“Impact of Women’s Harvest Practices on Pandanus guillaumetti in Madagascar’s Lowland Rainforests” Fedele et. al. Zurich Switzerland

By evaluating the health and number of Pandanus guillaumetti plants in the forests surrounding villages in Madagascar, researchers studied the harvesting practices of village women and how sustainable their harvesting is. The common name of this culturally important plant is “Tsiriky”. Women weave the leaves of the plants together to make mats, which are used to dry foods like cloves and rice. While women use mats in their own homes, they are often sold as a means to generate income. Tsiriky is a diecious plant and grows from 6-9 meters tall and 10-15 cm in diameter at the stem. The youngest plants have the biggest leaves, but only adults produce flowers and fruit. Therefore, one might suspect that the women who harvest these plants would do so unsustainably. In order to investigate the result of harvesting practices near villages in Madagascar, researchers travelled to the areas and measured the density of juvenile plants and branching adults per plot (stem/hectare) and how this information relates to the distance from the village. Because terrain surrounding the village is variable in ease of travel, they measured distance using minutes to walk to the plot because some land is close to the village but still time consuming to get to.

                The culture of the women who harvest these plants and make mats plays an important role in discovering what is going on with the sustainability of the process. In the Betsimisarakes ethnicity, women teach their daughters how to make the mats when the girls reach the age of eleven or twelve. Some women walk up to eight hours to sell drying mats, while some sell to traders who come directly into their villages to purchase mats. In the average home, these spice drying mats usually last about one year. Traditionally, sustainability is an important part of the Betsimisarakes culture, but as these mats become more popular around the world and demand increases, the women are often told that it is acceptable to ignore this tradition in order to make more money. While collecting leaves, the women often stay within their home village and territory in order to avoid conflict with people in other regions. They do not harvest the apical leaves of the plants in order to let them continue growth. From each tree, a woman only takes two to nine leaves. While harvesting tsiriky is often a woman’s work, men are brought along on rare trips to farther plots for protection and to carry the heavy load a long distance back to the village.

                The findings of the study were actually quite surprising because it was discovered that distance from the village did not have a significant impact on number or health of plants except for those very close to the village where the number of plants per hectare was fewer. This discovery is interesting because there are several reasons that this may have occurred. Perhaps this proves that a culture in which small villages are set up between large forests is beneficial because there is plenty of room for people to roam and gather resources instead of having to ship resources from rural places to more urban locations to be produced or consumed. On the other hand, this conclusion may indicate that an appreciation for sustainability rather than mass production results in better relations between humans and the environment. Whatever the reason for this environmentally friendly harvesting practice, the rest of the world could greatly benefit from ideals like those of the women who harvest tsiriky in Madagascar.