“We can now say with credibility that we have kept 1.5 degrees alive, but its pulse is weak and it will only survive if we keep our promises and translate commitments into rapid action”. This statement from the President of COP 26 says it all.  

COP 26 closed in Glasgow just a couple of months ago. After having raised high expectations for a step change in the pace and scale of climate action, the final Glasgow pact, while being far from those expectations, can still be considered as one step in the right direction. 

At COP 26, parties to the Paris Agreement had to resolve three major gaps: a gap in targets to reduce emissions, a gap in rules to deliver and monitor progress, and a gap in financing the climate action needed to put the world on a pathway to a safer future.

Effective and meaningful reduction of emissions can only be achieved by de-carbonizing every sector. Targets for emissions reduction are still missing but parties agreed on ways forward to set credible figures. The agreement could have included stronger language, deadlines and ways to action an effective transition out of fossil fuels, in addition to concrete actions to stop nature loss and scale up restoration.  

The African nations group, of which Madagascar is part, came to Glasgow to demand climate justice and call for climate finance. African negotiators wanted $1.3 trillion to cope with the impacts of climate change and accelerate adaptation measures, and an additional commitment around loss and damage – estimated by experts to amount to trillions of dollars. The final deal sealed at Glasgow is far from this.

However, there are also positive outcomes such as a new global deal by 100 nations to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, which Madagascar joined, or the creation of an annual ocean dialogue for ocean-based climate mitigation and adaptation action.  The recognition of the vital role of nature in achieving the 1.5°C goal and the fact that biodiversity loss and climate change are intricately linked is undoubtedly a major progress. Another element that is worth mentioning is the recognition of the increasing role of non-state actors in climate action, because governments on their own will not succeed in keeping track of 1.5 degrees, the actions of businesses, civil society organizations, communities, citizens will more than ever count.

Well, that’s it for Glasgow, what about Madagascar? What can the country get out of COP 26?  

Madagascar took active part in COP 26 with a large delegation led by the President of the Republic himself. The prolonged drought in the South and its consequences on the lives of millions of men, women and children has raised an unprecedented awareness of climate change and its impacts in the country, up to the highest level.

A recent scientific study by the World Weather Attribution, however, denies the claims that climate change has caused the food crisis in the South. According to this study, while climate change might have had a small effect on increasing the probability of drought, any possible effect is less important than natural variability and the vulnerability of people in the region to food insecurity. Hence, past and present failure to find effective and durable solutions to address the challenges of water availability, low agricultural yields and poverty in this naturally dry area are to blame, not climate change.

Indeed, climate change at work exacerbates existing problems. Where populations suffer from poor food security, water shortages, lack of access to basic services and other signs of dire poverty, climate change will exacerbate those. Where ecosystems are degraded, climate change will aggravate the effects for species and humans. The best way to fight climate change is therefore to first address all the non-climate problems: rampant poverty, environmental degradation, poor infrastructure and so on.

Nature is Madagascar’s first and greatest asset. Key economic sectors such as agriculture, livestock, fisheries or tourism all greatly depend on healthy nature. Nature is also our greatest asset in the fight against climate change. Forests, mangroves and seagrasses have been identified as major carbon sinks. Healthy ecosystems are fundamental to build resilience for people and wildlife. For Madagascar, nature, climate and livelihoods are intricately linked and so will be the solutions to the challenges they pose.  

Promoting local economic development that benefits communities living nearby high biodiversity areas, such as parks and other protected areas, adding value to nature resources and increasing market integration of rural farmers are critical to reduce the dependency on natural resources. Finding alternatives to the use of charcoal produced from natural forests and mangroves (which is the case in most regions outside of the central highlands) and ensuring availability and affordability of such alternatives at scale should be a top priority, while ensuring better managed fuelwood production in the meantime. The presidential vision to make Madagascar green again needs to be accompanied by a clear and shared plan that is laying where, what for and how forest restoration and reforestation/afforestation should take place, is much needed. For instance, where and with what species should forests be restored to maintain critical functions (such as habitat for lemurs and other species and corridors to allow them to move and adapt to climate change), for carbon sequestration or for wood and fuel provision?  

Above all, it is critical to ensure that the remaining standing forests and natural ecosystems are effectively protected and maintained. This requires better resourcing protected area management, making law enforcement more effective and eradicating corruption at all levels in the natural resources sector. Madagascar counts on generating revenues from forest carbon by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), mainly through large scale reforestation – a national target of 150,000 ha now set for 2022. But what is the point if we continue to lose existing forests to fires, even in the core zones of protected areas as is the case with Menabe Antimena, Ankarafantsika and others? As a matter-of-fact, experts estimate that if Madagascar’s forests continue to disappear at the current rate, the country will turn from a current carbon sink into a carbon emitter as soon as 2030.

So, coming back to the question: what can Madagascar get out of COP 26?

Madagascar’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) estimates at 42 billion USD the total amount required to ensure that the country is set to face future climate events and their impacts and that it builds resilience to maintain adequate agriculture and fisheries yields, maintain critical infrastructure, prevents the expansion of future diseases, avoids future water shortages and food insecurity and ultimately reduces the risks for future social conflicts, aggravated poverty and economic downturns. 

COP 26, with the many commitments of future climate finance could open additional and new funding channels for Madagascar to deliver on these commitments. However, in order to be able to fully take advantage these opportunities, Madagascar will have to show it is committed to and taking the appropriate actions for protecting the remaining natural ecosystems and addressing the drivers of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and rural poverty.

This would be our most meaningful contribution towards 1.5 degrees for the planet and definitely the most reliable lifeline for the current and future generations of Malagasy people.    

Many institutions attempted to link the current health crisis to environmental degradation. What are the links between pandemics and the environment?

This is what the book by Sonia Shah, a renowned science journalist, entitled Pandemic*, explains through evidence. The author goes back to history, those of medical science and human societies, to explain how past epidemics appeared and how human activities on the environment played a decisive role, although often poorly recognized. 

To start, over the past 50 years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have emerged or re-emerged in places where they had not existed before. Years before the first cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, 90% of epidemiologists predicted the inevitability of a new pandemic, caused by a known virus or a brand new one such as the current coronavirus.

Then we all carry a lot of microbes in us, so do all the other species. When these microbes remain in the body in which they evolved, they do not cause disease. Thus, neither Ebola nor coronavirus make bats sick. By contrast, they cause diseases in our bodies because they are new to us – they exploit a new habitat. The exchange of pathogens goes both ways – from animals to men and vice versa. According to Shah, our environmental policies have built shorter roads between us and wild animals. By cutting down forests to build our cities, factories, or mines, we have destroyed the habitat of other species, sometimes even caused their extinction. Species that survive human action must be content with the remaining fragments of natural habitat or invade that of humans.

The first case of Ebola in 2014 was that of a two-year-old child in West Africa, who was playing near a tree where bats lived. These bats normally lived in the forest, but by escaping fire and saw, they came to perch in the trees near human dwellings…

The author also took the example of West Nile virus, a virus that comes from migratory birds in Africa. Ornithologists had known for centuries that these birds landed seasonally in North America, but the first case of fever did not appear there until 1999. For a long time, the species of domestic birds that met these migratory birds were diverse enough, including healthy populations of green woodpeckers and rattles, which are poor carriers of the virus. With urbanization, the diversity of birds has decreased, green woodpeckers and rattles have become increasingly rare and have been gradually replaced by crows and robins, which are generalist species capable to live in any type of degraded environment, and which are good carriers of the virus. That' is how a mosquito could have bitten an infected bird and then a human being, and thousands of people are sick every year in North America...

The case of Lyme disease, an infectious disease that is transmitted by ticks, is another clear evidence. This disease first appeared centuries ago. The author links the spread of the disease in the United States to the creation of suburbs and the resulting forest retreat over the past fifty years. This forest retreat disrupted the balance of species composition, and possums and chipmunks that inhabited the forest were replaced by mice and deer. It turns out that a normal mouse destroys 50 ticks a week against a possum that destroys hundreds and hundreds a week simply by grooming. Ticks had to find a new habitat and the disease spread across the United States...

According to experts, the current coronavirus came from bats and contaminated humans through an intermediate host that has not yet been identified but is suspected to have been found in the Wuhan live animal market...

To all this, we can add the impacts of climate change that, by disrupting the seasons and ranges of species, causing human migrations, may promote the emergence of new diseases or their reappearance in new and unprepared places. All this is made easier by the expansion of the global air network, the promiscuity of cities, the lack of sanitation in some cities, and so on.

Today our top and common priority is to defeat COVID-19, and I acknowledge the efforts made by the State, communities, the private sector, the civil society, citizens. Now we must get ready for the post-COVID-19. We need to understand that pandemics, like climate disasters, are linked to our huge ecological footprint on the planet. We have made extensive use of our natural resources and COVID-19 shows us today what the price is. For the future, we must renew our link with nature, respect the needs of other species, stop all illegal trade in species, preserve and restore natural ecosystems, preserve biodiversity.  By protecting nature, we protect ourselves.  

(*) SHAH, Sonia. Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond. Ed. S. Crichton. 2016. 288 p.