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An Ethnography of a Carbon O Set Project in Madagascar's Eastern

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An Ethnography of a Carbon O Set Project in Madagascar's Eastern Durham E-Theses Entangling Molecules: an ethnography of a carbon oset project in Madagascar's eastern rainforest PENA-VALDERRAMA, SARA How to cite: PENA-VALDERRAMA, SARA (2016) Entangling Molecules: an ethnography of a carbon oset project in Madagascar's eastern rainforest, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11475/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Entangling Molecules: an ethnography of a carbon offset project in Madagascar’s eastern rainforest Sara Peña Valderrama In this dissertation I explore the multiple social lives of ‘carbon’ as key object of contemporary forms of global environmental governance. Through an ethnography of a forest carbon project, I detail the many forms that ‘carbon’ takes as it is deployed in a small locality in the forests of Madagascar. TAMS was a forest carbon project that ran for two decades in eastern Madagascar. Its aim was to reforest degraded fallows from slash-and-burn agriculture, or tavy, and to provide farmers with alternative livelihoods through the benefits obtained from the sale of carbon credits. Carried out by major conservation organisations, international institutions and the Malagasy government, TAMS was once hailed as a pilot carbon project for the whole of Africa. Six years after reforestation began, however, it came to a halt due to a series of complications and it was abandoned. My ethnography focuses on a series of glimpses into ‘carbon’ in its many guises as part of TAMS. This leads me to an analysis of the ways in which carbon credits are produced by, and at the same time re-articulate, ideas of value and waste in relation to forests and tavy; the peculiar materiality of ‘carbon’ as natural resource and form of labour; the experiences of ‘carbon’ as an instance of state oppression for farmers; and the complexity that arises from project actors’ efforts to turn grounded trees into mobile carbon credits. All along, we see how, far from the bounded CO2 molecule, the ‘carbon’ of forest carbon projects is not a fixed or stable object, but rather appears and disappears in multiple ways through diverse material and discursive practices. My aim is to show how specific forms of ‘carbon’—in their articulation of people’s relationships to each other and to their environments—open or foreclose particular socio-natural futures. Entangling Molecules: an ethnography of a carbon offset project in Madagascar’s eastern rainforest Sara Peña Valderrama Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology Durham University 2015 CONTENTS CONTENTS ................................................................................................................ II List of Figures ......................................................................................................... VI List of Abbreviations .........................................................................................VIII Declaration ............................................................................................................... X Statement of Copyright ........................................................................................ X Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. XI Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................. 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Carbon imaginaries today ................................................................................... 6 The Spirit of the Forest ................................................................................................ 7 Forest Spirits .................................................................................................................... 9 TAMS ................................................................................................................................. 13 Carbon imaginaries in the literature ............................................................ 16 Grounding and abstracting nature ....................................................................... 20 Carbon’s multiple social lives ................................................................................. 22 Summary of chapters: ......................................................................................... 25 Fieldwork: ............................................................................................................... 27 Mahatsara ....................................................................................................................... 30 The Tangalamena, key mediator of power in the village ............................ 34 Positionality and participant observation in Mahatsara ............................. 35 Other sources of data: ................................................................................................ 38 Ethical considerations ............................................................................................... 39 Chapter Two: Three Histories ......................................................................... 41 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 41 From molecule to credit .................................................................................... 42 The Kyoto Protocol and the ‘flexibility mechanisms’ ................................... 45 A History of Environmental Management in Madagascar ..................... 49 From pre-colonial to colonial times ..................................................................... 49 Post-colonial Madagascar ........................................................................................ 52 The National Environmental Plans (I to III) ..................................................... 54 TAMS, or the complicated project of Andasibe.......................................... 60 II Andasibe .......................................................................................................................... 60 TAMS, Tetik’asa Mampody Savoka ....................................................................... 64 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 69 TAMS as assemblage .................................................................................................. 71 Part I: Introduction to Chapters Three and Four ...................................... 73 Chapter Three: From Fallows to Forest ....................................................... 76 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 76 Back to the future: Recovering different pasts for different futures . 79 Degraded fallows: between un/productive pasts and futures ................. 80 The project to ‘restore the fallows’ ...................................................................... 84 The project to ‘bring back the forest’ .................................................................. 87 Changing visions of TAMS: restoring nature to different ends ................ 92 Recovering value from TAMS’ own waste ................................................... 98 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 108 Chapter Four: The Values of Deforestation ............................................. 112 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 112 Madagascar, a timely place ............................................................................ 116 Polluting Andasibe’s pasts ............................................................................. 123 Andasibe during the 19th century ....................................................................... 124 The values of Analamazaotra for the Colony ................................................. 126 The ‘Five year plan’ ................................................................................................... 133 ‘Valorising’ Madagascar through tavy............................................................... 139 Conservation, Labour and the Value of Loss ........................................... 141 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 147 Part II: Introduction to Chapters Five and Six ........................................ 150 Chapter Five: Voatery, Oppression in Time and Space ........................ 153 Introduction .......................................................................................................
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