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Tropical Forest Research Network |
RURAL WOOD MARKETS AND DECENTRALISATION IN MALI. SOME ISSUES
By Baptiste Hautdidier and Laurence Boutinot
Mali, as a Sahelian country with limited forest cover, could be overlooked in the current debates on international forest management. Yet, while its wood harvesting activities barely contribute to international trade, they represent nearly 90% of its domestic household energy. This is why - in a globalised world with multiple poverty alleviation and desertification reduction agendas - Mali is particularly in touch with processes of 'localisation' of timber resource management. In 1991, the dictatorship overthrow was strongly backed by rural people. The failure of the forest administration, with its repressive stance inherited from colonial times, was particularly blatant. This urge for reform led the peasantry to adopt the slogan of 'power back to the village' (mara ka segi so in Bamanan).
This coincided with the evolution of the ideas of international actors (Bretton-woods institutions, cooperation agencies, think tanks and NGOs) regarding institutional reforms. Thus globalisation met localisation and, while relying on new precepts of good governance and subsidiarity, the donors supported the development of two broad parallel moves towards decentralisation.
Communes and rural wood
markets
The first move towards decentralisation was the creation of a new level of power,
the commune, based on laws and decrees issued in 1995 and 1996. Yet, although
the process was initiated in 1999 with the election of the local councils in
a rather consensual ambience, the creation of the communes could more or less
be regarded as a political non-event until now. Due to a lack of real power
and financial means, their action is strongly impaired in rural areas when they
are not associated with a development project or real estate issues. Their role
in natural resource management is theoretically important, yet hindered by numerous
institutional resistance: according to a 1996 law, the real devolution of forest
estate to communes still has to take place.
The second move towards decentralisation consisted of a revision of the country's forest policy. Legislation adopted between 1995 and 1998 allowed a transfer of the forest management responsibility from the State to the rural communities, with a newly created institution - the rural wood market. Defined by a demarcated forest, a point of sale and a 'rural management team' comprising local woodcutters, the rural wood market can sell a predefined quota of wood and/or charcoal under the supervision of the Nature Conservation services. The system is based on police control at the entrance of the country's main cities. A differential taxation theoretically ensures a substantial advantage to the rural wood markets.
In reality, the picture is not that flattering, due to weak control (with efficiency estimated at 10%). Most markets fail to differ from the bulk of suppliers. Along the commodity chain, such a status quo benefits the wrongdoers, ranging from urban merchants to corrupt civil servants. Furthermore, the bank account used for the taxes collected for the markets , which are supposed to partly benefit the commune, was recently blocked.
Nevertheless, nearly 300 rural wood markets have been established to date, most of them at the instigation of development projects. From 1998 to 2002, the Household Energy Strategy, a para-governmental agency mainly funded by the World Bank and the Dutch government, supervised the process in the heart of the country. Relying on socio-economic and satellite-based surveys, it planned the potential locations of the markets around the main cities and oversaw their setting up by private operators. Based on different approaches, various development actors entered into contracts in other parts of Mali: the Swiss Intercooperation near Sikasso, the International Labour Organisation at Kita, and SOS Sahel, CARE and the Near-East Foundation in the Mopti region.
Research
The environmental superiority of the system has been rather questionable until
now and so are the social, territorial and economic consequences of transferring
management responsibility for timber resources. This is what a network of social
science researchers based in Mali plans to investigate. The hypothesis that
the reforms have substantial effects in terms of (i) reshaping of the equilibrium
of powers, (ii) the appropriation of territories and (iii) the redistribution
of the woodfuel commodity chain incomes, will be tested at three embedded scales,
namely the supply basin, the commune and the village.
The woodcutting activity, formerly caste-reserved and dominated by transitory wage earners, has since been largely spread throughout villages surrounding Bamako and other towns. The local harvesters, a substantial number of whom are women and landless peasants, are tending to become professional. The impact of the markets on actors' strategies and incomes may then be important, but also subject to swift changes. Are rural wood markets a factor of social and economic differentiation (at the inter and intra-household levels)? Was the gender awareness and the pro-poor stance of the markets' spirit a success or have global inequalities and struggles simply been translated to the village scale?
Changes
The rural management team of woodcutters, as an institution governing the access
to bush areas and contributing to its members' welfare, has been a factor of
change in local arenas. It triggered deep modifications of tenure rights over
village lands and internal power struggles that both eventually led to conflicts.
The question is how power relations and social networks are built through the
harvesting of a resource and the appropriation of a territory. What are the
links between those new powers and the traditional ones? What is the new constellation
of resource access and use that result from those interactions?
Considering the current ineffectiveness of the commune as an institution dedicated to natural resources management, the studies (based on the fields of social change anthropology, geography and economics) will take into account the possible functions of development projects, communes, merchants, hauliers and state representatives in a prospective view.
The aim is to reduce the conceptual inconsistencies between the ongoing processes of political decentralisation and liberalisation of the forest sector by accompanying the Malian society towards:
Further information:
Baptiste Hautdidier
CIRAD
BP 1813,Immeuble Ibrahim,
Quartier Niaréla Mali
Bamako
Mali
E-mail: baptiste.hautdidier@cirad.fr