Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Pastoralists' Organizations For Resource Management: An African Case by MICHAEL NI1. CE1RNEA Senior Advis.er Social Policy, and SociologY, The World Bank The Environment Deafrtrnent The World Bank 'March 1992< PASTORALISTS' ORGANIZATIONS FOR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: AN AFRICAN CASE by Michael M Cemea* The main conceptual point of the first part of this summarized paper (incidentally, a point often missed in the environmental literature), is that to attain good environmental management it is utterly insufficient to address the environmental requirements alone: we must address also the sociological variables which are paramount for the use of natural resources by people. In the second part, I will break away from the conceptual discussion to present the interesting case of a successful regional development strategy in a semi-arid area of West Africa, which created an user-based system of managing resources. I will briefly describe the interesting experience of grassland and water resource management in Eastern Senegal and will derive some generalizable lessons. These forms on the needed combination between local level action and macropolicy instruments for achieving sustainable resource use and management. BALANCING RESOURCE USE AND DEVELOPMENT The Users' Role. Many economic and social studies, as well as important statements on development policies, are stressing that sustainable land use and agricultural development * The views and interpretations expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author and should not necessarily be attributed to the institutions with which he is associated. -2- ultimately depend on the way management of natural resources is organized and shaped at field leveL Entrusting responsibilities to local institutions of the direct users is increasingly regarded as a possible strategy for successful management and control of the environment. The conceptualization of users' role in leading a resource management system requires a definition of their ownership (or non-ownership) position vis-a-vis the specific natural resources in question. Do users hold property rights over them? If yes, are these private or group ownership rights? When users are not owners, do they hold usufruct rights? Or do they have custodianship rights? Are such rights customary, or legally formalized? The current views about the role of the direct users (I have in mind primarily the small and medium-size farmers) in resource management vary on a broad spectrum. Some policymakers reject the option of entrusting management responsibility to users on the ground that they will abuse the resources, and advocate strict government and state controls as a solution. Others plead against state intervention and focus exclusively on users. This alternative is certainly worth further discussion. Evidence from many geographic areas increasingly suggest that the statist solution promises more failure than success. But before leaping to the prescription that resource management should be fully entrusted to the users, I think we need to ask a key question: are the users always able to exercise management? This question is not to be treated lightly. Taking such ability for granted in all cases is simply romantic, a populist (and non-sociologically based) stereotype. In development practice, questioning whether or not users have the capacity to manage is the first step -3 - towards assisting them in building such capacity, when it isn't present. On the contrary, pleading to entrust the responsibility for natural resource management to users without ascertaining that they have an organized ability to do so is a sure recipe for program failure. From a sociological viewpoint, the issue is not just the subjective capacity (or lack thereof) of one or another individual user, or of many users, to exercise management. The issue at stake is the presence or absence of forms of social organization structurally suited to manage and control the enviromment. Improved management requires social organization and collective action. Here is where, in my view, many voices in the global environmental movement are one-sided in emphasizing individual action, while underestimating the sociological variables at play for achieving systemic action, coordinated action. This, I believe, is the kind of conceptual perspective that social scientists can and must bring to the design of environmentally responsible development strategies. The concept of social organization points to the patterns of social relationships and institutional arrangements into which people enter in order to carry out productive and exchange activities. These include roles, rules, authority systems and enforcement mechanisms, among many other elements. They include the norms (formal and informal, customary or legislated) which govern people's behavior vis-a-vis these resources and vis-a-vis each other in using them, and the socially sanctioned penalties for transgressing these norms. They also encompass the institutions (farmer organizations or government bodies, or other private and public agencies) created for managing such resources. for their protection, enhancement, reallocation, taxation, and the like. Relying on such patterns of social organization, human groups use the surrounding physical environment to transform parts of it into resources necessary for their life. -4- But not all forms of social organization are structured so as to conduct their members to a sustainable use of environmental resources. In fact, as we know only too well, many are conducive to non-sustainable uses and are causing environmental degradation. Therefore, the core sociological question involved in the appealing prescription for "users' role" is to foster within and among the users enduring forms of social organization capable of assuming environmental management and of enforcing norms and controL Traditional Institutions and Formal Oreanization. If adequate forms of social organization are necessary as environmental management systems, can traditional social organizations in developing countries perform this role? Are the calls for the revival and strengthening of traditional institutions realistic as an environmental management strategy? The disappointment with weak states and proliferating yet ineffective government agencies, has led many development thinkers to advocate the revival of traditional institutions. Here and there, this has been possible and effective. But I doubt that this can become a workable mainstream strategy. Developing sustainable environmental management systems at the local level requires much, much more than relying on traditions, or simply reviving them. Blaming the new nation-state for disintegrating the informal traditional systems doesn't lead anywhere, and risks misdirecting the strategy for. action. In my view, it is imperative to increase, diversify, multiply, and solidify the various forms of formal organization of rural communities. All over the developing world, the degree of formal organization in rural communities lags far behind that of urban populations. The "organizational density" of agrarian collectivities is low as well. This is a fundamental characteristic of all underdevelopment. It accounts largely for the vulnerability of rural societies to powerful exogenous forces, including the state, its administrative apparatus with its known abuses, the market, and various other extractive agents. Many rural development programs collapse for want of grass roots rural organizations able to foster and sustain collective action (Cernea, 1981, 1987; Ostrom, 1991). If the organization of people (as opposed to a state of amorphousness) is recognized as a strategic resource for sustainable development, and organizational change is legitimately regarded as a development strategy (Hage and Finsterbush, 1987), then producing "organization" is not less important than providing financial or technical resources. In arid and semi-arid areas in particular, where mother nature has not been very generous, it is even more important to respond to resource scarcity with social organization because this is likely to lead to a better use, protection and management of what is available, on a sustainable basis. And in producing higher degrees of formal organization, unlockinz the capacity for self-organization is exponentially more effective than counting just on sending organizers from the outside. Moreover, the two are not mutually exclusive strategies either. Of course, the forms of social organization for adequate resource management will vary with both culture and nature. First, they will vary from culture to culture, from society to -6 - society, and even within the same society. Second, they will also vary with the kind of natural resource involved (land, or trees, or water, or pastures). In the Middle East or Africa, for instance, the post-traditional rural societies are much more differentiated economically and socially, while being much less homogeneous ethnically, than they were in the nre-colonial or even colonial era. One consequence of this increased and multidimensional heterogeneity is that single organizations can hardly represent and mobilize the entire village community for collective action -- as the widespread failure of "community woodlots" project indicates - (Cernea, 1990), except when certain interests can act as a common denominator. There is a natural trend toward the multiplication of organizations at the local level, responding to various special interests. Further also, the economic welfare of the post-traditional village is more dependent than at any prior time on national markets and public sector institutions. To sum up the main points stated above before moving to the Senegal case experience, I argue that the "local level", defined (with less relativity) as the direct producers, must be regarded as just one of the two key social actors determining the effectiveness of natural resource management systems. The other actor is the macro-level for the state with its cluster of tools - - a convenient, yet imperfect metaphor policies, tax and incentives systems, legal regulations. I argue also that involving users means dealing with their patterns of social organizations. This often requires the formation of new organizational patterns, new roles and rules, governing producers' interaction and regulating tenure and usufruct over natural resources. It is dangerous to overstate romantically the potential of past traditional systems as revivable and effective for solving today's environmental constraints.. RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN SEMI-ARID AREAS: SUCCESSFUL PASTORAL ASSOCIATIONS IN SENEGAL The approach to natural resource management that I discuss below is focused on improving rangeland and water use while increasing producers' income. This case is directly relevant to my argument in that it demonstrates the possibility, and the positive effects, of combining capacity building at the users' level with macro-tools for environmental management. It refers to the eastern region of Senegal, where two successive World Bank financed projects (1976-1982 and 1983-1989) assisted the region's agro-pastoral population over a period of 14 years in improving grassland and water management while supporting the development of animal husbandry and farming. I carried out field work for these projects beginning from 1975, when I participated in the design of the initial project, continuing through several review visits and subsequently with the appraisal and evaluation of the second project during the 1980s. My recent field visit in 1991 provided additional evidence about the strength and possible effectiveness of local management systems. as well as about the positive or negative roles that macro-factors and government agencies can play. The Senegal Livestock Development Project covered an area of about 1.3 million hectares of grasslands in the eastern part of the country, north of the Tambacounda-Dakar railway line. This area was undergoing rapid and uneven resource degradation caused by excessive grazing, absence of adequate water sources, lack of protection works, and the disregard of traditional land rights of local pastoralists by incoming herders from the arid northern Ferlo region (World Bank, 1976). In legal terms, the land was part of the national domain, under state ownership; in practice, it was under a common property regime which had gradually become unenforceable by the local users alone. Their rights were being eroded by the interference of both the (central and regional) government and the incomers from the north. In practice, a region of former common property had become an open access regime (Bromley and Cernea, 1989). It is relevant to the issues we discuss to note that the project feasibility report, prepared in 1974 by a French consulting firm, proposed an approach which virtually would have eliminated the users, the local pastoralists, from the project's strategy. It recommended to convert only several small sub-areas of the 1,300,000 hectares area into fattening ranches, to be owned and administered by the government or by large private entrepreneurs. The remainder of the area approximately 80 percent - was to be left to further degradation under the open access regime. The Bank's appraisal mission project - - - in which my task was the sociological design of the considered but rejected the consultant's approach. Instead, the mission proposed the reclamation of the entire region, based on facilitating and protecting a common propertv regime, with the users/pastoralists to be grouped and organized into grazing units, which will act as a system of managing the natural resources entrusted to their members. Thus redesigned, the project became a combined production/environmental/social/institutional package. Establishin2 Users' Organizations. The total area (1.3 million hectares) was subdivided in economically and ecologically viable subunits allocated to groups of users. The project's -9- social staff took great care that these user groups be formed voluntarily, with due account to their own cultural/ethnic affinity lines. The social extension agents (incorporated into the project's staffing) went from zone to zone identifying groups of 4, 6, or 8 neighboring settlements willing to associate themselves into one pastoral unit. The goals and proposed procedures for such units were carefully explained to the prospective members, who were given sufficient time to discuss among themselves whether or not such associations were desirable. When being established, these associations had to select their own management committees and leaders. Tenurial Ri2hts under State Protection. To ensure legal protection of these associations and their rights vis-a-vis land, range, water and trees, at the Bank's suggestion the Government of Senegal defined the entire grazing area as a "pioneer zone". It passed formal legislation (a special Decree) granting to each grazing association long term rights over segments averaging approximately 20-25,000 hectares each (Senegal, 1976). This was intended to help legally define both group size and natural resource boundaries. The government also committed itself to use its administrative power and apparatus when needed, to support these associations against non-members, including intruders, thus creating a mechanism to support the group's exlusionary rights. The exception was the provision of delineated land corridors for traditional transhumant herders. During the first four years of the project some 53 grazing associations were established over the entire project region (see Table 1). Table 1 Formation of Pastoral (Grazing) Units in Eastern Senegal for Herds, Grassland and Water Management ZONES PASORAL UNrIS l | AREA (becta) ~~~~~~~~~PASTIORAL |AGRICULTURAL | FAMIUES (number) FAMItES (number) TOTAL FAMILIES POPULAMON CATnlE SMALL RUMINANTS' YEAR OF ESrABLUSHMENT OF PASTORAL VETERINARY AGENTS 1 16 115 392,750 536 343 SW9 9.530 45,710 7,701 1977fl8 2 12 93 229,600 380 347 727 6,941 20,276 - 1979 6 16 118 415,500 732 1,347 2,079 21,993 39.070 _ 1980 13 _9 Ss 278W000 236 337 4,901 14,794 _ 1990 3 4 * l VILLAGES _ 121 Small ruminants are present in all zones, but statistics were not available. II - 11 - ImRroved Technoloev for Sustainable Resource Use. Most importantly, the project financed technical expert services to support the new local user associations in improving productive use of rangelands and scarce water. In such projects in semi-dry and arid areas it is important to explore primarily what better use can be made of the locally existing scarce resource of soil, range and water, rather than bringing resources from outside, since the latter approach is hardly sustainably after project completion. Therefore, a specialist team under the project used aerial photography and on-the-ground technical evaluation for mapping of the forage and water resources available within each pastoral association. The team also mapped the habitual routes of herd movements during the dry and wet seasons, and held repeated discussions with the herders to identify existing additional grazing resources, and the need and potential for additional water sources. Based on this work, the technical experts elaborated rational grazing management plans for each and every pastoral association and proposed them to each management committee. Given the scarcity of water, the project also built a series of new wells and ponds. It also provided animal health services, and assisted in livestock marketing to encourage offtake. The management plan for each user group directed the many family herds to various grazing areas in proportion with the potential of those areas, attempting to avoid surpassing the range's carrying capacity. New grazing areas could be introduced into the production cycle of that semi-arid area due to the newly created water points. The calendar of herd movements was adjusted through these management plans, so as to optimize the use of ponds far away from villages, and to free village labor needed during the peak farming season. - 12 - The local organizational arrangements promoted by the project worked. They increasingly assumed a managerial role over both the previously existing natural resources (rangeland, water ponds, trees, etc.) and the new ones, resulting from project investments (new wells, new water ponds). In practice, a common property regime was established for managing the range. Animal production was expanded. Use (abuse) by outsiders of the grazing lands under the project was effectively reduced, though it has not been completely eliminated, through vigilance on the part of the respective grazing associations, backed up by the authority of the regional administration. The cattle, as expected, remained the private property of the participating families. The new grazing associations gradually introduced improvements in pasture utilization and quality. Credit was provided under the project for improved breeding stock and for supplementary feed. Continued provision of credit to a grazing association was conditional on full repayment by the group. The emphasis of credit programs shifted during implementation from breeding stock to the provision of larger amounts of short term credit for feed and veterinary services. Credit recovery at project completion was 89 percent. Human Resource Development Among the factors that contributed to the impact of the project was the functional literacy program among pastoralists that by 1985 had included 4,000 individuals in various short courses. The themes used by the training and extension component of the project were linked to the other project components provision of animal health programs, etc. - establishment of grazing associations, The interest elicited by this educational component improved people's receptivity to the project's motivational and organizational efforts that were so essential to the overall effectiveness of the project. Many (several hundred) graduates of the literacy - 13 - programs became, with some additional training, auxiliary veterinary agents, and some rose to the leadership of the grazing associations. To sum up the strategic significance of this case, I think that it convincingly demonstrates that success is attributable to the combination of local and macro-factors for environmental management. In other words, users have assumed their roles and the government has put its tools to work, to reinforce a system that is local par excellence. I must also briefly mention (to my regret) that the macro-tools available to the government have been used in Senegal in recent years not only in suRport of this locally-based and user-based management systems but also against them. Directly conflicting with the legal Decree of 1976 (Senegal, 1976), referred to above, some government agencies, central and regional, have given authorization to outside entrepreneurs to exploit parts of the forested/grazing areas entrusted to the grazing associations. Over the last two years, large treed areas have been denuded by charcoal makers on the territory of several grazing associations, in a manner that is destructive to the environment and impoverishing to the area's agro-pastoralists. As shown by other ecologically hostile policy decisions adopted in Senegal lately (KpatindU, 1991) regarding the clearing of the Mbegue Sylvo-Pastoral reserve (totalling 45,000 hectares adjacent to the area of the project described above), these are not isolated accidents. Rather, they amount to an ecologically irresponsible recent series of macro-policy decisions in Senegal regarding grasslands and forests. This confirms, in the breach, the point that local environment - 14 - management systems become very vulnerable when macro-factors are acting divergently and weaken them. THE NEED FOR MACRO-POLICY INSTRUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF LOCAL ACTIONS In conclusion, the most important factor accounting for overall success was the presence of a clearly conceptualized and effective operational strategy for building organizational structures at the local level, as opposed to just a "technical package" devoid of sustaining social/ institutional structures on the ground. This strategy was patiently but tenaciously carried out in genuine cooperation with the area population by an adequately designed, selected and trained project staff of some 20 to 30 social extension agents recruited from the local population. The staff were trained to use sociologically inspired methods for establishing the pastoral units. Endurable social structures were established, consisting of the users themselves, and these structures were able to manage the use of key natural resources in a manner responsive to the producers' both short term and long term interests. These local level organizations proved to be a crucial social tool for adjusting and monitoring a dynamic balance between the actors' interest to productively consume and at the same time preserve the local natural resources that are the basis of their economic existence. These local institutions, supported (rather than undermined) by adequate national policy measures, have been a focal point in fostering collective action. - 15 - An independent evaluation carried out by the World Bank's Operations Evaluation Department concluded that the key lesson to be derived for future similar projects was: ...to attach pre-eminent importance from the start to active participation by members in the formation and development of their associations; and to develop a base for pasture management that is ecologicallv sound is strongly rooted in existing social norms and behavior, and is financially beneficial both for individual and the group as whole. In short, pastoral development must not be seen principally as a technical issue but rather as a process of social and economic change, to be sure, needs a sound technical base but which principally calls for motivation, training and participation of the pastoralists (OED, 1986; emphasis added - MMC). The macro-factors which contributed to success were, in principal, the following: (1) government intervention for clarifying tenurial arrangements over land and water, responsive to users' interests; (2) legal instruments instituted to protect the rangeland and water resources from use/abuse by outsiders (reversal of open access, backed by administrative power of enforcement); - 16- (3) financial instruments (official credit at below market rates granted to organized groups of users) apt to mobilize the users' own resources; (4) public sector investments in developing water resources in the area, to ensure a more balanced use of alternative grazing areas; (5) technical assistance (or new knowledge as a productive resource) provided to rangeland users, in the tangible form of grazing management plans. enabling them to carry out pastoral production in an environmentally sound manner. My overall conclusion is that sound environmental management and the improved use of natural resources depend largely on strengthening and rearranging the social organizational patterns that exist (or that need to be established) in different country settings to enable the producers themselves to use, protect and enhance their local resources and achieve sustainable development. - 17 - REFERENCES Bromley, David and Michael M. Cernea. 1989. The Management of Common Propeny Natmul Resources. Some Conceptual and OperationalFaflacies. Wold Bank Discussion Paper No. 57, Washington, DC. Cernea, Michael M. 1981. Modernization and Development Potential of Traditional Grass Roots PeasantOrganizations. World Bank Reprint Series Number 215. Cernea, Michael M. 1989. User Groups as Producers in PartcipatoryAfforestationStrategies, World Bank Discussion Paper Number 70, Washington, DC. Daly, Herman. 1991. EcologicalEconomics and Sustainable Development: From Concept to Policy, The World Bank, Environment Department. Development Working Paper Number 1991-27. Hage, Jerald and Kurt Fnsterbush. 1987. OrganizationalChange as a Development Strategy, Lyme Denver Publishers, Boulder/London. Kpatindd, Francis. 1991. Religion et developpement au SndgaL Afrique No. 1586, May. Orde de Defricherla Foret! Juene Ostrom, Elinor. 1991. Goveming the Commons. Senegal. 1976. Ministere du Developpement Rural et de L'Hydraulique. Decret No. 76-1242 du 31 D6cembre 1976, portant Classement en zone Pionnitre de certaines terres du Domaine National sit6es dans les ddpartements de Tambacounda ou de BakeeL Joumal Officiel De La Republique Du Senegal du 15 Janvier, 1977. (Senegal: Ministry of Rural Development and Water Resources Management. Decree #76-1242 of December 31, 1976 concerning the establishment of a pioneer zone from public property located in the Departments of Tambacounda and Bakel, Official Joumal of the Republic of Senegal, January 15, 1977, p. 41). World Bank. 1976. Eastem Senegal Livestock Development Project, Staff Appraisal Report. Washington, DC. World Bank. 1983. Eastern Senegal Rural Development Project Staff Appraisal Report Washington, DC. OED (Operations Evaluations Department, World Bank). 1986. Eastem Senegal Livestock Development Project, Project Performance Audit Report. Washington, DC.