UWE Bristol to help protect threatened forest in Madagascar in £800k project

UWE Bristol is a partner in a groundbreaking project awarded almost £800,000 in funding to protect one of Madagascar’s most precious and threatened forests.

The University is a key academic and implementation partner on the project focused on the Tsinjoarivo-Ambalaomby Protected Area (TAPA) in Madagascar’s Central Highlands, a biodiversity hotspot facing deforestation rates nine times higher than the Congo Basin.

Coordinated by the Malagasy-led non-governmental organisation Money for Madagascar, the project brings together a consortium of international experts, including UWE Bristol, Malagasy conservation organisation Sadabe and the Regen Network.

The initiative, ‘Locally Led Environmental Stewardship to Protect Madagascar’s Forests and Communities’, will run for five years and will involve working closely with communities living in TAPA.

It has been funded by the UK Government through the Darwin Initiative, a grants scheme that helps protect biodiversity and the natural environment in developing countries.

Dr Mark Steer, Associate Professor of Conservation Ecology at UWE Bristol, said: “This funding is a testament to the power of collaborative, evidence-based conservation. We are not just planting trees; we are helping to build a sustainable economic model where protecting the forest provides tangible benefits for local people.

“Our role at UWE Bristol will be to ensure the project’s impact is rigorously measured using advanced monitoring techniques, from drone surveys to bioacoustic analysis, providing the verified data needed to attract long-term investment.”

Without intervention, the forest being supported - home to critically endangered lemur species such as the Diademed Sifaka and Sibree’s Dwarf Lemur - is predicted to disappear within 20 years. The project will address the root causes of its problems by empowering local communities to become environmental stewards through an innovative scheme that links conservation directly to sustainable livelihoods.

The project will establish an ‘Environmental Stewardship Scheme’ co-produced with local communities. Farmers will be rewarded for implementing regenerative agricultural practices and forest restoration, funded through the sale of high-integrity biodiversity and ecosystem credits to global impact investors.

Project activities will include providing training for 1,000 farming families in climate-smart, regenerative agriculture to improve food security and reduce pressure on forests; co-creating a ‘menu’ of wildlife-friendly options and allied payments with local communities and restoring 800 hectares of degraded land within the buffer zone through reforestation and agroforestry.

Dr Steer, who said students and academics from UWE Bristol had been working alongside Sadabe in Madagascar since 2015, added: “This project is a fantastic example of UWE Bristol’s commitment to research with impact. It combines our expertise in environmental monitoring with a deep commitment to social justice and poverty reduction, creating a blueprint for conservation that can be replicated across Madagascar and beyond.”

The Darwin Initiative is one of the UK government’s flagship Biodiversity Challenge Funds, and awards grants that enable low and middle-income countries to conserve their unique biodiversity, reduce poverty and address climate change.

Announcing successful projects in the latest funding round, including initiatives across Africa and in Latin America and Myanmar, Chair of the Darwin Expert Committee Noëlle Kümpel said: “We received a record number of applications for this funding round, demonstrating how valued the Darwin Initiative is around the world. This made for some difficult decisions for the Darwin Expert Committee but this means that these successful projects are of a particularly high calibre, clearly demonstrating the need for them and the impacts they will have on biodiversity conservation and multidimensional poverty reduction on the ground.”