At the heart of Madagascar's ethical and environmental challenges

Cet article est tiré de la rubrique "Far Away" du magazine Omalius de septembre 2024.

Professor in the Department of Sciences, Philosophies and Societies, Laurent Ravez is multiplying his collaborations with Madagascar. In 2005, he took part in an American research project funded by the National Institutes of Health. The aim? To train healthcare professionals in ethics. "The United States needed to establish ethics committees all over the world," Laurent Ravez explains. "This project began in the Democratic Republic of Congo before expanding to Madagascar. When I arrived in Madagascar in 2009, it was a real culture shock for me. I already knew Africa, but this is a different Africa, at the intersection of various cultures, including Asian influences," he confides. "On site, we worked with a public health institute, then a research center in the field of infectious diseases. For almost 15 years, we introduced groups of researchers and doctors to this discipline. This led to the creation of new ethics committees and the strengthening of existing ones."

This first contact with Madagascar paved the way for new projects. "ARES-CDD proposed that I join a research project via institutional support at the University of Antananarivo", continues the professor. Institutional support aims to provide a university with the resources it needs to achieve its own objectives. "Here, the aim is to build capacity and boost the university's research. So we've been working with doctoriales, which enable PhD students to present their projects in a few minutes, share them with their colleagues, and thus stimulate research. Our presence allows us to contribute our experience and advice, but it's a real sharing of skills with the locals," insists Laurent Ravez.

Deeply attached to Madagascar, Laurent Ravez travels there several times a year. "It was during one of my trips that I was offered the chance to go and meet Father Pedro," he recounts. "He's a very inspiring man, who has enabled thousands of destitute people to get out of poverty, notably by building schools and a free university. He is convinced that education and work enable people to free themselves from poverty".

Still in the brainstorming stage, a new collaboration could soon see the light of day. "I taught bioethics in the northwest of the country, where I had the opportunity to work with a Faculty of Dentistry. Dentition in Madagascar is of particular concern, and this has repercussions on people's health or even their ability to find work," exposes the professor. "On the island, dentists are quite badly regarded by the population, perceived as being contemptuous. The idea would then be to raise the ethical awareness of these health professionals, while developing a dental prevention project with them," enthuses the researcher.

"Our aim is therefore to assess the toxicity of microplastics present in Madagascan rivers, by measuring their impact on zebrafish. We thus seek to demonstrate whether abnormalities occur when these fish are exposed to microplastics, and we try to determine whether these abnormalities persist or resolve in subsequent years."

To conduct this research, Andry Rabezanahary divides his time between Madagascar, where he collects water and sediment samples, and Namur, where he carries out the analyses. "Microplastic is collected using a plankton net, left in the river for 4 to 5 hours. We then characterize the microplastics to observe their degradation in the environment. The particles are then micronized to sizes ranging from 1 to 50 micrometers, and exposed to fish. The aim of these experiments is to determine whether microplastics are capable of crossing the fish's intestinal barriers, spreading through their bodies and potentially causing disease.

Seven years ago, a project to support the implementation of the IWRM (Integrated Water Resources Management) approach in Madagascar with a view to sustainable development and climate resilience was launched in collaboration between UNamur, UClouvain, UAntananarivo, UAntsiranana and UToamasina. This project, funded by ARES under the name GIRE SAVA, focuses on the SAVA region, located in the north-east of Madagascar. Its ambition is to examine several key aspects of water management, including hydrological alterations, water quality, hydrogeological alterations and the implementation of an information system as part of water management.

"As a researcher in the GIRE SAVA project, I work mainly on water quality in the project's pilot basin: the Ankavia watershed. I'm exploring how anthropization of the basin, i.e. the transformation of the environment by human action, affects the physico-chemical quality of the water in the Ankavia river, as well as invertebrate and diatom communities in the water. We are also trying to assess how quickly the river manages to decompose the organic matter discharged into the water by conducting in-situ experiments", explains Hélène Voahanginirina, PhD student.

The laboratory work was carried out in Madagascar in close collaboration with a team in Namur, under the direction of Professor Frederik de Laender, promoter of the research project. Camille Carpentier, an expert in macroinvertebrate identification, played a key role in these analyses. The aim of this research was to analyze macroinvertebrate composition at ten different sites, at various times of the year, in order to develop a predictive model of community diversity. A model that would be based on several predictive factors, such as land use, landscape type, as well as various physico-chemical variables, such as water acidity and temperature.