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Abstract:
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"Scientists' ideas about integrated conservation in Madagascar cluster around a recent aid-driven policy whose objective is state legal recognition of customary law. Natural scientists consider the recognition of customary law as a tool to go beyond the protected area approach by extending conservation to all remaining natural forests. Environmental economists look at it as a means to alleviate rural poverty through tradeoffs between productive uses and environmental services. Sociologists and anthropologists think that recognition of customary law will lead to a sustainable use of forest resources because it enhances tenure security of rural populations.
"Starting from that definition of the new paradigm, the paper presents a synthesis of the results field work conducted in 2003 and 2004 on a systematic sample of different local situations including cases of conversion of forested lands for agriculture, rural charcoal markets, and the extraction of palm fibre. I found that the recognition of customary law by state law lead in all of the six local situations to a repositioning of local actors' strategies. We are faced with selective reinterpretations of environmental policy according to indigenous moral and legal principles based social representations of labour, ancestral domain and trans-ethnic identity.
"The resulting difficulties to implement a pro-poor forest policy are no obstacle to its political legitimacy because in postcolonial administrative practice, 'exclusion', 'recognition', 'participation', as well as state property-based patron-client relations represent competing solutions applicable to the same problem situation, and not mutually exclusive public policies. To decide under which circumstances forest-based poverty alleviation through common property institutions can be a viable policy goal, further research should not only document case specific customary rules but also compare the differential options in implementing state forest law that lead to transformations in those customary rules."
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