Contradictions in agricultural intensification and improved natural resource management: issues in the fianarantsoa forest corridor of Madagascar

摘要

The international development profession is periodically buffeted by the infusion of new conceptual approaches that have a broad impact on both policies and project interventions at the local level. In Madagascar, as in many other countries, the government and donor organizations are turning to an ecoregional approach to natural resource management. Ecoregional planning is an outgrowth of the integrated conservation and development strategies (ICDPs) that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s (Larson etal., 1998). It represents a major shift from the previous focus on preserving species diversity to a more encompassing view of maintaining habitat diversity, evolutionary phenomena and adaptations of species to different environmental conditions aroundthe world. As articulated by the World Wildlife Fund (one of the leaders of the new conservation paradigm), ecoregions are defined as: relatively large units of land or water containing a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities sharinga large majority of their species, dynamics, and environmental conditions. Ecoregions function effectively as conservation units because their boundaries roughly coincide with the area over which key ecological processes most strongly interact.