Changing Land Use, Tenure, Interdependency And Resilience: The Uncertain Fate Of Grazing Lands In Farming Systems In Mali And Burkina
Joost Nelen, Amadi Coulibaly, Nata Traore
In the past decades livestock and grazing lands have become a fundament of farming systems in the cotton-grain belts of South-Mali and West-Burkina. After the big droughts pastoralists have settled down in considerable numbers. They have integrated local societies but most families remain secondary-rights holders in access to land and natural resources. Agro-pastoralists established mutual trust with hosting communities. Reciprocal service delivery existed. The trust relations helped in resolving conflicts. These relations have changed. Partly this is due to internal dynamics: all families have mixed production systems. The mutual dependency has been reduced, and therefore the need for strong social bonds. Due to population pressure and economic development competition over dwindling land and natural resources exists. Agriculture encroaches upon rangelands. Interventions have been designed to respond, but need improvement. Farm-level interventions are generic and have to be fine-tuned to production systems that are neither purely pastoral nor -agricultural. Re. agro-pastoralists: interventions need to understand how herds use resources that are spread over different territories. Local governments have appropriate land management instruments, but representation is a risk and quality of consultation processes is not guaranteed at the district intervention level: the social mutations ask for better checks and balances.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015
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