[LUM#11] Made in Madagascar
Auriane, Raphaël, Isabelle, and Sabine, undergraduate students in Ecology and Organismal Biology (EBO) at the University of Montpellier, spent the summer doing humanitarian work in Madagascar. It was an opportunity to work with the local population to promote better stewardship of resources and to travel off the beaten path.
“When we arrived and the airport staff found out where we were going, they looked at us with wide eyes!”says 21-year-old Auriane. Nineteen hours by bush taxi and seven hours by boat later, the four students disembarked in Analalava, a small coastal town in northwestern Madagascar.
Raphaël, Auriane, Sabine, and Isabelle organized this project with Opti’Pousse Haie, an association founded by young researchers from Réunion and mainland France, with the goal of establishing, in close partnership with a local association, a community-managed marine protected area in Analalava. Traveling throughout the region by canoe, the four Montpellier residents participated in village meetings to discuss the harmful effects of certain aquaculture practices while proposing solutions for better resource management.“We talked to them about the breeding cycles of fish species or the types of nets to prioritize, ”explains Auriane, “and then the villagers chose what they wanted to implement—or not—in their village.”
Three areas of focus
Once there, the students organized their work around three main areas. The most important focused on raising awareness of sustainable agricultural practices, particularly agroforestry: the combination of trees and ground crops.“The idea was to identify the species cultivated by local farmers and foresters in order to create a theoretical database accessible to everyone,” explains Raphaël. Residents were also able to observe hands-on experiments such as composting, crop rotation, and intercropping legumes.
Second component: education. Using an educational kit developed by IRD researchers and with the association’s help, Auriane was able to raise awareness among young children about the region’s rich ecosystems: the reef, the seagrass beds, and the mangroves. This work is sometimes complex due to the country’s socio-economic challenges.“We had to adapt the kit because illiteracy is widespread in Madagascar, and class sizes can reach up to 40 children, aged 8 to 16.”
"Full of little touches"
The third and final focus is the restoration of Madagascar’s mangrove forests, “one of the most dynamic ecosystems on the planet because it stores enormous amounts of carbon,” explains Raphaël, but one that is threatened in particular by the use of mangrove wood for heating or construction.
Beyond their Auriane mission, Raphaël, Isabelle, and Sabine discovered a different way of traveling and connecting with others:“Everywhere we went, people offered to let us pitch our tent in their backyard or invited us over for a meal. It was full of little gestures like that!” An experience that, in addition to planting trees, sowed the seeds of lasting openness.
For interested students, the Opti’Pousse Haie association is regularly looking for volunteers for international solidarity projects.
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