FEATURE - Madagascar seeks eco-tourists to help fight poverty
Date: 24-Dec-01
Country: MADAGASCAR
Author: Matthew Green
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.
