Help Farmers Rear Silk Moths to Restore Forests

It is Sunday night and I have only 3 more days in Madagascar. I am in the capital, Antananarivo and I never enjoy the city as much as being in the field – any field. But it has been a useful week as I have had a chance to discuss the CPALI program with colleagues here. CPALI is trying to accomplish a different kind of conservation program than has been tried in the past. In the 90’s there was an effort to introduce various small-scale enterprise programs in developing countries in support of conservation. Unfortunately more than 90% of the programs failed and even among those that did not, none that I know of developed robust markets for the products that were being introduced. Unfortunately, the general public and especially the conservation groups, have not fully analyzed why these programs failed. In my opinion, the direct cause of those failures was that the individuals implementing the programs did not develop sustainable markets and an infra-structure to support them.

CPALI has been working to develop a market for wild silk since before we even began our fieldwork. Despite our efforts and an innovative marketing plan, and the fact that we have identified some buyers, we are not there yet. If we are to realize our dream of establishing a robust, Malagasy, conservation enterprise that can support Madagascar’s unique biological habitats, we will need to work closely with other conservation organizations to do so. The enterprise requires geographic and economic scale to be profitable and to be effective in saving the fragile habitats we have targeted. Achieving that scale requires a unified effort across the island. We hope that other groups will replicate our program and will work together to continue to build the markets that we have started to identify. My conversations with others during the past week have focused on updating the conservation and development community about just those issues.

When I return to the States I will continue to advocate this approach and prepare for my return to Madagascar, currently scheduled to coincide with the Spring harvest of the second crop of cocoons. Mamy Ratsimbazafy, our project manager, has participated in all of the conversations this past week and I am very glad to have his continued supervision of the project in the coming months. He believes that he can enlist 20 more farmers by the end of the year, bringing our total to about 50 (from 5 in January, 2009). It is important to note that all of the farmers have "skin in the game"--they get rewarded for results when we buy their output, not merely for participation during the training and site visits.

Dr. Chris Holmes, technical advisor to WCS came by to see the team and our workshop. He was pretty impressed and began snapping pictures. The team smiled obligingly. I had a long talk with Chris about where we are trying to go. We are trying to scale-up the project in support of the Makira Protected Area. However, we need funds. WCS is the recipient of funds from all major donors to support the Makira Area. Their micro-credit center is working well, which is great news for future farmers who want to borrow funds to expand their silk programs. However WCS’s own efforts to create livelihood programs still need work.

We are trying to work towards a collaboration that will combine CPALI’s approach with WCS’s access to funding.

CPALI ‘s goal is to scale up to 500 farmers by the end of 2010. Our problem is that we are small, with a very limited paid staff. Hence CPALI needs to grow to help the project scale. We were hoping to receive funds from USAID but because of the political situation, USAID is still precluded from distributing anything but humanitarian aid. A project costing $500,000 is small for a USAID grant but requires extensive logistical support to process. We are between the proverbial rock and a hard place – we need funds to grow and hire staff but we can’t get funds until we grow and have a larger staff!

We will continue to talk with WCS to find a way to better meld our respective resources and approaches.

We will also be approaching, Tany Meva, a Malagasy foundation that is the recipient of funds from the MacArthur Foundation for livelihood programs in Madagascar. Tany Meva contracts out the work to Malagasy NGO. With our recent success, Chris has kindly agreed to call a meeting in Tana of WCS, CPALI and the director of Tany Meva who has always been quite receptive to us but unable to help us directly.

As an added/alternative approach, would be working to establish a Malagasy CPALI – then we could receive funds directly from Tany Meva. Mamy has started the paperwork to make CPALI Madagascar (or some more appropriate name) a reality. We are trying to think of an appropriate and reverent name – we are thinking of Ny Sabaka (our caterpillars), paralleling the name of Ny Tanintsika, the Malagasy organization who makes the textiles sold on the suraka site. We are open to suggestions!