Natural resources

In West Africa, desertification threatens the living conditions of over 250 million people. The results of projects to combat desertification undertaken over the last 40 years or so have been mixed. One reason for this is probably that technical or technological approaches have taken precedence over the sociological approach. This manual is intended to bring the reader back to the social dimensions of the fight against desertification, focusing on sustainable management of natural resources in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid environments.

The Pangani River Basin covers an area of about 43,650 km2, mostly in Tanzania with approximately 5% in Kenya. The Basin contains a wide array of resources of which water and arable land are arguably the most important to its 3.7 million Tanzanian inhabitants. There is a diversity of interests in the Basin, and these are able to wield various degrees of power as they seek to lay claim to its resources. These differences in power underlie the many conflicts that characterize natural resource exploitation within the Basin.

En Afrique de l'Ouest, la désertification menace les conditions d'existence de plus de 250 millions d'individus. Cependant, les résultats des projets de lutte contre la désertification entrepris depuis plus de 40 ans ont été pour le moins mitigés. Une des raisons à cela est probablement que la démarche technique, voire techniciste, a été privilégiée par rapport à l'approche sociale.