Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at the ways in which different people, environmental conservationists, state agents and rice and vanilla cultivators use, acquire and maintain knowledge in Northeast Madagascar. The paper explores different systems of knowledge in the production of sustainable futures in Madagascar.

Paper long abstract:

Madagascar is a "hot spot" for environmental conservation with 90 % of flora and 80 % of fauna being endemic. It is also world's biggest vanilla producer, producing 50-80 % of the world's consumed vanilla. In 2013 following the guidelines of the UN and IUCN to protect 10% of every country's major biomes (see the 2010 Convention on Biological Diversity targets), Madagascar met this target. At the same time, World Bank and IMF argued that more than half of Madagascar's land could be potentially used for expansion of cultivated area to secure food production for country's population, 70% of which gain their subsistence from the land. These land transforming processes are informed by scientific and expert knowledge based on certain power relations, institutions and practices and on the concern for sustainable life.

However, among the rice and vanilla cultivators living in the vicinity of the Marojejy National Park in Northeast Madagascar, the relationship to land and environment is intimate and continuity of life depends on the blessings of the ancestors and elders and relationships, especially to kin. Maintaining these relationships requires knowledge that is acquired through observations, experience, experimentation and continuous speculations. This is how cultivators approach new technologies, such as intensive irrigated rice cultivation, tha thas been introduced bythe state, trans-national NGOs and multilateral institutions, but has not replaced swidden hillrice cultivation system and . The aim of the paper is to explore different systems of knowledge within processes aiming to produce sustainable futures.