Madagascar – Forest
– Environment and Forestry

The ban on logging for precious woods has been in effect since January 2019. The government has strengthened forest protection to prevent illegal logging and exploitation. The same applies to increasing the area under forest management to achieve Madagascar's reforestation goal. Forest fires are also a serious problem, as fighting them is hampered by the fact that Madagascar has only one forest ranger for every 210,000 hectares of forest.

Madagascar is one of the countries where environmental management and sustainable development have been central to public policies initiated and supported by donors since the first national environmental plan in the early 1990s. Having ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the island nation immediately focused on the sustainable management and development of its long-overexploited natural resources. The implementation of this Convention is reflected in the consideration of biodiversity as a source of sustainable financing for local development, both in the National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), as well as in the Municipal Development Plans (MDPs) and the institutional priorities of donors. In this regard, the country was a pioneer, for example with the 1996 GELOSE Law, in transferring responsibility for the management of environmental assets to local communities, and has thus accumulated considerable experience.