In 2001, the Madagascar Ministry of Environment, Forest and Tourism, in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), launched a program to create the 372,470ha Makira Forest Protected Area and to finance it through carbon markets. This action protected one of the largest remaining contiguous tracts of low and mid-altitude rainforest in eastern Madagascar—ecologically and biologically important because of the high biodiversity value and large numbers of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. 

The establishment of the Makira Forest Protected Area is based on an integrated approach to reduce human threats to the region’s forests, while at the same time addressing the needs of the local communities and engaging these communities in the management of the protected area. The project combats the principal cause of deforestation in the area—slash-and-burn agriculture (“tavy”), driven by both subsistence and economic pressures—as well as threats from bush meat hunting, collection/exploitation of timber and non-timber forest products, burning of forest land for cattle.  Underlying these activities are factors such as open access to forest resources, rapid population growth, poverty and insecurity that are driving unsustainable resource use. The Makira Project focuses its interventions at improving farmer welfare and empowerment to address these underlining causes of forest clearance.