U SIGIGNON -- LET'S MAKE THE BUSH BETTER!

The World Bank/WBI’s CBNRM Initiative

Case Received: February 5, 1998

Author: Amara Coulibaly and Jean-Pierre Derlon

Tel: +233 64 0103

"U SIGIGNON"

(LET'S MAKE THE BUSH BETTER!)

Identification of the case

Country: Republic of Mali (West Africa)

Region: Sikasso: Mali’s third-largest administrative region. The study focuses on the area around Koutiala, an administrative Circuit and a Region of the Mali Textile Development Society (CMDT).

Renewable Resource: Forestry resources, mainly timber, pastureland, agricultural land and waterholes

Major Factors: The case-study area is under pressure from four fronts:

1. A lack of good arable soil and a decline in the quality of existing crop lands

2. There are too many animals and too many people

3. The area is close to a large urban center concerned only with business

4. There are many agencies operating in the area, often in a rather uncoordinated fashion

5. Resources may be exploited almost at will.

CMDT involvement : The case-study, called "u sigignon" (Let’s Make the Bush Better!) began with local discussions among some of the villages that currently make up the case-study area. The CMDT was then invited, through its Protection and Restoration Division, to participate in an initial meeting, involving those villages with shared objectives and lying within a certain radius.

The aim of this invitation was to help the villages organize themselves effectively and to situate them within an institutional framework so that necessary management measures could be backed by legal decisions.

So the CMDT, in turn, invited the other partners to become involved in the development process, so that they could work out a joint strategy.

The CMDT is now working closely with the Rural Environment and Development Project (EDP), which is part of the Inter-Cooperative Liaison Bureau. This collaboration is primarily financial. The EDP is paying the largest part (85 %) of the environment-protection costs.

The EDP became involved after a Swiss forestry project based at Sikasso decided to change the focus of its own program, which was concerned with both vegetation and the underlying soil. The Swiss approached the CMDT through the technical assistance services’ consultancy network and expressed their desire to work with the villages that were involved and that shared the same objectives. That was how the initial contacts were established.

The Initial Situation

At this point, the management of natural resources in Mali has generally very little to do with sustainability, which is a concept essentially recognized by few people, whether they be decision-makers or farmers. Resources are managed by technical assistance services, which direct those who wish to exploit natural resources toward village lands, without consulting the villagers first.

The case-study area is adjacent to an urban center. It has been under quite intense pressure from people exploiting its timber resources (carters from the town) and its pastureland was being shared with migrant livestock farmers. Furthermore, the area has reached saturation point in the sense that there is very little spare farmland available and virtually all the fallow land disappeared with the onset of mechanization. Population density is very high. Town farmers also have fields that they work during the winter. Farmland is gradually spreading, without authorization.

Village lands, and the land between the villages, were exploited in a destructive manner by the villagers themselves. The amount of timber being cut, for both home and commercial purposes, rose steadily. Fires were used to clear pastureland and to provide light for local hunters.

The villages and the CMDT together embarked upon a program whose main focus was to combat erosion, and which would involve planting trees, among other things.

The initial situation was thus characterized by a number of problems:

villagers were not able to control the management of their natural resources, which are in fact their own property.
pastureland was disappearing quickly, and this meant having to travel a long way to feed animals
there was no legal framework that would empower the villagers to deny access to their lands to strangers seeking to exploit their resources.
management of the land was subject to pressure from animals and from town-dwellers who come to exploit the land.

The change process

The collaboration between the villages and the technical assistance services has had a positive effect on the thinking of the villagers and on their entire attitude toward the exploitation of natural resources. The process has entailed a series of meetings with the rural communities.

First, an exploratory committee was set up, made up of representatives from each of the various parties. This committee worked with a local consultant to work out a strategy focusing on education, training and the implementation of a financial mechanism that might serve as a reference point for anyone wanting to provide financial support for the group. After five preliminary sessions, we held a plenary session, which produced a document that functions as a sort of handbook for the villages and for the project that currently supports them.

We have a number of small groups known as village relays, which were set up to provide an expert relief service for outside agencies, and which are able to guarantee sustainability. This transfer of competence is essential.

For two years, a local (joint) agreement has been under discussion. It was drawn up by the villages’ preparatory committee and subsequently discussed within every village. The technical assistance services supporting the villages would prefer that this agreement not contradict the Forest Code, which effectively embodies the decisions of the State itself. The agreement eventually agreed upon, in the light of that preference, will be circulated among the villages before being legally and officially ratified by the management and the village authorities.

The outcome

The major institutional reforms have been accompanied by measures at a local level:

the Water and Forestry Department no longer supervises logging operations in the area. At the village level, too, timber sales in the towns are no longer permitted, and controls are imposed on the quantity of wood that may be cut. Offenders are liable to citation by the forestry service, which must pay a percentage to the village in compensation. This way, the villages themselves are primarily responsible for their own resources.
those non-villagers who wish to exploit resources, and who are residents, are each placed under the supervision of a particular farm.
the environment and development project fulfills an important liaison function, linking the villages with the outside world while providing financial support for the management of natural resources.

Institutional measures are implemented at two levels:

The village:

decisions or measures concerning natural-resource management as stipulated by the project are being partially applied in the villages by the villagers themselves. Conditions are thus in place for intensive reafforestation, for renovated areas to function once more, for shallows to be developed, for the control of timber quotas and control of areas to be cleared, etc. Infractions must be punished and fines paid in relation to the crime. If the person concerned refuses to pay, then the technical assistance services must be called in, but the first link in the chain is the village.

The management and the technical assistance services:

these organizations provide support for the villages on request (or when needed). The Water and Forestry Department intervenes at the request of the villages whenever there is non-compliance with village decisions on timber cutting, brush fires, clearing operations, etc.,

The various proposals being implemented are having a beneficial effect on resources. It is possible to exercise control over both the amount of timber to be logged and the loggers themselves.

Certain activities that would be costly for a single village are being carried out by the community as a whole.

Lessons learned

Community-based management of natural resources does not necessarily begin with practical improvements. An initial awakening of consciences among the people is an important, if not essential, pre-requisite, if attitudes are to change.
The presence of an institutional framework gives rural communities the sense that it is they who are primarily responsible for their own natural resources.
drawing up an agreement at a local (community) level allows management, technical assistance services and villagers to be part of one single framework. The agreement must be carefully considered by the villagers and be unanimously agreed to before it is implemented.
community-based management of natural resources is, at this point, beyond the capacity of any one single village. An association of villages carries more weight and is more effective.
the goals of such village associations are nonetheless difficult to achieve in the short-term and require institutional, material and financial support.
The lessons learned from this case-study will serve as a foundation for other case-studies. Proposals made by technical assistance services to the villages must, however, be framed more carefully. In this case, the rural communities were simply looking for support from the technical assistance services.
The most important aspect is perhaps the drawing up of a local agreement which incorporates the concerns of the villages involved and excludes external players.
One great risk is that of seeing certain projects (above all the most expensive ones) fizzle out for lack of funds. We have not yet set up a rolling fund that would allow development to continue without the need for external funding.
The CMDT had already guided and educated rural organizations about the importance of natural resources, and this might be true of any similar organization. The CMDT had conducted tests which had a strong influence upon this study, in the sense that the lessons learned from those tests were crucial to the implementation of the various phases of the study.