
The World Bank reminds us that Malagasy people are among the world’s poorest, and that development need not threaten the environment on which we all rely. Our work follows this vital and accurate mantra. We join the Bank in calling on the world’s richest nations help Malagasy livelihoods improve in environmentally-friendly ways.
As we approach the end of the first month of 2025, and with a new regime in the world’s most powerful country withdrawing that state from the Paris Climate Agreement, it is worth noting that the actions we take as individuals, and in non-governmental contexts, may be more important than ever before.
In October 2024, the World Bank’s Poverty, Prosperity and the Planet report noted that Madagascar is the world’s ninth-poorest country, with 79.7 per cent of its population living on less than US$2.15 per day.
It noted that eight of the other ten were also sub-Saharan nations, and unlike all nine of the other poorest ten states in the world, only Madagascar was not experiencing or had experienced civil war or armed resistance to its government in the last five years.
The report predicts that while the situation may improve in the next 24 months, it would do so only slowly and by a small amount, projecting 79.1 per cent of Malagasy people would live in poverty by the end of 2025, and 78.4 per cent by 31st December 2026.
Poverty, Prosperity and the Planet also reports that 66 per cent – two thirds – of all annual global carbon and other fossil fuel emissions come from just ten of the world’s richest countries: the 140 least emitting countries produce less than five per cent of such emissions.
Madagascar is one of the world’s carbon-negative states, actually removing more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. Yet, in common with many of the world’s poorest stats, its people are at far greater than average risk from the direct impacts of climate change – floods, disease, soil loss and degradation, famine, and cyclones – than those in other parts of the world.
There is a common belief that ‘development’ and other measures by which people improve their standards of living must be damaging to the environment, but the World Bank notes that this is no longer – if it ever were – the case: ‘Low-income countries barely contribute to emissions and emissions are not expected to grow significantly under current (development) policies… This is where international financing plays a key role—in enabling these countries to invest in future-oriented (low emissions) technologies now.‘
This message – that development and improving people’s lives and livelihoods need not (and indeed must not) damage the environment upon which all Malagasy people and everyone all over the world rely – has been at the heart of our work and approach since we began working with Malagasy men, women and children.
Our programmes create not just improved livelihoods, welfare, potential, health and progress of those people, who are among the world’s poorest and face some of the greatest risks from man-made – but not Madagascar-made – climate change, but also protect and promote the unique Malagasy environment: the rainforests, and the plants and animals they nourish and house.
We add our voice to that of the World Bank: the world’s wealthiest countries can and should help its poorest, including Madagascar, to improve people’s lives while protecting the environment upon which we all rely.