In Niger, there is a project to build the Dosso refinery, petrochemical complex and power plant that will range up to 300,000 hectares. The issue is that the site encompasses a protected area of 7,760 hectares which will obviously be destroyed. Knowing that this area was a prior community agropastoral zone with common tenure arrangement before it has been degazetted, it is legitimate to question in the form and the legitimacy of the process of declassification by the current authorities of Niger.
This presentation will allow broadly to review the different levels of sustaining conservation sites in Niger through the prism of the effectiveness or efficiency of the procedures and institutions put in place to guarantee the community livelihoods as well as development projects. Thus, can the State, that is supposed the guarantor of the national conservation strategy, acts as a violator of its own standards even when economic interests are evoked? To what extend common property rights on pastures and forests as well as individuals rights will be prevailed? This study will emphasize on the desirable nature of the protection mechanisms to be established.
