

“ Madagascar’s highland region once was covered with

an evergreen forest dominated by about 20 endemic tree

species. This has been permanently replaced by a florist-

ically impoverished steppe vegetation on ferrolic soils.

Human intervention has caused this deforestation, aided

by a notable failure of highland forests to spontaneously

regenrate.” (Gade, 1996, p. 101)

The supporting evidence for these sweeping statementsabout land cover and the causes of change actually consist of

some rather circumstantial evidence, summarised by Gade

(1996, pp. 103–105), namely: all living mammalian species

on Madagascar are forest dwelling; subfossils belonging to

extinct animals have been recovered along with tree trunks

and tree fruits; pollen spectra dated from about AD 1000 can

be interpreted as being from forest vegetation; forest relicts

may indicate that trees covered much of the upland region;

the evolution of a rich endemic herbaceous flora would have

been expected if grassland were ancient on the island; Mala-

gasy oral folk tradition describes a forest-clothed highland

of a remote past. The causes of this presumed deforestationis mainly directed to population pressure on the resources

caused by a rapidly increasing population, as can be read in

the quotation below;

“Paddy rice cultivation of Asian inspiration gained as-

cendancy in the highlands after 1700 (Berg, 1981).

Valley floors and sides were terraced and converted

info irrigated rice fields in response to decreased pro-

ductivity of swidden agriculture as the primary forest

was removed. Growing population pressure fostered that

change and an increasingly hierarchical polity contrib-

uted to its organisation. ” (Gade, 1996, p. 105)

The validity of the deforestation narrative

Simultaneously with the establishment of this dominant de-

forestation narrative, also called the classical hypothesis,

several researchers began to forward other explanations for

both original highland vegetation cover and possible agents

of change other than anthropogenic ones. They point to-wards abiotic factors and the possible role of environmental

change. One hypothesis is that the grassland reflects climate

changes during the late Quaternary. This was described by

Bourgeat (1972) and further developed by Burney (1987,

1997). In Burney’s (1997) view, the highlands at the time of

human arrival consisted of a mosaic of woodlands, shrub-

lands, and a savannah-type grassland. He thus directly

attacks the prevailing narrative, as described by Gade (1996),

of Madagascar as a completely forested island until human

colonisation. Burney points out that Madagascar has been

subject to climate changes on many scales, from a gen-

eral cooling since the Cretaceous, to increased aridificationsince the Oligocene, to a regular rhythm of tropical-zone

responses to the glacial-interglacial cycles of the Quatern-

ary (Burney, 1997, p. 76). This dynamically changing

Madagascar experienced major vegetation changes in pre-

settlement times3, which operated on different time scales,

from glacial-interglacial to shorter ‘disturbance’ scales.

Burney builds his arguments on evidence from several

sites, using radiometrically dated fossil pollen, charcoal,

algae, and former lake levels. In the early 1980s a mul-

tidisciplinary group of researchers from several American

institutions and the University of Madagascar collected in-

formation on the causes and timing of megafaunal4 extinc-

tion and environmental changes in Madagascar. Their goal

was to re-examine classic fossil sites such as Ampasambazi-

mba (near Antananarivo) through excavation, radio carbon

dating and examination of pollen stratigraphy. The site ac-

cumulated bones in a matrix of shallow lake and marsh

sediments between circa 9,000 and 4,000 yr B.P. The pollen

spectra (which were the first dated ones from Madagas-

car), were interpreted as representing a mixed vegetation

of woodland, shrubland, and grassland, which undermined

the idea of a totally forested Madagascar before human ar-

rival (Burney, 1997). This interpretation was supported by

palaeontologists, who had long been questioning why so

many of the extinct animals seemed to be ground-dwellerswith adaptations more suited to a savannah habitat than a

forested one (see MacPhee et al., 1985). Burney also demon-

strates that fires influenced the vegetation and were common

in Madagascar long before human settlement, rather than

being introduced fairly recently as the deforestation ortho-

doxy advocates claim. Burney and his group investigated

the charcoal concentration from 23 sediment cores (Burney,

1997, p. 78) throughout Madagascar by the use of several

independent techniques to minimise misinterpretation. The

outcome of the tests points clearly in one direction: data

from the sediment cores show that the influx and concen-

tration of charcoal are often higher in late Pleistocene and

early Holocene samples than in those of the human period,

including those of modern times (Burney, 1997, p. 81).



195

can also be found. Some descriptions point towards a non-

forested environment at the time of the Merina penetration.

The clearest one is a description of how wild cattle roamed

over wide areas (Kent, 1970), a description which contra-

dicts the notion of a totally forest environment at the time.

Other Tantara interpreters such as Dez (quoted in Kull, 2000)

support this view, and suggest that the highland landscapein the 13th century consisted of vast grasslands, occasional

forests and marshes.

Several early European explorers who travelled in the

highlands confirm this view. Nicolas Mayeur, who travelled

the highlands around 1750, writes that

“Trees are not to be seen here except those which are

planted in the trenches around villages and their number

is small. The forests from which [the Hova] obtain their

construction wood are on the southern borders, at some

twenty leagues distance.” (Quoted in Kent, 1970, p. 214)

The central highlands are the region of Madagascar that has

received most archaeological attention. The oldest archae-ological sites known from this area are assigned from the

12th to the 14th century (Dewar, 1997), but the rarity of

sites dating from earlier than the 15th century suggests that

population density at that time was low. Burney (1987) uses

palynological records to show a marked increase in burning

and grass pollen frequency in the 7th or 8th century. This

suggests that there was a period of 500 years with increased

burning and spread of grasslands when there is no evidence

of human settlement in the highlands. It could be that ar-

chaeologists just have not been able to uncover that evidence

yet, but considering the large amount of archaeological at-

tention paid to this area, and the huge number of sites (tens of thousands) from the 15th century onwards, this explanation

seems unlikely.

Many of the advocates of a human-induced deforest-

ation in the Madagascar highlands point towards present

day-human exploitation of the natural resources as a clue to

understanding degradation in the past. The relatively fast de-

forestation of Madagascar’s eastern rainforest7 is especially

used as a model of how the highlands once became defores-

ted. The most important activities are believed to be cutting

of forest for fuelwood and construction, and clearing for

agricultural fields. But firewood collection, the production

of charcoal, and lumbering for construction has significant

effects on the environment only when population densities

are high (Bates and Skogseid, 1997). At the time of the

Vazimba and the Merina penetration of the highlands the

population numbers were very low. Dewar (1997) points

out that no settlement exceeded a few thousand people until

the nineteenth century; thus the effects of clearing forests

for fuelwood and construction must have been very local.

Also, the widespread environmental effect of clearing forests

for fields is very dependent on high population density;

in the highlands 500–1,000 years ago the population was

very low. In the case of swidden agriculture as an agent of

transition considerable empirical evidence shows that it is

relatively ecologically stable when population numbers arelow (Dewar, 1997). Forest clearance for fields would not

have been an important cause of change until population

densities increased significantly, which did not occur until

the 18th and 19th centuries.

Given the low population density at the time and the dif-

ferent climate conditions any comparison between past de-

forestation in the highlands and present deforestation in the

eastern rain forest seems out of place. The neo-Malthusian

argument often used to describe the deforestation of the east-ern rain forest has no logical validity in the highlands at the

time they were supposed to have been deforested. The ad-

vocates of the deforestation narrative have never been able

to explain the paradox that lies in the fact that if the en-

tire island was forested and in an ecological equilibrium at

the time of human arrival, the environmental effects were

greatest in the areas where humans were latest to arrive, and

for a long period lived in the smallest numbers.

The policy issue

Despite scientific evidence that suggests that climate, veget-

ation, and fire have a complex interaction that has changed

over time, only one, probably simplistic, view seems to have

been incorporated in the policy documents and strategy plans

of the big environmental NGOs, the World Bank and govern-

mental organisations: the highlands was once forested, and

has been deforested as a result of human activities. Several

of these institutions have produced figures that show that

Madagascar now has less than 10–20% of its original forest

cover left. Such statistics draw on and perpetuate images

of original forest as a baseline to compare present-day as-

sessments derived from techniques such as remote sensing.

Table 1 shows how some of the most important institutions

within the field of development and environment perpetuate

and contribute to the image of a once-forested Madagascar.

There seems to be some sort of consensus around the figure

80%. This is widely used to represent the size of the island

that has been deforested as a response to human activities.

Given the present amount of forest, these figures presuppose

an almost totally forested highland in the past.

The World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) states

that 60–85% of the original Madagascar forest has been

destroyed by unsustainable shifting subsistence cultivation

(1996, p. 1). These figures circulate widely among in-

ternational organisations and are put to a variety of uses.Furthermore these data are often the basis for unsourced

tables and figures in secondary and tertiary articles and re-

ports. The Madagascar Environmental Action Plan (1988),

supported by such pivotal actors as the World Bank, USAID,

Cooperation Suisse, UNESCO, UNDP, and WWF also re-

peats the deforestation narrative and states that most of the

island was covered with natural forest, and that only 20% of

the original cover remains.

“ Most of Madagascar was initially covered in natural

forests. But now these forests have been totally destroyed

in over 80% of the country. Deforestation has been

particularly severe on the High Plateau.” (MadagascarEnvironmental Action Plan 1988, p. 26)



196

Table 1. Representation of deforestation in Madagascar.

Presumed original % deforested Reference Citing

vegetation

Completely forested 88% Bakke (1991) (supported by No reference

NORAD and WWF)

Mostly forested 60–85% World Conservation Monito ring No referenceCentre (1994)

Mostly forested with Over 80% USAID (1998) No reference

tropical forest cover

Totally forested 70–75% Jenkins (1987) (Supported by Bastian

IUCN) (1964)

Most of island 80% Madagascar Environmental Action No reference

covered with natural forest Plan (1988) Supported by World

Bank, USAID, Cooperation Suisse,

UNESCO, UNDP, WWF

So how has this figure come into being? The underlying

ecological assumptions for such estimates are founded on an

equilibrium-based view of vegetation, which can be traced

back to the influential views of Clements (1916). In this

view the nature of the vegetation in a region is climatic-

ally determined. For example, in the case of most moist

climate types forest would be predicted. It is assumed that in

the absence of continuous disturbance – human or natural –

forest is the equilibrium end-point of a process of succession

that vegetation progresses through after a physical or biotic

disturbance. Neither climatic fluctuations over time nor the

disturbances themselves are thought to play a significant role

in determining the status of the system. This ‘paradigm’ haslately been strongly challenged, especially in the ecological

literature of the temperate and dry tropical zones. The term

‘new ecology’ has been used to describe a shift in focus to

instability and disequilibria as important characteristics of

many ecosystems and away from equilibrium and homeo-

stasis (Glenn-Lewin et al., 1992; Botkin, 1990; Zimmerer,

2000; Leach and Farihead, 2000).

Any ecosystem is composed of patches at different spa-

tial and temporal scales, which are defined by the physical

environment and the disturbance regime. In many ecosys-

tems, disturbances such as fire, wind damage and drought

occur more frequently and over larger areas than previously

thought, and they thus exert a major influence on the dynam-

ics and structure of the vegetation. In regions where rainfall

is seasonal and variable, climatic variability may influence

ecological processes either directly or indirectly via the dis-

turbance regime (e.g., fire frequency). Thus, particularly in

the drier tropical regions, the irregular spatial and temporal

variations in the environment play an important role in the

structuring of the ecosystem. Where the regional climate

regime is such that there is a fine balance among the po-

tentials of different types of vegetation to predominate (for

example, trees vs. grasses in savannah regions), disturbance

regimes, small shifts in climate, and other stochastic events

may be the final determinants of the vegetation. By focusingon heterogeneity at a range of temporal and spatial scales a

better understanding of the highlands vegetation history can

appear. Only within such a view can the complex relation-

ship between forest, woodland and savannah on the one hand

and climate and fire on the other be fully grasped.

The deforestation narrative of the Madagascar high-

lands presupposes a natural climax vegetation of forest even

though this way of thinking has been strongly challenged

and even rejected in the modern ecological literature. So why

is this view still so prevalent? One explanation might be that

the ‘new ecology’ has made a major impact in the field of

ecology only in the past two decades or so. Beyond ecology

this ‘paradigm shift’ has been picked up by social scientists

and other academics in the 1990s. But to make a major im-

pact among the policy makers, NGOs and aid donors outsideacademia it demands further time. In combination with this

‘informational indolence’ other explanations can be sought.

The policy narratives often resist change or modification

in the presence of contradictory theoretical development or

empirical evidence because they underwrite and stabilise

assumptions for decision-making. Thus, they enable poli-

cymakers to act and give a firm basis for action. Leach

and Mearns (1996) state that in the colonial period received

wisdom8 about environmental change served to justify the

funding of national environmental management agencies, a

situation that has continued through the post-colonial era.

Leach and Mearns write that:

“Government departments with responsibility for forest

and wildlife protection and management, in particular,

are often heavily reliant on revenue received from fines

and the sale of permits. The underlying premise on which

the continued flow of such revenues rests is that the

stewardship over natural resources is properly the re-

sponsibility of the state. It depends on and serves to

perpetuate the conventional view that local inhabitants

are incapable of acting as resource custodians.” (1996,

p. 20)

In this scenario, a government has strong interests in main-

taining a view about the instrumental role of local inhab-

itants in bringing about environmental degradation. Roe

(1995, p. 1066) takes the argument further and suggests



197

that crisis descriptions of African realities are the ‘primary

means whereby development experts and the institutions for

which they work claim rights to stewardship over land and

resources they do not own.” Roe states that by appealing

to what he terms ‘crisis narratives’ technical experts and

managers can claim rights as ‘stakeholders’ in the land and

resources they say are under crisis. In this way the morecrisis the narrative generates, the more right the elite have to

establish a claim to the resource they say is subject to crisis.

In terms of biodiversity Madagascar ranks as extremely

interesting to the world’s conservation and environmental

organisations. The country is often described as a ‘hotspot’

of biodiversity because of its unique natural history and high

level of endemism (Myers et al., 2000). Following Roe’s

line of thought, the deforestation narrative of the highlands,

which is indeed crisis-ridden, serves as a justification for

western experts to intervene and claim rights in Madagas-

car’s biodiversity. By employing the deforestation narrative

one makes a clear case. A highland deforested as a result of human activities leaves no doubt about the fact that the local

inhabitants are not managing their resources in a sustainable

manner. This opens the way for a centrally governed en-

vironmental policy based on western expertise and western

ideas about the conservation of nature. The narrative is held

up as a warning sign of what will happen in other parts of

Madagascar if action is not taken. In this way a contested

theory of what happened in the highlands five hundred years

ago is used as an argument for action and the application of

western conservation strategies in other parts of Madagascar.

Even in environments totally different from the highlands in

terms of both ecology and demography.

In Madagascar, as in other places, one of the most power-

ful explanations for deforestation is the neo-Malthusian

theory that links population growth and shifting cultivation.

As stated earlier, this argument has little value in describing

what happened at the time when the highland is supposed

to have been deforested. Even concerning the more recent

deforestation of the eastern rain forest it has limited ex-

planatory power. Jarosz (1996) writes that in a period when

a large amount of remaining primary forest disappeared,

between 1900 and 1941, the national population growth rate

was at, or below, the replacement level. This deforestation

had little to do with population growth linked to shifting

cultivation, but can be related to logging, forest product ex-traction, export crop production, shifting cultivation, grazing

and burning. Jarosz argues that the role of the state was

pivotal in these matters. As an example she uses the co-

lonial state’s forest concessionaire policy, which in 1921

allowed the exploitation of precious woods such as ebony,

rosewood and palisander. This resulted in the clearcutting

and destruction of some of the most accessible forest on the

island. Thus, not only are the narratives based on uncertain

information in relation to the ecological/bioclimatic status

of the vegetation, but also the means of its destruction are

contradicted by available evidence.

The practice of burning forest and grass has always been

a central element in Madagascar’s traditional environmental

management. Thus, fire has generated conflict between the

government and local people for over a hundred years. The

French colonial government, which regarded fire as an im-

portant part of the deforestation narrative, sought to control

fire through legislation and banned its use. The laws of 1907

and 1930 were the result of French scientists claiming that

fires destroyed forests and impoverished the soil. After in-

dependence the legislation continued to reflect the coloniallaws. Penalties for illegal wildfires were further strengthened

as environmental money began to make a substantial impact

on the country’s economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Kull (2000) writes that the burning of pastures is a useful

tool for the farmers and is an integrated part of highland

farming. Burning contributes to improving forage quality,

preparing grasslands for planting, and improving water run

off for irrigation; it wards off invading locusts, and keeps

the rat population low. The criminalisation of this tradi-

tional agricultural activity maintains the conflict between

western scientific view and traditional land-use methods,

and closes the lines of communication and mutual under-standing between local people and development ‘experts’.

Because of legislation, the effects of the deforestation narrat-

ive have been severe on the local people. It has impoverished

them through taxes, fines, prison sentences, and resource

alienation. It has also denied the technical validity of local

ecological knowledge, and undermined the credibility of

outside experts in local people’s eyes. By criminalising burn-

ing it has denied value to their cultural forms, expression

and morality. On top of this, the deforestation narrative in

Madagascar and its executive policy can lead to increased

deforestation when illegal burning becomes a symbol of

peasant protest against state authority (Jarosz, 1996). Thus,

the precautionary principle often highlighted in conservation

matters, can trigger unexpected effects if the perspective

employed is inadequately correlated with reality.

Conclusion

The deforestation narrative of Madagascar appears based

on a simple causal explanation, that is, a neo-Malthusian

view of the relationship between society and environmental

change, and on outmoded concepts of stasis in climate-

vegetation systems that have been subsequently abandoned.

This is not unique for Madagascar as many of the deforesta-tion narratives in Africa are based on these notions. The neo-

Malthusian paradigm explains how population growth leads

to deforestation and the Clementsian concept of a single

vegetation type, unchanging in time and space, provides a

baseline from which deforestation can be measured. As elab-

orated earlier in this paper, the neo-Malthusian paradigm can

not give a satisfactory explanation for the origin of the grass-

lands of the highlands. Furthermore, increased knowledge

of climate change and its implication for vegetation sug-

gest that human impact occurred within a natural vegetation

mosaic that was already subject to fire.

Burney’s (1987, 1997) research in the highlands high-

lights long-term cycles of climate change and the dynamicnature of Madagascar’s vegetation. Heterogeneity across a

range of temporal and spatial scales is a key element in the



199

Blaikie for valuable comments. This research was supported

by the Interdisciplinary Program at the Norwegian Univer-

sity of Science and Technology, and by Hedmark University

College.

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