The Sectoral Innovation Facility for NGOs (FISONG) is a funding tool from Agence Française de Développement (AFD) which makes the most of NGOs’ specialist know-how and ability to inno- vate. A call for themed projects was launched in
2012 around the theme ‘Biodiversity and devel- opment: sharing the benefits of biodiversity for village communities’. Community management of natural resources can protect ecosystems better and ensure that they are used sustainably while
at the same time improving the flow of socio- economic benefits back to local people, although it often meets political, technical, economic and cultural obstacles. NGOs were therefore asked to propose answers to these problems.
A selection committee chose three projects, including the
‘Biodiversity, development and governance: To-
wards a model for the new marine protected are- as (MPAs) of Madagascar’s project (Hafafi), run by the French development NGO GRET in asso- ciation with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Malagasy NGO Fanamby. One of the objec- tives of the FISONG project is to build and show- case a successful model (with Ankarea and Ankivonjy MPAs in the North West as pilot sites) for Madagascar’s growing MPA network that inte- grates biodiversity conservation, poverty reduc- tion and community-led management of natural marine resources.