Our multi-year project in CAZ West, Madagascar, made possible thanks to the support of The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), continues to progress well.

When planning the project, we had hoped that 235 community members across the five project sites would be interested in learning agroforestry techniques, and we are delighted that we have achieved that level of community support, with 237 members currently participating in the training programme.

Young coffee plants ready to be ‘grown on’ in prepared beds  © The Aspinall Foundation Madagascar

Agroforestry is an agricultural method which has many benefits, including building resilience to the impacts of climate change. It combines annual or perennial crops, like vegetables and coffee, with beneficial trees and shrubs to create a symbiotic relationship that provides shade, moisture and nutrients to the main crop whilst providing carbon storage along with food and habitat for a variety of species, particularly bugs, bats, and birds.  

In the past few months young coffee plants, produced from seed by local nurserymen, have been distributed to each of the participating members. They will now be ‘grown on’ in specially prepared beds until they are mature enough to be transplanted into the areas set aside for agroforestry which will also be populated with fruit trees and other benefical native trees to create an effective land management system that will benefit both the communities and wildlife.

Formal Training Session  © The Aspinall Foundation Madagascar

Some of the training is carried out in a class-room style but there are plenty of practical sessions too.

Compost Making © The Aspinall Foundation Madagascar

For, example prior to this project none of the communities were making compost, relying instead on slash-and-burn to move to new areas of land once the nutrient levels were depleted, or using chemical fertilizers. Now community members are making compost pits using a low-cost method that does  not require significant additional resources. Plant and biodegradable waste material is shredded, using machetes or a shredding machine, and layered into a pit approximately a metre square. A bamboo pole is inserted during construction to provide a hole for aeration and, once full, the pit is covered to avoid it becoming too wet. Within a few months the contents of the pit will have decomposed, leaving a rich, easy to use, compost.

Using one of the shredders provided as part of the project  to make compost © The Aspinall Foundation Madagascar

It isn’t all about work though, as there are celebration days too. On the 20th June it was  World Environment Day and this year our team took the opportunity to celebrate the occasion in Sahanomana, one of the villages in the project area. The event was attended by around 113 adults and 145 schoolchildren. 


One of the posters created by our team  © The Aspinall Foundation Madagascar

Celebration days such as this bring people together for an enjoyable event, and children can create lemur masks, play football and take part in competitions. It is also an opportunity for our team to carry out additional awareness-raising on issues such as climate change. Posters help identify the issues, and also show that everyone can be part of finding solutions to the problems communities are facing.

An area of degraded forest to be restored  © The Aspinall Foundation Madagascar

One of the next steps for this project at the end of this year, or January 2025, is to participate in forest restoration by transplanting saplings of endemic tree species that have been cultivated in the local tree nurseries. There are currently 10,000 saplings ready to be planted into degraded areas of forest and a recent visit to an area transplanted earlier in the project found there were no dead plants that needed replacement. 

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund is a joint initiative of l’Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, the European Union, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan and the World Bank. A fundamental goal is to ensure civil society is engaged in biodiversity conservation.