Tree planting project in East Africa

Madagascar

A report of NVC’s study tour to Madagascar
13th October 2001

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Preface

Until December 2000, our main activities involved building schools in Vietnam and sending commodities to the country, and supplying commodities to other areas where people needed urgent help. The study tour to Madagascar we arranged last year was the first attempt for us to offer our assistance in the form of manual labor. It was also the first joint attempt by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and a NGO to organize a project of this kind. The project was such a success that a second study tour to the country took place in August of this year. In this time, our group leader was the representative of our NGO, Dr. Hidetoshi Taga, a professor at Waseda University.

Twenty-seven people participated in the tour including five NVC members attending Niigata University, six students from Toyama University, another nine students from Waseda University and six students granted NVC internships. We were surprised to discover how physically strong the local inhabitants were and we realized that our own contribution to the project had its limits. In view of this, we hope that the following report will help to deepen the understanding of what is happening elsewhere in the world and stimulate your interests in it.


1, The Situation in Madagascar

One of the principal causes of the deforestation that afflicts Madagascar stems from its increase of population and social changes. Those have changed their traditional practice of slash and burn farming. If the practice is properly carried out, the soil’s regenerative powers are unaffected by this method. But people untutored in farming practices have continued the method of slash and burn farming in highly damaging ways. Deforestation has resulted in not only the loss of trees but in the depletion of the rice harvest as well. The loosened topsoil damages the rice fields and farms near rivers. This leads to a reduction of the size of the rice harvest in the country, where people are dependent on rice production.

Therefore, it is imperative that deforestation should be halted so that forests could be rebuilt. Although several previous attempts were made to solve this problem, lack of funds, administrative restrictions, and social changes have thwarted people’s efforts to find a solution.


2,The 2001 Study Tour to Madagascar

In Madagascar, there are many areas on mountains where the earth has subsided to form cliffs (See picture 1). We had visited these areas during the previous study tour and went there again in 2001. We piled up sandbags and erected stockades to prevent soil spillage. Moats were made to stop water flowing into the encroached areas and nursery trees were planted beside the waterways in an effort to fortify them against seepage. Sandbags, weighing more than 100kg each, were made up on the spot and were laid in two lines with three bags high along either side of the moats. Then, piles were driven in to the ground on both sides of the sandbags. And, they were covered with sand. In order to direct the flow of rainwater to the foot of the mountains where the earth had not collapsed, we built waterways at the top of the mountains where its soil were encroached. The depth of waterways was about 20 cm and its width was 50 cm. But the hard soil, called laterite, made it difficult to dig out with local spades we had been given. The success of our project relied heavily on worker’s mere physical strength.


After the waterways had been made, we planted nursery trees called ‘bedevil’ on collapsed area of the water channel. Bedevil is a hardy plant with strong roots. One villager suggested erecting wooden fences around the waterways to facilitate drainage and we put this suggestion into practice during this study tour (See Note 1).

The picture on the left (Picture 3) shows these wooden fences were erected at narrower points than other points where sandbags were used instead. We drove in piles in to the ground and wove small pieces of wood into a kind of latticed netting. Straw was then used to fill in gaps between the net and a wooden fence is completed. This process was repeated in other damaged areas.

In the end of the whole process of preventing soil erosion, we constructed a concrete dam at the entrance of such an area where most sands were driven into and there was lots of pressure to collapse its soil. This practice has worked well as a countermeasure against the soil erosion caused by the heavy rain in 2001 (See Note 2). As a result of this success, members of the National Diet, local assembly chiefs, locally based NGOs, and television crews have visited the areas in order to assess its feasibility to implement similar practices in other badly affected areas. We hope that this success will have a ripple effect in other parts of the country.


3,Epilogue

During the rainy season, large quantities of sand and silt flow into rivers. And the sand bags and wooden fences held them back. When the soil turns into a stable ground, ferns and grasses are ready to take root, grow and thicken out there. Trees can also grow if nursery trees are planted and the soil is given enough time to recover from the damaging effect of soil erosion. This is a long process and requires us to have perseverance, but we would like to continue our work with a hope that the whole area will be covered with vegetation one day.


[Basic facts about Republic of Madagascar]

Size: 587,000 square kilometers
(About one and a half times as large as Japan)
Distance from Japan: About 127,000 km
Population: About 12,800 thousands
Ethnic composition: African, Malaysian, and a tribal society consisting of about 18 tribes
Languages: Madagascar and French
Religion: Christianity, Animism, and Islam
Gross National Product (GNP): US 2,741million dollars (year 1998)
Gross National Product Per Capita: US 260 dollars (year 1998)
Exchange rate: About 6.3 Madagascar franc = 1 US dollar
Major industries: Farming (rice, coffee, and vanilla) and Fishing (Shrimp and Tuna)


Notes.1: The water inside the waterways also removes soil. Wooden fences can down the speed of water.
Notes. 2: Further work is done after this process.