The Libanona Ecology Centre (CEL) in Fort Dauphin was established in 1995 with initial support from the donations following the death of Friends of the Earth campaigner DirectorAndrew Lees. Lees’ tragic death in 1994, in the Petriky Forest near Fort Dauphin, led to the establishment of a charitable trust (The Andrew Lees Trust) and raising of the initial funds, which would allow the centre to be established by the rehabilitation of classroom and administrative buildings in Libanona and funding of staff salaries and teaching equipment. The “Centre Ecologique de Libanona” was founded by two expatriates, Mark Fenn (then of the WWF Andohahela ICDP) and Dr Raoul Mulder (then of the School for International Training Madagascar program), who facilitated the formation of a board of directors drawn from Malagasy state universities (Tuléar and Antananarivo).

During the early years, the training activities of the centre focused predominantly on providing ad hoc training courses for NGO staff and delivering some teaching modules for DEA students from the University of Tulear. Since this early period, the centre has also run more practical field projects supporting regional conservation planning and providing training and capacity building for natural resource management in rural communities in the dry regions of the south (district of Amboasary).

In 2002 with support from WWF Madagascar, the centre undertook a systematic study of human resource needs and future projections in the southern region of Madagascar. This study drew on interviews with representatives of governmental bodies, development agencies, and nongovernmental organizations as well as private sector operators, and reviewed the training programs offered in similar technical educational establishments in other parts of Madagascar. The report produced from this study laid the groundwork for the establishment of the centre’s first formal and full-time training course. This program, which was the first higher education training course available in the southeast of Madagascar, was known as the BACC+2 in Environmental Management for Development, and began in the autumn of 2004 with the first cohort of 21 students. Shortly after the recruitment of the first group the MacArthur Foundation awarded the centre a grant to cover many of the startup costs (course development, IT lab installation, academic director salary). The centre received accreditation from the Malagasy higher education authorities as an approved centre for the provision of technical diplomas at the BACC+2 levels. As the first cohort of students approached graduation it became apparent that, among this and the following groups there was a strong demand to upgrade the training into a three-year professional degree (License Professionnelle) program. With the continued support of the MacArthur Foundation, the centre began to meet this demand by offering a third year of advanced courses and independent research.