For centuries, Lake Andranobe in Madagascar’s central highlands has nourished the surrounding communities. Over the past 16 years, its dependents have come together to restore the ailing lake. Now, that community-led initiative, the organization Tatamo Miray an’Andranobe (TAMIA), has won the United Nations Development Programme’s Equator Prize this year in the “Nature for Water” category.
The southern Indian Ocean island has been cut off from the African continent for over 80 million years – a separation that has developed an extraordinary array of plants and animals, many of which cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. But after humans settled on the island about 2,500 years ago, many species such as giant lemurs, elephant birds, and dwarf hippos started to disappear, and some 30 mammal species are already extinct.