Decentralized forest management and environmental subjectivities in

Ngañik, Senegal

Ewan RobinsonDepartment of GeographyUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

September 23, 2010Pathways to Sustainability Conference

IDS, University of Sussex

What’s surprising about decentralized management in Ngañik?

• Decentralized forest management is regarded as a success…

…in a region with almost no forests.

• Residents care about protecting forests...…which contribute only marginally to their incomes.

Decentralized Forest Governance

• Powers, Representation, and Accountability framework (Ribot 2007)

• Does participation alter people?– Environmental subjectivities (Agrawal 2005)

• Do people seek to alter institutions?– Democratic articulation (Chhatre 2008)

Environmentality (Agrawal 2005)

• Governmentalized localities– The state transfers limited management powers are

diverse local authorities.– It trades coercive control for “intimate” disciplining.

• Regulatory communities– New local authorities enforce regulations on resource

users.• Environmental subjectivities

– Through participation in regulation, individuals develop new orientations towards the environment.

What drives Environmental Subjectivities?

• Involvement > Identity– Direct involvement in regulation, rather than

social identities, drives individuals’ environmental orientations.

• Involvement > Discourse– Individuals build orientations through involvement

rather than merely adopting prevalent discourses.

Decentralization in Senegal

• Legal reforms– Law on the National Domain (1964)– ‘Participatory’ Forest Code (1993)– Decentralization Laws (1996)– New Forestry Code (1998)– Revised Forest Code under development (2011+)

• Devolution curtailed in practice– Case studies in high-value charcoal production forests

(Ribot 1995, Faye 2006, Bandiaky 2008).

Landscapes and Livelihoods in Ngañik

– Colonial: Immigration into the Peanut Basin.– Post-Independence: State policies encouraged

extensive cash-crops, replacing fallows.– Structural adjustment and neglect.

How is decentralization success defined?

Regeneration, not Reforestation

Photo source: GTGRN (GTZ) 2005.

‘Rational’ firewood production

Photo source: GTGRN (GTZ) 2005.

“Their level of organization is what is impressive.”

Author’s photo

Basis in self-interest

– Material benefits are relatively minor:– Income for women from wild fruits– Rotational firewood harvests– Revenues for village investments and crisis loans

• Ngañik residents were not allowed access to lucrative urban fuelwood markets.• Transportation permits require expensive management

plans.

Self-regulation

• Some villages continue to profit from rotational firewood cutting.

• The rural council continues to allocate additional land to protected areas.

• Forest Service agents remain primary enforcers, now with local partners.

“Kuy amul doole mënul jàpp morom am.”“Before you only had to look out for one person.

Now there are many eyes in the bush.”

How have EnvironmentalSubjectivities changed?

• Local ownership and responsibility“The Forest Service has been around since

Independence... They were there during the period when the whole environment in Senegal was destroyed.”

“For the population, they saw only the Forest Service as owning the bush… [Today] people have woken up and they own it themselves.”

- President of the Environmental Commission, Ngañik

• Healthy landscapes are forested landscapes“This was a desert… like Mauritania. There was nothing

there, no trees… Now the rains have returned.”- Abdoulaye Cissé

• Identify environmental villains.– Link poverty and environmental destruction.

• Orientations towards protecting the environment are accompanied by new expectations for local control.

How have EnvironmentalSubjectivities changed?

What drives Environmental Subjectivities?

• Social identities- Leaders – Regulatory activity often revolves

around a particularly active individual who has internalized the project of protection.

• Discourse– New environmental orientations are based in

prevailing narratives of environmental destruction.

– In what ways do locals rework these discourse?

Acknowledgements

Funding• Fulbright-IIE Student Scholarship

Research Partners• IED Afrique, Dakar, Senegal• PERACOD, Kaolack, Senegal• Jesse Ribot, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign• Papa Faye, ISM, Dakar, Senegal• Residents of Ngañik and other research sites, Senegal

Bibliography

• Agrawal, A. 2005. Environmentality: Technologies of government and the making of subjects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

• Bandiaky, S. 2008. Gender Inequality in Malidino Biodiversity Community-based Reserve, Senegal: Political Parties and the ‘Village Approach.’ Conservation and Society 6(1):62-73.

• Chhatre, A. 2008. Political articulation and accountability in decentralisation: Theory and evidence from India. Conservation and Society 6(1):12-23.

• Groupe de Travail Gouvernance des Ressources Naturelles. 2005. Les impacts socio-économiques de la gestion décentralisée des ressources naturelles: La contribution des conventions locales à la lutte contre la pauvreté. Eschborn: Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit.

• Faye, P. 2006. Décentralisation, pluralisme institutionnel et démocratie locale : Étude de cas de la gestion du massif forestier Missirah/Kothiary (région de Tambacounda, Sénégal). Market Access & Institutional Choice Working Paper 20. Washington, DC: WRI.

• Ribot, J.C. 2007. Institutional choice and recognition in the consolidation of local democracy. Development 50(1):43-49.

Thank you!