Innovative Financing for Local Coastal Communities in Madagascar

This briefing advocates for a shift toward innovative, bottom-up financing for coastal communities in Madagascar to combat biodiversity loss and poverty. It highlights the Beolobe regranting mechanism and the MIHARI network as models for empowering local stewards and small-scale fishers, while warning of risks such as legal gaps and financial mismanagement.

• Madagascar faces ongoing biodiversity loss and natural resource degradation despite three decades of international donor investment and conservation efforts. The country is reported to have the most threatened living species globally as of 2023, with nearly 3,800 species at risk of extinction, and lost 44% of its forest area between 1950 and 2014.
• Local communities in Madagascar are economically disadvantaged and vulnerable to shocks, including cyclones, health issues, and banditry. They face threats from land grabs—specifically citing law 2021-016 which may put 5 million households at risk—and security threats against conservation leaders, including murder and death threats from illegal resource exploiters.
• Current conservation funding often fails because it prioritizes the establishment of protected areas and biodiversity activities over the primary needs of local and Indigenous people. This often limits community access to resources and fails to provide meaningful solutions to their problems.
• The MIHARI LMMA Network, established in 2012, represents the first community management network model in the South-West Indian Ocean, currently comprising 280 individual Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) aimed at empowering local marine resource managers.
• The Beolobe regranting mechanism is an emerging bottom-up platform in Madagascar designed to empower small-scale fishers to lead project design and implementation. It aims to create a community trust fund involving philanthropists, investors, and the private sector, and will launch a Coastal Business Incubator Fellowship to develop sustainable 'blue businesses'.
• Community trust funds in Madagascar face several operational and systemic risks, including potential fraud, low financial management capacity, literacy barriers, and a lack of legal status for community organisations. Higher-level risks include the absence of laws protecting whistleblowers and environmental defenders, and inconsistent enforcement of regulations.
• The Biodiversity and Protected Areas Fund (FAPBM) serves as a large-scale trust fund for biodiversity in Africa, with $150 million in invested capital used to preserve 64 protected areas covering over 5.3 million hectares.

APA

South African Institute of International Affairs (2024). Innovative Financing for Local Coastal Communities in Madagascar. https://saiia.org.za/research/innovative-financing-for-local-coastal-communities-in-madagascar/

Chicago

South African Institute of International Affairs. Innovative Financing for Local Coastal Communities in Madagascar. 2024. https://saiia.org.za/research/innovative-financing-for-local-coastal-communities-in-madagascar/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=South African Institute of International Affairs |title=Innovative Financing for Local Coastal Communities in Madagascar |date=6 June 2024 |url=https://saiia.org.za/research/innovative-financing-for-local-coastal-communities-in-madagascar/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{southafricaninstituteofinternationalaffairs2024innovative, author = {{South African Institute of International Affairs}}, title = {{Innovative Financing for Local Coastal Communities in Madagascar}}, institution = {South African Institute of International Affairs}, year = {2024}, month = jun, url = {https://saiia.org.za/research/innovative-financing-for-local-coastal-communities-in-madagascar/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }