FEATURE - Madagascar seeks eco-tourists to help fight poverty
ANDASIBE, Madagascar - Pushing his way through the undergrowth in
search of Madagascar's wide-eyed lemurs, Nirina the guide embodies
Madagascar's
potential to harness tourism to fight poverty.
Pausing to point out a giraffe-necked beetle clinging to a leaf, or
the traveller tree which yields drinking water if you stab its stem with
a knife, he not only revels
in the island's incredible beauty, but makes his living from it.
"We don't want to be like a rich man with a plane or Rolls Royce, but
tourism allows us to feed our families," said Nirina, president of the
Andasibe Guide
Association working in the Perinet reserve near Andasibe in central
Madagascar.
Earning a steady income from guiding visitors in search of lemurs,
primates which look something like a cross between a teddy bear and a
panda, Nirina has
spent the last five years helping train other guides to serve rising
numbers of visitors.
Madagascar is hoping to harness a growing flow of tourist dollars to
find more jobs for people like Nirina and boost government revenues in
one of the world's
poorest countries.
On an island endowed with some of the richest plant and animal life on
the planet, conservationists say Madagascar has huge potential to expand
"eco-tourism"
in its national parks that will also help preserve the unique natural
habitat.
In Madagascar, there is no time to waste. The island has already lost
more than 80 percent of its original forest cover, with the rest
disappearing rapidly as
farmers seek fresh firewood and pasture for a burgeoning population.
"If we continue the pace of deforestation we have now, we won't get
the benefits from tourism," Nirina said. "We have to have a radical
change in outlook for
eco-tourism to succeed."
UNDISCOVERED JEWEL
Madagascar, lying in the Indian Ocean some 400 km (250 miles) off the
southeast coast of Africa, is experiencing a rapid increase in visitors
after years of
relative neglect.
Economic analysts estimate visitor numbers are rising by an average of
15 percent per year, with the island receiving 138,000 visitors in 1999
compared to
75,000 in 1995.
Two thirds of visitors come for eco-tourism, seeking a glimpse of rare
snakes and chameleons in rainforest reserves or watching whales
cavorting off the coast.
In the Masoala National Park, one of the largest blocks of rainforest
on Madagascar, visitors pay a 50,000 Malagasy francs ($7.90) entrance
fee, with a
proportion of the money ploughed into projects to boost development in
the local community and educate villagers on the importance of
preserving trees.
Government officials managing Masoala say the project is working,
helping to dissuade people from chopping down trees by showing them that
the forest can
generate money.
"From one year to the next we have seen a clear fall in the quantity,
as well as the surface area of deforestation," said Masoala Park
Director Robert Emmanuel
Rajaonarison, speaking in the park on a peninsula in northeast
Madagascar.
UNEXPLOITED POTENTIAL
But while environmentalists say Madagascar could follow the example of
countries like Costa Rica or Ecuador which have made good progress in
earning
income from eco-tourism, the country's poor infrastructure is a
hindrance.
Most tourists are concentrated at a handful of sites, like the Perinet
reserve or the Ranomafana rainforest in the east of the island, meaning
most reserves attract only a trickle of visitors and little revenue.
Tour operators say air fares to Madagascar are relatively expensive,
while a poor road network across the island, about the size of France or
the state of Texas in the United States, can make travelling around
difficult.
"One thing would be perhaps better road infrastructure, better plane
schedules, that's one thing that the government could do," said James
MacKinnon, of the
Wildlife Conservation Society, which works in the Masoala National Park.
"It's pretty uncomfortable to get to many places in Madagascar."
Hoteliers say the government could do more to promote the island
abroad, while plans to privatise the state carrier Air Madagascar could
eventually help to
reduce expensive air fares.
At present about half the visitors come from France, the former
colonial power, but the recent establishment of air links with Asia
could present new opportunities.
DEFORESTATION CONTINUES
Eco-tourism can help provide income to farmers around special
reserves, while education programmes may help slow deforestation, but an
area in the region of
200,000 hectares of forest is still being chopped down every year by
farmers.
About 1.9 percent of Madagascar's land surface is protected by
national parks, but much of the damage takes place outside forest
reserves where eco-tourism
can do little to stop the destruction.
Visitors to the Perinet reserve outside Madagascar drive back to the
capital on a road that snakes through hillsides studded with smouldering
tree stumps, while
farmers sell the burnt wood as bags of charcoal by the roadside.
"We've done this," said Erneste, a farmer tending his cattle,
gesturing to fields stripped bare of trees. "We have nothing to eat, no
money, so we're forced to take wood. We know what we've done, but we
have no choice." (Additional reporting by Nina Schwendemann).
Story by Matthew Green
Story Date: 24/12/2001
Reuters News Service 2001
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