Case Received: February 2, 1998

The "Siwaa" Test Zone on the sustainable, community-based management of natural resources lies 15 kilometers to the south-east of the town of Koutiala, which is a regional administrative capital (in the administrative region of Sikasso, in southern Mali) and site of one of the 6 regional offices of the CMDT (Mali Textile Development Society). The zone comprises 6 neighboring villages which together make up a uniform area of 16,605 ha, with a population of 6,338 people. The villages in question are Kaniko (central), Try I, Try II, M’Péresso, Namposséla and Sinsina.

The principle renewable resources involved in this test of the community-based management of natural resources include pastoral resources (especially grasses and trees used for fodder), forest resources (especially firewood and the products of gathering) and agricultural land.

In fact, it was the village of Kaniko that first approached the CMDT, in order to seek that organization’s assistance in finding a solution to the general problem of the degradation of agricultural land, and the hydric erosion in Kaniko in particular. In response to the concerns of the people of Kaniko, the CMDT then set up its IER (Institute for Rural Economies) research unit, via its Sikasso-based research division, the DRSPR (Division for Research into Rural Production Systems). The tests carried out by the DRSPR (now known as the ESPGRN, or the Team on Natural-Resource Production and Management Systems), which consisted of introducing basic anti-erosion methods that could be implemented by the rural communities themselves, continued for two seasons (1984/85 and 1985/86). As a result, the CMDT was able, in May 1986, to set up its Battle Against Erosion project (PLAE). It was aided in this project by Belgium, and the goal was to pass on to the people the lessons learned from our research in the Battle Against Erosion (LAE) carried out throughout the CMDT area. Those lessons concerned the use of innovations such as lines of stones, quickset hedges, and grass strips, instruction on how to maintain ditches, plant trees and clean up homes, the use of firebreaks, spaced banks with furrows, dry or semi-wet scratching, the bulk production of quality organic manure to fertilize the land, and how to protect areas at risk of bush fires and the abusive exploitation of pastoral and timber resources. The PLAE went on developing, and in 1992 became a CMDT division (that is, part of the organization’s permanent structure). The Soil Protection and Restoration Division (DDRS), as it was now called, was based at Koutiala but reported to CMDT Headquarters in Bamako.

For around 3 months (from May 1986 to February 1989) the PLAE worked with several villages (including the Siwaa test zone’s own Try I and Try II) within the CMDT regions of Koutiala and Sikasso. Then, in February 1989, the PLAE conducted an assessment, comprising a number of studies, of what had been achieved in the Kaniko area, in order to ensure that the LAE program, which had begun in 1984, could be successful.

The results of this assessment were welcomed by the people of Kaniko. Hydric erosion, which was generally caused by water trickling down from the plateau areas, was under control. Areas that lay above the fields under development, and which had suffered notable degradation due to excessive cutting of timber, pressure from animals, and unregulated bush fires, had begun to turn green again, bringing greater promise of new grass shoots and tree roots. And yet, despite these positive signs, rural communities continued to entertain doubts as to how long the innovations referred to above might be sustained. In their view, a solution needed to be found. They complained that the parts of their lands that had undergone improvement were being exploited by neighboring villages and by herds belonging to the bigger traders of the town of Koutiala. The land was being used as pastureland for the traders’ animals or as a source of firewood for sale in Koutiala (town carters), in blatantly contravention of the management regulations that the villages themselves had introduced to ensure that the production potential of their village lands could be sustained. In the short-term, this would ruin the people’s attempts to improvement the management of their resources and to combat the erosion and degradation of their natural resources. They also stated that in their view, development should not be limited to their fields and the immediate surrounding area. Development and good resource management should, they said, also be applied in all the other areas that were suffering degradation, since these lands were causing the erosion of their cultivated lands. In their view, if a solution to this problem could not be found, then they were clearly neither "owners" nor "masters" of their own lands. Consequently, they added, they should not be expected to go on developing their own lands if people from outside were free to come along and negate their efforts.

Something clearly needed to be done. The PLAE asked the DRSPR to approach the other technical assistance services in the Koutiala region (notably the Water and Forests Service and the Animal Husbandry Service), along with the administrative and political authorities, in order to set up a test of natural-resource management in Kaniko. This was the best approach to the problem, in light of the fact that all the land belonged to the State and anyone could exploit resources wherever they wished without anybody having the power to stand in the way. So, in March 1989, the test was begun.

As it turned out, it was not just the village of Kaniko that was included in the experiment. The 5 surrounding villages also joined in, mainly because of custom and the ancient links between Kaniko and its immediate neighbors (Try I, Try II, M’Péresso, Namposséla and Sinsina).

The main goal of this test of the sustainable and community-based management of natural resources in the so-called "Siwaa" village area was to design and test a participatory approach that might foster improved management of the land, by the villagers and for the villagers, based on the principle of the sustained and lasting use of existing natural resources.

The name "SIWAA" given to the experiment by the villagers means "Dry bush." It reflects the concern of the 6 villages involved to manage the bush land in such a way that it might flourish again and become, as they described it, "green bush."

I have been involved in this experiment since the beginning. At first, I worked with the (Dutch) project leader. That was between 1986 and 1992. My job was to make as many people as possible aware of the lessons learned, in this context, from our LAE/MPP research throughout the CMDT region, and to make whatever improvements were possible and necessary to ensure that the people of southern Mali adopted both the anti-erosion measures and those measures concerning the management of natural resources. Subsequently, I served as head of the section concerned with the development of lands in the CMDT’s Koutiala area, which answers to the Chief of the CMDT’s Koutiala-based Regional Rural Development Division, on the technical aspects of the implementation of MPP (Sustain Production Potential) policies and on the sustainable management of natural resources (GDRN). I also represented the CMDT on the DRSPR team which, from May 1985 to May 1986, around the villages of Kaniko, Try I and Try II, tested LAE measures before the PLAE began.

The Siwaa region is located in the Sudanese agricultural and climatic zone, with an average rainfall between 800 and 1000 mm. Agricultural land makes up over 50 % of the surface of the inter-village areas, which are almost entirely devoted to crops. The farming methods being used could not prevent the degradation of their arable lands. This had led to shorter fallow periods (2 to 4years maximum). At this point, areas around the edges of their lands were being farmed, because of the lack of arable land (due to population growth, the rapid spread of cultivated land caused by oxen farming, and the transition to a money-based agriculture, driven by the move to income-based crop farming, especially rice-growing). As a result, livestock counts had rocketed, to meet the need for working oxen, and the need simply to build a herd (cattle hoarding). This had led to an alarming surplus of pastureland in the Siwaa zone, a surplus that did not even take into account the influx of migrant animals and those from neighboring villages and the town of Koutiala, all of which served only to exacerbate the problem. Thus the farmers had been turned into agro-shepherds, who practiced a kind of oxen-driven sedentary animal husbandry.

Thus, the degradation of land and vegetation had begun. It continued to worsen until the point when farmers became aware of the fall in per-hectare returns and the onset of erosion in their fields. It was at this point that Kaniko asked the CMDT to help resolve the situation.

In terms of agriculture, pastureland and forests, only M’Péresso, among the villages in the Siwaa test zone, has experienced a somewhat less intense pressure on its renewable natural resources (that is, soil and vegetation). This is because it is larger and has a lower population.

Prevailing land law may be characterized as a mixture of the customary and the modern:

According to modern land law, land that is not registered (including lands occupied by the farmers) belongs to the State. Modern land law also, however, recognizes individual and community rights as rights of use. The exploitation of timber resources is regulated by the Forest Code.

According to customary law, pastureland is open to all, whether native or outsider. The exploitation of forest resources according to customary law is unfettered, except in the case of sacred woods and certain fruit trees. There is no pastoral code governing the exploitation of pastureland, waterholes or the passage of animal herds.

The main problems presented by the Siwaa test zone were of two kinds:

1. The zone’s timber resources were under threat. Large-scale commercial exploitation of timber by outside carters, conducted to meet the energy needs of the town of Koutiala, was cited as the main reason for the degradation of the bush;

2. The second factor was the intense pressure brought to bear on the bush by the herds of the Koutiala merchants and other outside farmers.

Other, related, and no less important, problems, such as bush fires and the unregulated use of firewood by the women living in the test zone (they build large woodpiles simply as an act of defiance) reinforced the risks of degradation in the land between the Siwaa villages.

Change was brought about by an approach that emphasized intervention on the ground. Three essential goals were identified:

1. Villagers must be educated, made aware of the problem, and trained.

2. The lands belonging to the 6 villages must be defined.

3. Any obstacles, within the Siwaa zone, to the community-based management of natural resources, must be identified and dealt with.

The program sought to produce the following changes:

• the establishment of a consultation framework, to function both among the various agencies involved and, by means of the inter-village committee created for this purpose, between the agencies and the local people;

• a thorough assessment of the prevailing conditions in the Siwaa test zone;

• the creation and implementation of a plan for the sustainable and wise use of natural resources in the region (agricultural, forest and pasture lands);

• (after the assessment phase was over), the removal of the deadly taboo surrounding the acknowledgment of village borders. Initially, we incorporated only a part of each village area, as defined by the paths that ran between them - an area equivalent to 12,605 ha. However, acknowledgment of such borders is essential to good natural-resource management, and a subsequent change in attitude brought the inclusion of all village lands (around 16,605 ha);

• the administrative and political authorities should be asked to grant an exemption under the law that would allow the testing of new ways to manage natural resources – ways that did not always conform to prevailing Mali law (at the outset of the test), but which were useful, and even indispensable, if the people were to be made responsible for the management of their own natural resources. The ultimate goal here was to secure help in improving and amending those existing laws that were no longer applicable to modern conditions.

• a local agreement (respecting the new Forest Code) was to be drawn up, in close consultation with the local people, governing the wise use of agricultural, forest, and pastureland resources. State approval for the agreement should be secured;

• the local people were to be made responsible for the implementation of the said agreement;

• outside exploiters of village lands should be made to respect the local agreement, wherever they failed to do so.

In terms of the outcome of the program, we may note the following points:

• there has been a slight slowing in the degradation of natural resources (notably concerning excessive logging and the erosion of agricultural soils). This gives us cause to hope that, if these trends continue, they these resources can be used on a sustainable basis in the future;

• for once, we have seen effective collaboration, both among institutions and between institutions and the local people. The technical assistance services have found a way to make the consultation and collaboration process work, and have actively encouraged the participation of the villagers. It is an essential pre-condition for an experiment such as Siwaa that joint programs be designed and put into effect;

• intra-village and inter-village coordination around the notion of the sustainable and community-based management of natural resources has become a reality in the Siwaa zone. Village committees have been set up in each village, as has an inter-village committee on GRN (Natural-Resource Management) for the 6 villages in which women take part;

• we have proceeded at a gentle pace, because progress is essentially dependent upon the     means at the disposal of the rural communities (minimal outside funds, if any at all) and upon the existence of an institutional and legal framework geared toward making villagers responsible for their own resources.

• the State has drawn up and implemented a new Forest Code, which takes into account certain socioeconomic and agro-ecological realities, as well as a number of lessons learned from the various projects on community-based management of natural resources (including the PLAE);

• the local agreement, which incorporates the newly enforced regulations (the new Forest Code) has been drawn up, amended and adopted by the local people and the various service agencies involved, and signed by the administrative and political authorities. It took effect on May 16 1997.

• this local agreement will be implemented by the villagers, with the support of the technical assistance services. Responsibility for imposing punishments under the agreement, in the case of infractions, and in cases where an amicable agreement cannot be reached, used to fall on the Water and Forest Department (before the restructuring of the Ministry for Rural Development and the Environment), and now (with the restructuring of December 1997) falls on the Regulation and Control Service.

• there are some embryonic GRN programs already under way in the Siwaa zone. There are not many of them yet, but we may note, by way of example, the test zone "U sigignon", which comprises 11 villages and is located in the Northern part of the Siwaa zone, and the test zone "SIGIYAA", which is managing the Molobala area (comprising 11 villages) in the southern territories of the Siwaa zone. These experiences suggest that the Siwaa experience can be repeated in the medium and long term, bearing in mind the specific characteristics of each zone in southern Mali.

If the villagers are not made responsible for the management of their own resources, through institutional and legal reforms that empower them to regulate the use of natural resources for themselves, it is almost impossible to deal with the degradation of those resources.

Management committees (representing both individual villages and groups of villages) form a link between the villages and outside partners (as well as outside users of resources) that is essential to the successful conclusion of any program seeking to promote the community-based management of natural resources.

Technical assistance agencies must exercise an appropriate degree of patience when providing technical support to programs seeking to promote the community-based management of natural resources. Such programs require more time, more effort (and yet often minimal expenditure) on their part. Siwaa is in its 8^th year, and much still remains to be done.

Villagers are often unable to keep up with the speed at which renewable natural resources become degraded. This can seriously hamper efforts to promote the community-based management of natural resources.

Because the community-based management of natural resources requires commitments to be made at both a community and an individual level, a minimum of social cohesion is essential to its success. There is a veritable avalanche of parent AV’s (Village Associations) currently being set up in the CMDT’s Koutiala region (and these include the countless AV’s being set up within individual villages). One of the main factors behind this process is the erosion of the social fabric, generally provoked by a crisis of some sort (such as mismanagement of AV revenues; individual farmers’ determination to exploit resources to their own benefit, due to the transition to money-based agricultural production; power disputes among villages chiefs, etc.). Unless one is very careful, this process can undermine efforts to promote the community-based management of natural resources, and may even be bring those efforts to a complete standstill.

The decentralization process now under way in Mali can serve as a model for improvements in the community-based management of natural resources within a group of villages such as those in the Siwaa zone. But the success of the decentralization process will greatly depend upon those responsible for its implementation. If decentralization proves, at village level, to be nothing more than the devolution of decision-making powers, then we shall have missed the main point.

Any plan for the development and management of areas in which natural resources are managed on a community basis must be fully understood by those responsible for its implementation. If this is not the case, then the program will be meaningless and doomed to failure.

Underlying any interventions within the ambit of the community-based management of natural resources there must be a constant process of communication and consultation between the various groups involved. Those groups include technical assistance services, administrative and political groups, as well as internal and external users of natural resources. Without such a process, such interventions will surely fail.

Rapid results can be achieved by implementing the community-based management of natural resources through project financing. Once the financing dries up, however, the survival of such projects cannot be guaranteed. It is essential to provide support and training to the village and inter-village liaison groups so that the villagers themselves are able to manage, plan and evaluate the various programs related to such projects.

The need to provide financial support, in the form of loans, to income-generating activities, can provide an incentive to support the community-based management of natural resources. If this is to happen, bona fide projects should be designed and financed by the people concerned.

Among totally destitute peoples (for example those in Mali’s desert areas), there is no guarantee that the community-based management of natural resources will succeed without the considerable human, material and financial resources necessary to instill new life into those areas whose recovery is likely to give hope back to the people.

A pastoral code is essential to the better the regulation of pastoral resources. There is a great deal still to be done in this area, specifically because there is no such pastoral code.