Speaker
1: |
For
60,000,000 years these forests have evolved in isolation. For all that time,
the great island of Madagascar has drifted alone through the Indian ocean.
There are 28 species of lemur on Madagascar and none of them can be found
anywhere else on earth. In fact most of the mammals and almost all the
reptiles on the island are unique. So too are more than 80% of the plants in
the Malagasy rainforest. It's one of the world's great storehouses of genetic
diversity. |
|
Botanist
Pierre Jules Rakotomalaza and his partner have been
hired by World Wide Fund for Nature to do a stock take. |
Pierre
Jules: |
[Foreign
language 00:01:37]. |
Speaker
1: |
Painstakingly
they're selecting, identifying and listing every species of plant in a single
hectare of forest. |
Pierre
Jules: |
[Foreign
language 00:01:44]. |
Speaker
1: |
It's
a slow job but they can't afford to take too long because the forest is
disappearing faster than they can identify what it contains. |
|
A
few months ago the rambaliala family chopped down a
hectare of forest and burned the dried out foliage. In the fertile ashes they
planted their rice and now in lake Mai they're harvesting. But Jones Pierre
knows that the soil won't stay fertile for long. The destruction of new
forest is steady and remoteless. |
Jones
Pierre: |
[Foreign
language 00:02:43]. |
Speaker
1: |
Human
beings first arrived in Madagascar only 1500 years ago. Steering the
outrigger canoes across the Indian ocean from the rice lands of South East
Asia. |
|
Since
then, they've slashed and burned their way across the island. Three quarters
of the original forest is gone, and with it the fragile top soil washed by
the rain into the rivers and by the rivers into the ocean. |
|
Most
of the rainforest that remains is in the remotest parts of the country. From
the airport on the tourist island of Nosy Be off north west coast of
Madagascar it's a two hour boat trip to the mainland. |
|
We're
going to visit a unique pilot project in the hills. According to it's creator, it offers the only hope of stopping the
destruction. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
[Foreign
language 00:04:12]. |
Speaker
1: |
Doctor
Nat Quansah was born in Ghana in West Africa and trained as a botanist in
London. He first fell in love with Madagascar when he came here as a student.
He is no fan of the traditional approach to conservation. "Trying to
fence the forest off from the people," he says, "Just won't work in
the long run." |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
People
are made for nature, nature is made for people. And until we learn to make
that to work in a balanced equation, we're not going to get anywhere. |
Speaker
1: |
Nat
Quansah needed a place for his experiment that was too remote from the modern
word and he found it. It's only 70 kilometres from our landing place on the
coast to the village Rambuda Sekwana
in the hills, but national highway six the main road south to the capital is
no superhighway. And this was the end of the rainy season. As darkness fell,
so did the rain. |
|
Three
hours later we finally extracted the land rover. It wasn't until 4:00 the
next morning that we reached the end of the road. Even here in the remote
hills the forest has been cleared and burnt but the rice farmers, not once
but time and again. But high up on the mountain slopes, great sways of
primary forest remain untouched. And just as important for Nat Quansah's
project the ties between the people and the forest haven't yet been broken. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
I'm
doing this project with this hypothesis; that if the lives of the people and
the habitats or the biodiversity around them are interwoven, are intricately
interwoven, and those people's lives depend on this biodiversity, then those
people also will happily or willingly take up the responsibility to save
those resources. |
Ndrunale: |
[Foreign
language 00:07:11]. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
[Foreign
language 00:07:15]. |
Speaker
1: |
Ndrunale is a traditional healer, he knows the medicinal
properties oh hundreds of species of plant and fungus. Knowledge that's been
accumulated for a thousand years and more. |
Ndrunale: |
[Foreign
language 00:07:25]. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
[Foreign
language 00:07:26]. |
Ndrunale: |
[Foreign
language 00:07:33]. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
Mm-hmm
(affirmative). |
Speaker
1: |
When
Nat Quansah found Ndrunale it looked as through his
precious knowledge might never be passed on. The church regarded him as a
witch. The doctors dismissed him as a quack. The people were beginning to
turn away from his traditional remedies. But for Nat Quansah those remedies
were the key to his new approach to conservation. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
The
people using plants for medicine is the link between them and nature and it's
a strong link because if you are ill you can't do anything, if you're strong
and healthy you can do lots of things. |
Speaker
1: |
In
the village of Rambuda Sekwana
Nat Quansah set out to strengthen that link still further. With the help of
the WorldWide Fun for Nature he set up a most
unusual health clinic. |
|
For
a 70 year old Joseph Manaparana is pretty fit. But
he's been suffering from stomach pains. A few years ago he would have had to
travel 80 kilometres a third of it on foot to reach the nearest clinic. Now
he can find a doctor just by crossing the river. |
Dr. Karl: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:02]. |
Joseph: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:03]. |
Dr. Karl: |
Mm-hmm
(affirmative). |
Speaker
1: |
There's
always a fully qualified GP like Doctor Karl Randriambololona
on duty at the clinic. |
Dr. Karl: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:11]? |
Speaker
1: |
But
twice a week he finds himself sharing his examination room with an arbitrate
traditional healer. |
Joseph: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:19]. |
Dr. Karl: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:20]. |
Speaker
1: |
Together
doctor and healer make their diagnosis and agree on treatment. |
Ndrunale: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:27]. |
Speaker
1: |
The
rule is that whenever possible the drugs will come from Ndrunale's
pharmacy in the forest, stick and leaf, bark and root fruit and flower. |
|
Gradually
the healers vast store of knowledge is being passed on to the doctors. |
Ndrunale: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:48]. |
Dr. Karl: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:51]. |
Speaker
1: |
Doctor
Randriambololona and his colleagues were trained to
prescribe the expensive pills and portions of western medicine. |
Dr. Karl: |
[Foreign
language 00:09:59]. |
Speaker
1: |
But
first they regarded these traditional remedies with suspicion. |
Dr. Karl: |
[French
00:10:06]. |
Speaker
1: |
[French
00:10:29]? |
Dr. Karl: |
[French
00:10:30]. |
Speaker
1: |
But
the flow of knowledge isn't all one way, 600 kilometres to the south in the
capital Antananarivo the traditional cures of the forest are refined by
modern science. This part of the project is led by the first Malagasy woman
to qualify as a pharmacologist, Nat Quansah's wife Patricia. She and her
students are finding cheap and practical ways to improve the efficiency of Ndrunale's treatments. |
|
The
juice of these berries is an effective remedy for cough and fever, but the
tree from which they come fruit's only once a year. The distilled oil from
the berries can be stored and used all year round. |
Patricia: |
We
try to help the people to convince them that the medicinal plants that they
have in the rainforest can cure them. So they now understand better their
relationship with forest and they know that their life depends on the forest
and they are ready to conserve the forest. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
[Foreign
language 00:11:49] |
Speaker
1: |
It's
no quick fix solution but Nat Quansah insists that the clinic is transforming
attitudes in Manongarivo. |
Speaker
9: |
[Foreign
language 00:11:59]. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
[Foreign
language 00:12:09]. |
Speaker
1: |
Respect
for old Ndrunale the traditional healer has
increased dramatically since the clinic came. |
Speaker
10: |
[Foreign
language 00:12:16]. |
Speaker
1: |
And
the forest is already benefiting. |
Ndrunale: |
[Foreign
language 00:12:20]. |
Speaker
1: |
But
so far that ban applies only to the small portion of the forest which is Ndrunale's medicine chest. Elsewhere not much has changed
as yet. Jones Pierre Rambialala still intends to
cut and burn a new plot for his family's rice field in two years time and he is the headman of Rambuda
Sekwana village. |
Jones
Pierre: |
[Foreign
language 00:13:11]. |
Speaker
1: |
Rice
and the way it's grown is still a fundamental problem. Nat Quansah's project
is studying how Jones Pierre can feed his family without cutting down
hectares of forests to do it. But the health clinic was the community's first
priority and so Quansah insists it had to be his too. |
Dr. Nat Quansah: |
The
project agreed to meet the community's priority, make that priority as the
project's priority. And in listening to their point of view you build
confidence, you build trust. And once that trust is built it becomes easier
to talk of and discuss things and find solutions to other problems. |
|
The
slash and burn is a problem. Meeting them on their health point has made it
easier for us to try and meet them on that agricultural point. If we can save
the biodiversity of Madagascar through making the people themselves want to
save, there's a lot for the people themselves and for the world. |
Speaker
1: |
At
the current rate all of Madagascar's forest will be gone in 30 years. On its
own, a project like Nat Quansah's is too small to make a dent in the
destruction, but in one respect at least he's surely right, the humans of
Madagascar are threatening the existence of most of its other inhabitants.
Only the humans of Madagascar can take on the responsibility for saving them. |