Abstract
The delineation and protection of transhumance corridors are increasingly seen as critical to maintaining livestock mobility in agropastoral areas of West Africa by allowing passage through areas of increasing cropping pressure. Understanding the local politics surrounding the mapping and protection of transhumance corridors is important for policy formulation. This study reports the findings of group meetings in nine local districts (communaut's rurales) in eastern Senegal about recently mapped corridors. The focus of our observations include local perceptions of 1) the benefits and costs of corridors, 2) the effect of the recognition of corridors on competing land uses (particularly farming), 3) the need for and means to recognize and protect corridors, and 4) the appropriate level of authority to recognize and protect corridors. Our findings show significant geographical variation within the study area as to the perceived benefits and costs of corridors, with a major distinction between groups who view the function of corridors as protecting local farms from livestock passing through and those that understand corridors as critical for facilitating access to pastures. Given the significant overlap among multiple formal and informal poles of authority, the politics surrounding corridor delineation and protection are shaped less by the perceived costs to competing land uses than by contestation over the authority that designation and protection would require. Policy implications of findings for land use planning around corridors are discussed.
Highlights
The need to promote and facilitate livestock mobility in semi-arid West Africa has been recognized by social and biophysical scientists (e.g. Ellis and Swift 1988; Niamir-Fuller 1999; Scoones 1994) but is increasingly recognized by national governments in the region (Bonnet and Hérault 2011; Dongmo et al 2012; Touré 2004; Wabnitz 2006)
Regional movements of livestock do require, at a minimum, the ability to move through agropastoral areas on a seasonal basis
Corridors play a vital function in areas of mixed land use, in the middle latitudes (13.5° to 15° north) where mobility is increasingly constrained due to land use competition with crop agriculture
Summary
The need to promote and facilitate livestock mobility in semi-arid West Africa has been recognized by social and biophysical scientists (e.g. Ellis and Swift 1988; Niamir-Fuller 1999; Scoones 1994) but is increasingly recognized by national governments in the region (Bonnet and Hérault 2011; Dongmo et al 2012; Touré 2004; Wabnitz 2006). Moving south into the middle portion of the study area (Figure 1), cultivation pressure increases, ethnic composition diversifies (greater presence of Wolof, Serer, and Manding groups), and the history and coherence of customary pastoral organization is more limited than to the north. This is the area where contemporary tensions between farming and herding groups run highest (higher land use competition) and the political influence of pastoral groups is relatively low. As these resulting shifts in power are contested, processes of decentralization become enmeshed in the production and reproduction of hierarchy at the local level (Gray 2006; Poteete and Ribot 2011)
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