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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.