Resilient Forests and Livelihoods: what it is, and why it’s necessary
From Tuesday 22 April 2025 to Tuesday 29 April 2025, the Green Match Fund campaign was open.
We reached our target of £60,000 on Friday 25 April: thank you so much!
All donations made up to then have been DOUBLED in value, and will be used in our Resilient Forests and Livelihoods programme.
You can still donate here, to help us help Malagasy people lift themselves from food shortage and poverty, and protect and expand the amazing and vital rainforest which surrounds them.
What is RFL, and why is it necessary?
Malagasy men, women and children are among the poorest people on Earth.
Madagascar itself is ranked as the world’s fourth- to eighth-poorest country on Earth (criteria differ) for which data is available, and the least developed.
Four in every five Malagasy people (79.9 per cent) survive on just £1.73 per day or less – the global poverty baseline.
And 80 per cent of Malagasy people rely on agriculture – many of them on subsistence agriculture – for food and in some cases income.
Malagasy agriculture, too, is under threat.
Although Madagascar is one of only four ‘carbon sinks’ – countries which absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit – the country is being hit by some of the hardest impacts of climate change.
Despite the fact that Madagascar and their people can truly argue that they have played no part in creating the looming climate catastrophe, Malagasy people are being hammered by it: droughts and floods ruin crops, while exceptional rainfalls are washing fertile soil away – soil which may not be replaceable during the expected lifespan of the human race.
These bitter realities combine to make Malagasy people suffer.
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.
Under this intense pressure – lack of food, poverty, loss of crops and fertile soil – it is easy to understand why some Malagasy people turn to the forest: destroying parts of it to free new soil to increase crop yields.
But this, too, is a catastrophe.
The Malagasy rainforest is one of the wonders of the modern world.
Five per cent of all the world’s species of plants and animals are found in Madagascar. Eighty per cent of those are only found there.
It is our duty to protect this vibrant, amazing biological treasure.
And we are not.
There are more ring-tailed lemurs in zoos than there are in the Malagasy rainforest.
More than 600 species of animals and plants in Madagascar are threatened with extinction.
Madagascar has already lost 80 per cent of its natural areas and loses around 200,000ha. to deforestation each year, in part due to illegal logging and slash and burn agriculture, both of which are efforts by Malagasy people to escape hunger and poverty.
The current rate of deforestation, if unchecked, could lead to the complete loss of Madagascar’s forests within 40 years.
Preventing this is not only vital for the forest and its species, it is also in our direct interest.
The rainforests are a vital source of the air that we breathe, and are central to our hopes to reduce the impact and length of the looming catastrophe we all face.
It is a grim irony that the sole remedy many Malagasy people can access to their insufferable, unjust situation is likely to make that situation even worse.
And that’s where RFL makes a real, meaningful, difference.
Resilient Forests and Livelihoods works with Malagasy people to address the problems and challenges they tell us are most important to them.
We provide them with training in new, proven agricultural approaches which increase crop yields and so incomes, with equipment and opportunities to practice them, as well as to try new ways to generate income.
We are helping Malagasy people lift themselves from poverty.
And these new approaches and methods reduce and remove the need to slash and burn sections of the rainforest.
We are also helping Malagasy men, women and young people learn more about the forests and wilderness that surrounds them, including how to protect and expand it.
We are simultaneously helping Malagasy people end their poverty and food shortage, and protect the rainforest on which we all rely.
This is development and the environment working together, hand-in-hand, each complementing and strengthening the other.
It is vital, and it is working.
And we need your help to keep it going.
This is why we are working so hard to raise these funds.
Because your donation can change and save the lives of Malagasy men, women and children, and through preserving the country’s and the planet’s precious rainforest, perhaps play some part in saving lives all over the world.
Double your impact. Join us saving lives in Madagascar and all over the world.
As noted, we already achieved our Green Match Fund target – thank you so much!
But if you still want to donate to the RFL programme, please do so here: your donation will be very gratefully received and will help Malagasy people lift themselves from poverty and hunger, and protect and expand the Malagasy rainforest, upon which we all rely.
Your donation will benefit:
Malagasy people who deserve as we all do to live in reasonable comfort, free from risk of malnutrition and harm: your donation will help us provide the platform from which they can increase their incomes, produce the food they need, and develop and manage their own initiatives and ideas. You will help change lives, absolutely for the better
The Malagasy rainforest and all the animals and plants within it (the Malagasy wilderness contains five per cent of all the world’s species of flora and fauna: 80 per cent of those are found nowhere else on the planet): your donation will give Malagasy people the means to protect and expand the forests, and safeguard the animals and plants it contains and supports
Everyone: the world relies on its forests. That includes all of us. Even if we did not have a moral responsibility to protect – or at least not be responsible for harming – the living things with which we share the planet, our rainforests provide air we breathe and are central to our hopes and efforts to reduce and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Your work and generosity will, in this way, benefit every person – every living thing – on Earth
Thank you!
Thanks so much for reading, and please help us give Malagasy people the platform they need to improve their lives and health, and protect and promote the magnificent ecosystem in which they live, and on which we all rely.
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Malagasy agriculture, too, is under threat.
Madagascar has already lost 80 per cent of its natural areas and loses around 200,000ha. to deforestation each year, in part due to illegal logging and slash and burn agriculture, both of which are efforts by Malagasy people to escape hunger and poverty.
