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REWARDING BENEFITS THROUGH PAYMENTS AND MARKETS
Box 5.13: Example of a multiple-benefits REDD project in Madagascar
Background: Less than 15% of Madagascar’s land area remains forested, having lost about half of its forest
cover since 1953 with much regional variation (Hanski et al. 2007); for instance, most of the coastal lowland
forests have been cleared. Recently, unprotected natural forest was lost at a rate of 0.65% annually in the
period 2000-2005 (MEFT; USAID and CI 2009). The Ankeniheny-Mantadia-Zahamena corridor project in
east-central Madagascar is designed to protect some of the last remaining low and mid-elevation primary
rainforest.
Project design and goals: The project targets the delivery of multiple benefits for biodiversity, human livelihoods
and climate change mitigation. It is structured to take advantage of carbon financing from the emerging
voluntary and compliance markets through the sale of emissions reductions from REDD. Endorsed by
the government in 2004 and developed with NGO support led by Conservation International (CI), the project
provides for the creation of a new protected area. Its objectives combine protection against deforestation
with reforestation of targeted sites to restore habitat connectivity, enhancing local resource management
capacity (approximately 315,000 people live in 30 surrounding communes) and endemic species conservation.
Project governance and funding: The Environment Ministry acts as project manager, protected area administrator
and ‘vendor’ of the carbon offsets created through REDD and reforestation activities. Communities
and NGOs are organised into Local Management Units, federated within sectors, and ultimately report to
the Ministry. CI and the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund (BioCF) provide the technical expertise and financial
support to access carbon finance mechanisms, including future application of REDD carbon accounting
methodology and monitoring emissions reductions.
Because carbon finance is rarely able to cover high start-up and transaction costs in forest carbon projects,
the project combined carbon-credit purchase commitments and project support from the BioCF with targeted
biodiversity investments from CI and the government and community development funding through USAID
and the World Bank.
Source: personal communication Olaf Zerbock and James McKinnon, Conservation International
BIODIVERSITY AS A GLOBAL PUBLIC GOOD
As underlined throughout this report, biodiversity and
ecosystem services provide critical inputs to local and
national societies in terms of production, cultural
values and recreational amenity. However, biodiversity
is also a global public good which merits international
cooperation and support for its conservation, restoration
and management in its own right.
The supply of public goods usually falls to government
as such goods are by definition non-excludable
and non-rival: this makes it hard for business or individuals
to profit from producing them. Recognising
biodiversity as a global public good implies that governments
have a role to ensure its international pro-
vision, either by creating conditions for organisations,
businesses and individuals to undertake larger-scale
and more effective conservation or by taking on this
task themselves.
There are good reasons for governments to invest
in natural capital and ecosystem services beyond
their national borders or to devise international
payments for ecosystem services (see also Chapters
9 and 8):
• global benefits derive from biodiversity and
from local, regional and international ecosystem services,
notably non-use values. These need to be
made explicit and reflected in government policies;
• efforts to reduce biodiversity loss will require
particular efforts from biodiversity-rich developing
TEEB FOR NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY MAKERS - CHAPTER 5: PAGE 30