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COVID-19 (2022 Deadline)
Resilient food systems and biodiversity under future crises in Madagascar
PI: O. Sarobidy Rakotonarivo (sarobidy.rakotonarivo@gmail.com), University of Antananarivo
U.S. Partners: Randall Kramer, Andrew Bell, and James Herrera, Duke University
Project Dates: October 15, 2022 - March 30, 2024
Project Overview:
 | | Project PI Sarobidy Rakotonarivo pretesting the interactive games on tablets with farmers in Mandena. The farmers were asked to make decisions on a digital farming landscape. On each of their private farm plots, they could choose between farming vanilla intensively in a monocrop system (as they currently do), diversify crops (e.g., plant rice, cassava, or other perennial crops) or leave the land as fallow. The games were highly interactive and engaging, spatially and temporally dynamic, and accessible to participants with low education levels (through the use of icons and visuals). The purpose of the game was to examine : i) how shocks (such as COVID19 or vanilla price collapse) affect farmer willingness to diversify crops, and hence increase resilience, ii) how interventions (price shocks, subsidy) impact biodiversity conservation (i.e., whether it increases or decreases forest clearing for production-oriented landscapes) |
The COVID-19 crisis has led to severe increases in global food insecurity. In Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, COVID-19 has aggravated food insecurity by causing lost revenue from exports and tourism, disruption in agricultural markets, volatility in crop prices due to travel restrictions, and increases in the prices of basic commodities. In addition, COVID-19 has reportedly undermined Madagascar’s unique biodiversity, as people have increasingly turned to wildlife trafficking, charcoal production, logging, and forest clearing for agriculture to make up for lost income. The increased urban out-migration caused by the pandemic has also put extra pressure on natural resources and increased local demand for food and other needs.
This project aims to inform the prevention and resolution of future crises by providing better understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods and food security and its knock-on impacts on biodiversity in northeastern Madagascar. The project team will first carry out key informant interviews and focus groups to identify the various mechanisms by which COVID-19 has altered food security and livelihoods, and they will also explore farmer livelihood coping strategies during COVID-19. Using a choice experiment survey, they will then examine farmers’ preferences for regenerative agriculture as an alternative to practices that are reliant on input markets (such as monoculture forest-derived vanilla crops) or the need to engage in forest clearing. The researchers will also conduct innovative experimental games with farmers to examine their willingness to coordinate their efforts in regenerative agri-environmental contracts. They will further facilitate multi-stakeholder workshops in rural village settings to synthetize knowledge learned from the discrete choice experiment and games, and jointly explore their practical implementation and integration into existing or alternative innovative livelihood strategies.
This project will provide key policy recommendations that will be disseminated to decision makers and a wider audience through appropriate channels (a short video and a workshop). In addition, the co-production of these recommendations with decision makers and affected communities will foster ownership and increase the likelihood that they will be fully incorporated into policy design. Beyond the lifetime of the project, the Duke University Lemur Center and the project PI have ongoing related commitments in the Sava region of Madagascar and will be in a position to continue to engage with communities and various stakeholders on these issues.
Project updates
During April-June 2023 reporting period, the project team completed the main data collection. They implemented a choice experiment survey and experimental games with 200 farmers in the villages of Mandena and Andrapengy to examine farmers’ preferences for regenerative agriculture as an alternative to practices that are reliant on input markets (such as monoculture forest-derived vanilla crops) or the need to engage in forest clearing in the event of crises such as COVID19.The field team spent a total of five weeks in these villages (15 April to 27 May 2023). The experimental games aimed to examine the impact of policy interventions (price shocks and individual payments) on farmer willingness to diversify crops, (and hence increase resilience) and to support forest conservation. They were developed on Netlogo and played on tablet computers in a group of six farmers with farmers. Since the completion of the data collection, the team has been busy cleaning the survey and game datasets and preparing them for data analysis. Publications
Rakotonarivo, O. Sarobidy, and O. Ravaka Andriamihaja. “ Global North–Global South Research Partnerships Are Still Inequitable.” Nature Human Behaviour, October 12, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01728-0 Rakotonarivo, O.S., Rakotoarisoa, M., Rajaonarivelo, H.M. et al. Resolving land tenure security is essential to deliver forest restoration. Commun Earth Environ 4, 179 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00847-w Bell, A.R., Rakotonarivo, O.S., Bhargava, A. et al. Financial incentives often fail to reconcile agricultural productivity and pro-conservation behavior. Commun Earth Environ 4, 27 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00689-6
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