Tag: payment for ecosystem services
From trepidation to appreciation: my experience with Madagascar’s mangroves
When I started working with mangroves four years ago, I had no idea what I was getting myself into...
Conserving the Bay of Assassins: the story so far
From village meetings to mangrove mud, this is the story of three years of effort from coastal communities to protect the mangroves of the Bay of Assassins in southwest Madagascar
Making a living from the forests between land and sea
by Kitty Brayne, Country Coordinator, Madagascar I’m in a fishing village, but I can’t see the sea. Ankazomborona is perched on the edge of a muddy channel separating land from a forbidding forest of twisted mangrove trees, their roots veering...
Using the right tools for the job: my experiences with TESSA
by Lalao Aigrette, Senior Blue Carbon Scientist, Toliara, Madagascar According to my colleagues, Kenya is my second home, as this trip marks my sixth visit to the east African country. I recently attended a follow-up workshop about the uses of the Toolkit...
Staff Q&A with Aude Carro, Blue Forests Coordinator (NW Madagascar)
In the nineteenth instalment in our series of Q&As with Blue Ventures staff, we ask Aude Carro, Blue Forests Coordinator (NW Madagascar), some searching questions about science, conservation and superpowers…
Mapping resources with the communities in the Bay of Assassins
by Katrina Dewar, Field Scientist, Madagascar This was my first introduction to the lives of the Blue Forests team – finally I got to go on an adventure with them! For a whole week we worked on developing resource use...
Longing for a carbon project
by Sylvia Paulot, Blue Carbon Scientist, Toliara – Madagascar For Mamelo Honko, a community based association for mangrove protection in Ambondrolava, southwest Madagascar, International Mangrove Day (held on July 26th) is one of the rare occasions to share publicly their...
Blue forests: progress made and looking forward
By Trevor Jones, Geospatial Analyst and Manager, Vancouver If someone had told me three years ago that I would come to work in Madagascar’s mangrove forests, I wouldn’t have believed them. Fast forward to July 2011 and I found myself commencing...
Andika sur Mer reserve opening: a photo diary
Andika-sur-Mer, a vezo fishing village of just over 200 people located about 20 kilometers south of Morondava on Madagascar’s west coast, closed their first temporary mangrove reserve in December of 2011. In this photo slide-show, our Conservation Coordinator, Brian Jones,...
Blue forests workshop
This article by Mairead Rocke was originally published on the Blue Carbon Portal: you can read the original post here On the 17th and 18th of January 2013, the validation workshop for the GEF Blue Forests project was held at the...
Blue carbon in Abu Dhabi
by Trevor Jones, Remote Sensing Scientist, Madagascar Lalao Aigrette, fellow BV Blue Forests colleague, and I recently spent a fascinating two weeks in the western coast of the Arabian Gulf. We were participating in the initial research of the Abu...
Antanandahy: where the women rule the mangroves
by Sylvia Paulot and Kate England, Blue Forests team, Madagascar After winding its way west, Madagascar’s Tsiribihina River empties into the Mozambique Channel in a maze of tributaries entwined with mangroves. At the end of last year, Sylvia and Kate...
A journey of crab catching in the mangrove channel
by Sylvia Paulot, Blue Forests Scientist, Madagascar As mangrove conservation officer, I have visited many villages in mangrove forests, and talked much with the local people, but I have never really experienced first-hand the daily life of a fisher from one...
Making moves towards Madagascar’s first mangrove carbon project
by the Blue Forests Team, Madagascar Madagascar’s 5,600 km coastline includes Africa’s third largest extent of mangroves: an estimated 213,000 hectares! These “blue” forests take and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide and support a diverse and in many cases...
Blue forests: behind the scenes…
by Samir Gandhi, Blue Forests Research Assistant, Madagascar A lot has changed for me in 12 months, undoubtedly for the better. Just over a year ago I was stuck in a dead-end office job; now, I am working for Blue Ventures...