Future of Community Lands

Emmanuel Ndione

doi:10.3362/9781780442266

Future of Community Lands

Human resources

This book describes the approaches and experiences of rural development workers in Senegal working with small-scale farmers. Its aim is to highlight successful methodological approaches adopted by this group in their attempt to help farmers revitalize the local environment in community lands, while building on the farmers' own experiences. It thus describes a facilitating approach. It is additionally interesting to anglophone readers because the book comes out of the experiences of development workers in francophone West Africa, and thus offers a fresh perspective on the common concerns of development workers worldwide.

Published: 1995
Pages: 256

eBook: 9781780442266

Paperback: 9781853392481


Introduction xiii
Part I The deep roots of community lands 1
1 The community land in the words of the people 3
The political history of Fandene 6
The changing landscape 11
The religious history of Fandene 14
The spread of Christianity 16
Changing farming practices: the men and women tell
their stories 18
Outside intervention 27
Conclusion: our community land is highly complex 31
2 A complex identity 33
Historical identity 34
Cultural identity 36
Organizational identity 37
Strategies and changes 38
Landmark conclusions 38
Part II The failure of projects to take root 41
3 From a sectoral to a global approach 43
A brief history of development projects in West Africa 43
New approaches to reafforestation in West Africa 47
Trees and forests, symbols of colonial rule 47
Trees come to the villages 49
From copse to fields, from fields to community land 49
Towards local, global and social issues 52
Landmark conclusions 55
4 Project type and the role of the local people 57
Promotion projects 57
Support projects 58
Consultative structures 60
Models and reality 60
Project type and personal profiles 64
Where are we going? 65
Landmark conclusions 66
5 Techniques and local participation 68
Trends 68
Reafforestation and differences of perception 74
The differing perceptions of community land 85
Nobody's technical choices are neutral 89
Landmark conclusions 90
6 Power issues 92
Analysis of the forces involved in a project 92
Project financing and participation 99
The price to be paid for participation: local control of
environmental resources 103
Landmark conclusions 105
Part III Interaction 107
7 Sob: a tale of interaction 109
From Dakar to Sob 109
Two villages and some hamlets 110
Arable farming and livestock rearing 111
Whose project: the young people's or the village's? 112
The village takes control 113
Sectoral activities 114
Two groups in opposition 114
Necessity of an urban setting 115
Who has responsibility for health care in the village? 117
The connection between plants and their environment 117
The village's natural resources under threat 117
From sectoral to global 118
Looking at practical problems in the field 118
The workshop: a springboard towards more global
thinking 119
Getting the guests to talk and share their points of view 120
Global problems and how they are linked 121
A new impetus 121
Village involvement and consensus-building 122
Conflicts over land distribution 123
The technical officer's logic vs. the farmer's logic 125
A system of credit grows out of the grain bank 126
Women and the grain markets 127
Is transparency always desirable? 128
Formal criteria or unwritten rules? 130
Discovering indigenous knowledge 130
8 Beyond building a dam 133
The dynamism of the smaller villages 134
The village's negotiating and organizational skills 134
An experience which shaped Enda's thinking 136
Market gardening in the wadi 137
Two sites, two dams 139
'The land belongs to everyone' 'How can we be sure of that?' 140
Following the footsteps of KMF 141
North/South collaboration, or learning to work together 142
Traditional organization vs. business logic 142
Words of reassurance 145
Alarming divergences 146
A complex social landscape 149
Dispelling doubts 150
Settling scores 151
Strategies determined by status within the group 152
Local social rules 153
Rescheduling and calling in the authorities 154
Learning more about the actors' unspoken thoughts 156
Starting again 157
It looked promising . . . 160
. . . and yet nothing changed 160
Hidden costs 161
The authorities take a stance 162
Legal solutions are not always effective 163
Back to square one 164
Warnings and threats 165
Negotiation and forecasting 166
The diversity of interest groups 169
New communications for a new structure 173
Looking at things from a different perspective 173
The 'fruits' of the cassava 174
Initiatives and self-reliance 174
Village programmes and village funds 176
9 The actors 178
Projects are about interaction 178
The project produces and divides the actors 178
Three processes by which projects produce actors 180
Versatile actors and shifting social divisions 182
Landmark conclusions 183
10 Relational frameworks 185
Relational networks as a strategic resource 185
The positioning of external actors 187
Relational networks and the actors' room for manoeuvre 188
Relational networks and communication 189
Landmark conclusions 189
11 Interaction . 191
Confrontation of world-views 191
Value systems and systems of reference 192
The internal world of the Support Organization 193
Who am I? What am I doing here? The anxiety of the
fieldworker 198
The interplay of supply and demand 199
The villagers' myths about NGOs 200
Landmark conclusions 201
12 Learning processes 203
Learning on all fronts and letting go of certainties 203
Failure, unforeseen events and confrontation: the ingredients
of the learning process 207
Seizing learning opportunities 209
Landmark conclusions 210
13 Creative uncertainties 212
Complication, diversification 213
Managing uncertainty — reverse planning 216
Landmark conclusions 216
14 Research-Action-Learning 218
The project as a research process 218
Pointers for managing interaction 225
15 Conclusion 232