Session 1. 14.

The last few decades have witnessed the proliferation of collective payment contracts for environmental services (C-PES) to help alleviate problems of deforestation and natural resources degradation in the context of communal land tenure. As C-PES programs are proving to gain the adherence of rural communities in many part of the world, discussions on how C-PES arrangements may support the emergence of collective actions are minimal in scientific literature. In this respect, we refer to the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to analyze the institutional content of one recent C-PES contract in Southern Tunisia that had allowed for the pastoral amelioration of 148 300 ha of tribal grazing lands. We apply first to the institutional grammar tool to unpack new management rules, and refer next to the Institutional Network Analysis approach to reconstruct these rules within action situations of provision, appropriation, and monitoring and sanctioning. Results reveal a purposeful institutional change crafted around Ostrom’s design principles. Of particular manifestation are those principles related to resource system boundaries and local enforcement of provision and appropriation rules. Moreover, our investigation reveals that actors’ interaction was intended to occur within centralized collaborative networks, which may hinder possibilities for social learning and acquirement of new institutions by resource users.

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.

The three northern regions of Cameroon, Adamawa, North and Far-North, are experiencing delays in human development. In addition to the state underinvestment, there are tensions fuelled by population growth and climate change. Moreover, a significant part of the Septentrion is covered by protected areas, leading to the competition for scarce land and natural resources. In response, a 5-year initiative was launched in 2023, “Cameroon Green Septentrion: Integrated Territorial Governance” with the objective to make territorial governance more inclusive and to promote conflict prevention. One of the actions aims at making zoning and land management decisions better informed, transparent and respected and a “conflict hotspot” approach is being implemented, consisting of (i) categorising conflicts according to their typology (e.g. herders-farmers, communities-protected areas, communities-wildlife); (ii) identifying major areas in the landscape where the conflicts occur, called “conflict hotspots”, together with a range of stakeholders in participatory workshops at communal and regional level and selecting representative sites for interventions; (iii) in-depth analysis of conflicts and conflict resolution mechanisms in those pilot sites; (iv) strengthening existing conflict prevention and management mechanisms and/or create new ones; (v) strengthening capacities of main protagonists in the conflicts, to enhance participation of vulnerable groups in decision-making processes and create awareness among the more powerful actors to allow participatory and inclusive land use planning and natural resource management; (vi) developing scenarios of a future without conflicts and a roadmap to arrive at it.

On October 2-4, 2024, the N’Djamena international conference (https://pasto-protect-2024.sciencesconf.org/?forward-action=index&forward-controller=index&lang=en) permitted to bridging the gap between the conservationist vision of protected areas and the pure pastoral activities. The conference stressed the need not to think about conservation in a way that is disconnected from the development of local communities.

This conference allowed to put some concepts at the debate (landscape vs territorial approach; pastoralist vs neo-pastoralists) and to learn on experiences in the field (parks playing in some settings a role of refuge, or routes for herds during crisis or in tension zones, the comparison of the services provided by agropastoral systems, in comparison with protected areas).

Chadian research institutions and decision-makers wish to make this conference an event to be repeated and the IASC biennial conference offers occasion to continue research on this thematic and made progress on solutions to co-construct the future of protected areas and agropastoral interfaces’ territories based on more inclusive and commons modes of governance.