Biodiversity and Development, hand in hand

This year’s International Day for Biodiversity – which falls today, Thursday 22 May 2025 – is being held under the theme: ‘Harmony with nature and sustainable development.’

The phrase could be our slogan, and at Money for Madagascar we work specifically with men, women and children in arguable the world’s biodiversity hotbed to help Malagasy people achieve development and opportunity, while protecting and promoting the island’s vibrant, vital, natural environment.

Madagascar is a – arguably ‘the’ – hotbed for global biodiversity.

Five per cent of all the world’s species are found in its rainforests, dry forests, wetlands and other wilderness, and close to 90 per cent of those live only in Madagascar.

But the Malagasy wilderness is at extreme risk.

Madagascar has the world’s fourth-highest rate of deforestation. It has already lost 80 per cent of its natural areas and loses around 200,000ha. to deforestation each year. At the current rate, Madagascar’s forests will be completely gone within 40 years.

And more than 3,900 Malagasy plant and animal species are threatened. The ‘level’ above ‘threatened’ is endangered: 600 species of flora and fauna are endangered. The ‘level’ above that is extinction.

The International Biodiversity Day, held today, Thursday 22 May 2025, has as one of its suggested statements:

‘Biodiversity is the foundation of all life on Earth. It is fundamental to human well-being, a healthy planet, and economic prosperity for all people. We depend on it for food, medicine, energy, clean air and water, protection from natural disasters as well as recreation and cultural inspiration.’

We entirely agree, and would add that the environment is not only vital for our survival, it and the animas and plants which also rely upon it and are each vital parts of it, deserves to exist just as much as any person or group of people does.

The day’s ‘official slogan’ this year is: ‘Harmony with nature and sustainable development.’

And on this, we are in complete accord.

Because the people of Madagascar, who have been handed the responsibility to protect the island’s vital, vibrant natural environment, also face extreme and serious challenges.

Madagascar is the world’s fourth-poorest country.

Eighty per cent of Malagasy people rely on farming – in many cases subsistence farming or day labour – to access food. Very nearly as many – 79.9 per cent – survive on just £1.73 per day or less: the global poverty baseline.

More than one million Malagasy people are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity. This term means they lack sufficient food to meet their basic needs, threatening their ability to work, and also their lives: the next ‘level’ of food shortage is famine.

Many, many more experience hunger every day, missing at least one meal: 50 per cent of Malagasy children suffer stunting due to malnutrition. One in ten do not reach their tenth birthday.

This is an absolutely unacceptable situation. No person deserves to live in poverty, hunger and fear over where their next meal is coming from.

No-one should be denied the opportunity to reach their potential by poor health, lack of care, lack of educational opportunities or the means to access them.

And it is even less acceptable when the men, women and children we demand must help save the rainforests, in part to save us all from catastrophe, are the same people denied these opportunities and forced into this shocking discomfort and danger.

At Money for Madagascar, we work with these communities. We listen to them, and help them define the challenges they face, and set the means by which they overcome them.

We help children access and get the greatest benefit from, education.

We help youngsters who have ‘fallen through the gaps’ and can no longer live with their families get the sheter, food, healthcare, education, and vital care and attention, they need and deserve.

We help Malagasy people with no access to power connect using innovative solar technology, improving health as wll as education and livelihoods.

We work with communities to help them grow more food, increase their incomes, lift themselves from poverty and hunger, and protect and expand the amazing environment which surrounds them, of which they are part, and on which we all rely.

The International Day for Biodiversity is explicitly about development and the environment working together rather than pulling apart or clashing.

So are we.

All at Money for Madagascar wish you a happy IDB, but also a happy year, and lifetime, of celebrating biodiversity and human development and comfort for all.