.png)
VIDEOS
Promoting dialogue to restore the land
Diffa's district, Niger
“Before carrying out an activity, the team always asks us if it meets our needs and our way of life. RESILAC's community approach converges with our local specificities. ".
This observation, drawn up by the president of a local CSO in the municipality of Diffa [1], highlights the approach carried by the RESILAC project, which operates in a complex security and climatic context.
For more than a decade, the Diffa region has suffered from a crisis with multiple causes. The structural weaknesses linked to a natural environment impacted by climate change, and the limited capacities of state services, lead to a lack of infrastructure and access to basic services. Added to this are the ongoing abuses and violence that armed groups bring to bear on the populations. This multifaceted and growing insecurity has several consequences: a drastic reduction in the use of fertile areas of Lake Chad, internal displacement of populations and the arrival of refugees from neighboring countries, demographic pressure on the scarce resources available in certain areas. already highly precarious and the exacerbation of community conflicts related to the sharing of natural resources[2].
In addition, in the region, States and their decentralized technical services intervene to a very limited extent in land management at the local level. The Nigerien land law contains provisions on land appropriation and conflict resolution in rural areas, but these are used very little, because the procedures are often restrictive and very expensive[3]. While land management remains globally in the hands of traditional chiefdoms, their powers are diminishing and the lack of dialogue sometimes freezes everyone's positions.
Moreover, the effects of climate change are an additional source of concern and tension by reducing their availability due to silting up, frequent droughts and the decline in the fertility of soils used for agriculture and livestock[4].
Faced with this situation, the RESILAC project set up targeted programs to restore land and help communities to self-manage natural resources. These programs are innovative because they promote multi-stakeholder debates at the local level, and formalize the rules for access to natural resources through local agreements for developed sites. These partnership agreements are signed between community leaders and elected officials responsible for regional administrative entities, or decentralized technical services specifically involved in an agricultural activity, always respecting the laws in force in the country. RESILAC's programs also aim to produce new techniques to define the fate of abandoned lands: to establish diagnostics to optimize the use of these lands, while being creative in order to guarantee environmentally friendly exploitation.
A new approach to dialogue
In the Diffa region, RESILAC strengthens dialogue mechanisms between territorial entities (municipalities, cantons, chiefdoms) and provides them with data to enable them to make the link between the needs of the populations and the development issues of their localities[5] .
Thus, RESILAC has supported the municipalities of Maine Soroa, Chétimari and Goudoumaria, in collaboration with the decentralized state technical services, to initiate the process of updating the municipal plan to draw an overall vision of the challenges to be met over the next five years.
In these communes, the departmental authorities helped the project to create 22 community land commissions. These commissions are administrative entities whose mission is to lead development operations. In addition, the project has set up 7 consultation frameworks around high-intensity labor-intensive worksites (HIMO), which serve to improve mediation on recurring conflicts related to access to natural resources. This regularly takes the form of the signing of framework agreements to distribute the roles of all the players on the developed agricultural sites.
All these devices make it possible to strengthen community engagement, and to solicit a joint effort to reinvest abandoned land.
In addition, labor-based work sites provide work for young people, women and vulnerable populations who, through this, participate in the economic recovery of the community, can save money and meet the needs of their families. This stabilizes the populations in the region, promotes social cohesion and resilience.
An inclusive program adapted to each village
95km from Diffa and 20km from the main town of Mainé Soroa, Adebour is a village which concentrates rain-fed agriculture, market gardening, livestock farming and petty trade[6]. The village has dune lands, for rain-fed agricultural production and extensive livestock farming in community grazing areas. It also has fertile valleys, suitable for market gardening and rainfed production. RESILAC teams carried out diagnostics there, with a view to identifying the natural resources that are subject to more demographic and climatic pressure[7].
Following these diagnoses, the groups of farmers mobilized to restore the land. These well-targeted works have resulted in particular in the construction of wire fences, permanent water points in the valleys, the fixing of dunes as well as the sowing with herbaceous plants and the planting of Prosopis plants (derived from Acacias) which slow down the advance of the desert. Soumaila Malam AWARI, member of the site management committee, explains:
"This site is important for us, because it will not only save our valley from silting up, but also allow our animals to find food just outside the village".
In addition, the project promotes equitable access to land on restored sites. Thus, on one of the village's community market gardening sites, among the 48 heads of households designated for land management, 12 are women. A real novelty, according to Gaptia Mai WANDARA, a young farmer and mother of three children:
“I now benefit from a 200 m² plot, where I cultivate potatoes, tomatoes, moringa and lettuce. Previously, it was my husband, alone, who looked after the household by volunteering as labor and selling charcoal. Now, the consumption of these market garden products has improved the nutritional security of my family. And above all, as a woman, having access to land is a source of pride and a chance ” .
The practice of innovative techniques adapted to climate challenges
In the region, soils are becoming less fertile due to continued land degradation, linked to poor farming practices, erosion and silting up.
To remedy this, RESILAC has set up “pilot activities” to test innovative practices. In Yambal (a village in the commune of N'Guigmi), in partnership with the University of Diffa, 20 leading producers, 50% of whom are women, participated in experimental studies. Ibrahim Hamidou OUMAROU, technical referent of the project, specifies:
“ A total of seven techniques and practices were tested alongside university students, focusing on the growth parameters and yield of corn, the effects of plant spacing on growth, productivity and efficiency. of a moringa hedge, the effects of compost on the growth and yield of corn and millet, the effectiveness of neem juice against insect pests of cowpea and the effects of the presence of basil on insect pests of cabbage ”.
When the results are conclusive, these new techniques will then be taught to the villagers, through Farmer Field Schools [8].
This is part of the process of transmitting / perpetuating innovative techniques on essential issues for the inhabitants: the consequences of the upwelling on land, the problem of the growing use of pesticides, and the future of abandoned land facing to drought.
In addition to the practical training of rural producers, the staff of the local state technical services are also mobilized. Thus, a training course on Intelligent Agriculture facing the Climate (AIC) was organized in March 2020, and renewed in June in Zinder with the Regional Directorate of Agriculture and the agents of the RESILAC project, in collaboration with the Institute. International Research on Crops of Semi-Arid Tropical Zones (ICRISAT).
While land governance has since improved, the region nevertheless remains the scene of unpredictable developments. The persistent fragility of the land, the movements of populations and the frequent takeovers of non-state armed groups, which in particular tax access to natural resources [9], make it necessary to redouble our ingenuity to think, together, the conditions of fair and sustainable sharing of resources.
Find this article on our partners' websites:
[1] Iterative evaluation report with mini-seminar (EIMS) N ° 3 conducted in Niger, December 2020
[2] Report, Pillar 1 Referent Visit - Diffa Region, October 2020 - the visits date from August 18 to 26, 2020
[3] INSUCO regional research study, Contrasting impacts of the security crisis on land tenure situations in the Lake Chad region, 2020
[4] PASAM & AFD report, Food security for rural Sahelian households in Niger, in the departments of Gouré and Maine Soroa.
[5] Progress Report of August 31, 2019 - RESILAC Global Steering Committee
[6] Mission report of the regional technical advisor - visit from August 13 to 25, 2020 - villages of Mamari Forage and Adebour
[7] RESILAC interim execution report n ° 3 produced in Niger - December 2020
[8] Farmer field school: a group of 20 to 25 people meeting once a week to cultivate a training plot throughout a growing season and to learn together to solve production problems
[9] INSUCO regional research study, Contrasting impacts of the security crisis on land tenure situations in the Lake Chad region, 2020