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The human communities and ecosystems of island and coastal southeast Africa face significant and linked ecological threats. Socioecological conditions of concern to communities, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and researchers include declining agricultural productivity, deforestation, introductions of non-native flora and fauna, coastal erosion and sedimentation, damage to marine environments, illegal fishing, overfishing, waste pollution, salinization of freshwater supplies, and rising energy demands, among others. Human-environment challenges are connected to longer, often ignored, histories of social and ecological dynamics in the region. We argue that these challenges are more effectively understood and addressed within a longer-term historical ecology framework. We reviewed cases from Madagascar, coastal Kenya, and the Zanzibar Archipelago of fisheries, deforestation, and management of human waste to encourage increased engagement among historical ecologists, conservation scientists, and policy makers. These case studies demonstrate that by widening the types and time depths of data sets we used to investigate and address current socioecological challenges, our interpretations of their causes and strategies for their mitigation varied significantly.Perspectivas Históricas sobre las Dinámicas Contemporáneas entre Humanos y el Ambiente en el Sureste de África Resumen Las comunidades humanas y los ecosistemas de las costas del sureste africano enfrentan amenazas ecológicas significativas y vinculadas. Las condiciones socio-ecológicas que preocupan a las comunidades, los gobiernos, las organizaciones no gubernamentales y a los investigadores incluyen la poductividad agrícola en declinación, la deforestación, la introducción de flora y fauna no nativa, la sedimentación y erosión costera, el daño hacia los ecosistemas marinos, la pesca ilegal, la sobrepesca, la contaminación por desechos, la salinización de las cuencas de agua dulce, y la creciente demanda de energía, entre otras. Los retos humanos - ecosistema están conectados con historias más largas, y frecuentemente ignoradas, de dinámicas sociales y ecológicas en la región. Argumentamos que estos retos se entienden y se tratan con mayor efectividad dentro de un marco de trabajo de ecología histórica con un periodo más largo. Revisamos casos de pesquerías, deforestación y manejo de desechos humanos en Madagascar, la costa de Kenia y el archipiélago de Zanzíbar para propiciar una mayor participación entre los ecologistas históricos, los científicos de la conservación, y los legisladores. Estos estudios de caso demuestran que al ampliar los tipos y la temporalidad de los conjuntos de datos que usamos para investigar y tratar los retos socio-ecológicos contemporáneos, nuestras interpretaciones de las causas de estos retos y las estrategias para su mitigación variaron significativamente.

In Ambovombe-Androy water is scarce, time-consuming to obtain, and expense. Nonetheless, there is little study into the complexity of popular perception of costs for services in Madagascar. This paper addresses this gap. It is based on a district-wide household survey, focus groups, and interviews. It looks at the wide variation in pricing expectations across a number of intra-community demographic groups and economic classes before considering the user perceptions of water markets themselves as determinants of their willingness to pay. It concludes by isolating the determinants under which and places in which the new macro-level strategies are likely to be accepted, and work, at the community level in Ambovombe-Androy.

Alabama is a water rich state. Yet, agriculture is limited in both scale and productivity and the state regularly suffers from drought. Climate variability adds to this paradox even while water users, particularly farmers, have few coping mechanisms. In this paper, we argue that more significant than the water resource itself in Alabama is the governance structure of that resource. The riparian doctrine, as it stands, stymies effective management. The role of water doctrines, and resultant policy, is, therefore, crucial to enhancing decision-making opportunities for agricultural end-users in Alabama. After exploring different doctrine types as applied across the states we conclude that a move towards “regulated riparianism” consistent with the American Society of Civil Engineers Regulated Riparian Water Code (2004) would enhance opportunities for both the state and agriculturalists to cope with variable water supply conditions while maximizing environmental benefits. The paper then concludes with a review of the primary objectives of the Water Code and key places where Alabama’s Water Code would need revision to meet these objectives.

Madagascar is often cited as an example of a country with a long history of local institutional strength and stalwart community participation in the decision-making process. This article explores the crisis of community life in southern Madagascar, particularly the changed nature of community involvement. Associational life is in decline—a result not only of challenging economic conditions, but also of eroded social norms, as the rule-making institutions of the past have been replaced by the loose guidelines of the present. This situation, which has the potential of exacerbating economic problems, is also likely to have grievous political and ecological consequences.

This paper focuses on the iconoclasticism of water as a plentiful resource and the near universalization of decentralizing institutions to manage it. The authors explore two agro‐pastoral regions — Ambovombe District (Madagascar) and Tana River District (Kenya) — and consider institutional change, particularly the disengaging state, the lack of fiscal and administrative support throughout decentralization, community responses, and informal private markets. This paper concludes that decentralization holds the potential to increase accountability of the resource management process, improve governance and leadership accountability, and maximize the resource in a sustainable fashion. However, what we are seeing instead through the process of decentralization are the states exiting from the water governance process too rapidly and without concern for the culturally embedded social and economic norms, and the growing gap between new institutions and the needs, desires, and capacity of participants in the new sy...

Political parties enhance democracy because of their role in recruiting candidates, mobilizing the electorate, articulating, aggregating and representing conflicting interests in society, and forming governments and making policies. Political parties also help maintain political leaders in power, but those that do so to the exclusion of the democracy-enhancement functions become tools for neopatrimonial rule. In Madagascar, political parties have historically served as tools of neo-patrimonial rule and not as instruments of democracy. This article first examines the roots of political parties in Madagascar to clarify why they have taken this form, and then assesses the direction of the newly formed Tiako i Madagasikara (TIM) and its potential for overcoming the country’s neopatrimonial legacy in favor of enhancing its new and fragile democracy.

Despite the volatile politics of 2002 … Madagascar did not undergo a radical change of government. At no point was an attempt made to fundamentally change the nature of the system or to uproot the ancien régime. Only a courageous individual could break with this long history and turn power over to democratic institutions. Whether Madagascar's new president has this will remains a question.

President Ratsiraka is trying to reverse the gains that have been made during Madagascar's democratization process. Campaigning on the slogan of freedom with development, he has successfully moved the country back toward the autocracy of the Second Republic. If the highest leadership is not seeking democracy, then who is?

This paper explores local perceptions of internationally financed conservation and development projects in Madagascar and the success of these projects at influencing perceptions. Interviews, surveys, and focus group sessions were conducted in the peripheral zones of three Malagasy national parks: Ranomafana, Andohahela, and Masoala. Relevant questions explored community demographics, socioeconomic status, and local perceptions of the parks. The principal finding is that while a majority of people living in the peripheral zones do find conservation a valuable goal, they see it as a luxury they cannot afford. Despite their efforts and innovation, conservation and development projects have had a minimal impact on socioeconomic or associational life in the Ranomafana and Andohahela peripheral zones, and a significant but modest impact in the Masoala peripheral zone, by providing economic alternatives to destructive resource use. As a result, they are limited in their success at promoting conservation outcomes.