By UN Environment
The hills surrounding Ahbohibary Kofay used to be filled with birdsong, says Lydia, who tends a small rice paddy outside the tiny village at the bottom of Bemolanga valley. That was until this area in Western Madagascar was laid to waste by fire in the early 1990s. The fire killed the trees and the birds fell silent.
“There was a forest here before,” she says, indicating the corrugated slopes spreading to the horizon beyond her family’s fields. “Because of the bush fire, now it’s like this. Birds can’t live without trees.”
Without the trees holding the soil together, the land at the top of the valley started to erode. Every time it rained, streams carved deeper scars into the landscape—gullies known locally as lavaka—sending red soil down the valley and silting up the villagers’ fields. The local spring dried up and Lydia’s rice harvest fell by almost a third, forcing her family of six to put less on their plate, and giving them less to sell. Struggling to pay her children’s school fees, Lydia was forced to take her eldest son out of school. Read more>>
