Carbon Credit Payments Stall for Madagascar Forest Communities, World Bank Funds Sit Unuse

Madagascar’s REDD+ carbon credit program received its first World Bank disbursement of approximately 9 million dollars in 2021. More than two and a half years later, many of the forest communities that program was designed to pay have still not seen the money.

The REDD+ mechanism, which stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, operates across 14 state-owned protected areas managed by private organizations. Its core promise is straightforward: convert forest conservation into direct income for local communities. Under the benefit-sharing arrangement, 5 percent of carbon credit revenues flow to communities as compensation for their protection work. The remaining revenue is split between protected area managers and municipalities, with managers expected to reinvest their share in reforestation, income-generating activities, or basic services, in consultation with local communities.

In practice, that consultation is largely theoretical.

Investigative journalist Lynda Andriatsitonta of the Malina network documented the gap between policy and delivery firsthand. “We found that despite the first tranche of World Bank financing being paid out, many local communities still have not received the benefits that are supposed to go to them,” she reported. “Some communities did not even know these rewards existed.” Decision-making mechanisms lack transparency, and communities report having little real voice in how money is spent.

Geography makes the operational challenge acute. The program covers two million hectares of protected forest. Lovakanto Ravelomanana, coordinator of the REDD+ system within the Ministry of Environment, described the terrain bluntly: in the densest zones, some areas are reachable only by motorcycle on poor tracks, others only on foot. Each protected area manager must build strategies to reach communities scattered across that fragmented landscape.

Meanwhile, administrative bottlenecks are compounding the delays at every level. Municipalities are entitled to 13 percent of the fund allocation, yet not all of them have received their payments. Ravelomanana acknowledged the dysfunction directly: “The administrative machinery is very heavy. Whenever there are errors, everything goes back to the starting point. The same file can sit in the same place within the same ministry for months. It is true that we are learning as we go, but unfortunately the consequence is all these delays that keep accumulating.”

The stakes of fixing this are significant. The World Bank agreement includes two additional tranches worth approximately 42 million dollars combined. Both disbursements are conditional: Madagascar must demonstrate measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from forest protection, and it must show successful implementation of the revenue-sharing plan. The current record on implementation, communities unpaid, consultation processes bypassed, and funds stalled inside ministries, puts both conditions at risk.

Whether the program can close the gap between its design and its delivery before the next disbursement review will determine not just whether communities receive what they were promised, but whether Madagascar can unlock the larger funding that forest protection is supposed to generate.