Disaggregating Induced Intensification for Land-Change Analysis: A Case Study from Madagascar

This study investigates smallholder responses to land pressure in the Andapa region of Madagascar. Recent enforcement of conservation laws has abruptly closed the agricultural frontier, and development experts warn of land degradation if exogenous support is not forthcoming. To evaluate responses, the study identifies adaptive and maladaptive management strategies by production sector instead of by production system, allowing for a more precise linkage between strategies and associated land change. Results reveal a remarkably positive response to land pressure, with significant expansion of both market tree crops and irrigated rice fields. Yet, the study also finds excessive cropping frequency in the hill-rice sector, demonstrating independently motivated and environmentally inconsistent strategies within production systems. This evidence calls for a new formulation of the induced intensification thesis's bipolar model predicting either adaptive or maladaptive change. It also suggests that exogenous policies, such as those designed to promote environmentally preferred production sectors in order to substitute for less desirable sectors, may not have their desired effect in Andapa. Aggregating data to identify broad-level trajectories of change reveals incommensurate results across levels of analysis, highlighting a scale dynamic anticipated by spatial geographers but inadequately addressed in human-environment literatures.