Sustainable Landscapes for Eastern Madagascar – A Midterm Impact Evaluation

Abstract

The Sustainable Landscapes in Eastern Madagascar project aims to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers and reduce carbon emissions by implementing climate-smart agriculture and more sustainable forest management in the two remaining large blocks of forest in the eastern part of Madagascar, covering 660,000 hectares in 15 districts. We present findings from a midterm clustered phase-in evaluation. Baseline data was collected in early 2019 from 1822 households in local community associations. A total of 1654 were successfully re-interviewed in late 2022. Midline results show widespread adoption of a range of conservation agriculture practices, with early project recipients showing increased adoption rates of up to 20 percentage points greater than comparison households, including soil conservation measures (2–13 pp), agroforestry (2–6 pp) and the use of drought-resistant crops (2–6 pp). Further, household food security using the consolidated approach for reporting indicators of food security shows improvement across intention-to-treat, local average treatment effect and difference-in-differences specifications. In terms of forest use, fewer beneficiaries report deriving income from unsustainable activities in both summer (1 pp) and winter (4–7pp) seasons.