We believe that good management strategies can be developed only when based on thorough understanding of each site’s specific human, physical, and biological environment and the particular opportunities and threats that flow from this context.
We reject both the unthinking implementation of activities at a succession of sites irrespective of need and decision-making based on unsupported preconceptions.
Rather, we develop work plans based on the collection and analysis of information.
When methods are unproven, they are monitored and tested using an experimental approach.

Although Madagascar’s flora and fauna are highly valued by scientists and much appreciated by tourists, we believe that the primary beneficiaries of conservation should be local people.
Never would we want to exclude locals from their natural heritage and create reserves that serve only researchers, tourists, and other outsiders.
Such an approach would be both unfair and ultimately unlikely to result in long-term biodiversity conservation.
To avoid such exclusion while still achieving conservation is a major challenge that requires valorizing each area for local stakeholders, developing in them a sense of ownership and responsibility for the site, and empowering them to oversee the sustainable management of the natural resources in their area, there by creating a “stewardship paradigm” in which it makes more sense for them to use natural wealth sustainably than to squander it..

We believe that durable conservation projects must be inclusive and must involve those from all groups in society, including the young, the elderly, women, the economically less advantaged, and new immigrants.
Often it is the young and the new immigrants to an area who, lacking their own land, are forced to seek their livelihoods from the non-sustainable exploitation of natural resources.
Although quick results can be obtained by focusing efforts on winning the support of the powerful, there is often a rapid turnover among these people, and today’s powerful ally can be quickly replaced by his/her competitor, with disastrous results for the project.
To understand fully the threats to a site and to develop effective methods to diminish these threats requires the full engagement of the entire community..

Most rural Malagasy are conservative and sometimes slow to adopt innovations.
Therefore, community-based conservation must find ways of working with traditions and, where possible, valorize local cultures to achieve the project’s objectives.
Often, conservation approaches are perfectly consistent with local cultures and their acceptability much enhanced if framed in this context.
In addition, we believe that unwritten societal rules are more powerful in controlling abusive exploitation of natural resources than is national legislation, and certainly more resilient to the whims of national politicians.

In many conservation organizations, the best people are based at headquarters, managing projects from far away through locally recruited intermediates, using simple “one size fits all” solutions that regularly yield disappointing results.
There is little opportunity or motivation to develop the personal commitment and understanding needed to fight for the kind of change that is urgently required or to grasp and deal with the complex and site-specific causes of environmental degradation.
To avoid this scenario, at MBG-Madagascar we place our best people closest to the problem, challenge them to understand the complex reasons for the environmental degradation in their communities, and trust and empower them to work with local stakeholders to develop and implement an effective program of activities to achieve for their project goal.