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Case study 2 - WINDBREAKS, AGROFORESTRY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT -- MAJJIA VALLEY

Introduction

The Majjia Valley windbreaks constitute an anomaly in top-down development projects. The windbreaks were planted, despite initial local resistance, on Forest Service decision. They grew well and protected valley fields ever more effectively against wind erosion. By 1987, despite severe costs for some -- mainly local Hausa women who formerly grazed livestock in the valley -- the planted trees had effectively eliminated the wind erosion problem in all treated areas. The windbreak lines were being regularly extended throughout the valley and it appears that the project's goal will be achieved for the entire valley by the year 2000 at the latest.

In the meantime, three additional problems have arisen. All are serious and threaten to undermine the unquestionable success of the windbreak activity. They are the following:

This section reviews the Majjia Valley project using the four categories of the analytic framework, that is, attributes of goods and services, institutions, interactions and outcomes. The first part, Windbreaks, analyzes the original wind erosion problem and the measures taken to combat it. The second part, Windbreak Harvesting, assesses the windbreak maintenance problems of protection, periodic harvesting and distribution of harvested forest products. The third part, Windbreaks and Environmental Management in the Wider Valley Region, will address issues raised by the need to extend the focus of environmental management from windbreaks on the valley floor to water harvesting and runoff control on the valley sides and the surrounding plateaux. The fourth part, Institutional Arrangements for Construction and Maintenance of Waterworks and Ground Cover, analyzes institutional conditions necessary to support a link between windbreak maintenance and broader gauge environmental management activities. These are, water harvesting, runoff control and mastery of water erosion in the Majjia Valley -- conditions for sustaining agricultural productivity in the area.

Windbreaks -- Establishment phase 1975-84

OVERVIEW

The initial phase of the Majjia Windbreak project -- not yet completed -- began in 1974 with the creation of nurseries to produce seedlings for the windbreaks. The first trees were planted during the 1975 rainy season in the northern part of the 100-kilometer-long Majjia Valley. The valley, created by a seasonal watercourse, is situated between Bouza and Birnin Konni in the southern part of Tahoua Department. It varies in width between three and five kilometers along its length, has rich alluvial soils and, in the 1970s, a flood regime which made lucrative dry-season, flood recession agriculture possible throughout the length of the valley.

The windbreaks were conceived as a solution to a severe erosion problem, occasioned by persistent strong winds which blow down the Majjia Valley during the November-to-May dry season. A dense cover of local woodstock -- trees and bushes -- formerly protected the valley sides and floor from the effects of buffeting winds. However from the 1930s on, much of the woodstock was destroyed as farmers cleared land for fields down the valley sides and eventually onto the valley floor. The seasonal winds, by 1974, were stripping the most productive fine soils from the surface of valley fields and seriously threatening the agricultural potential of these rich bottomlands.

The then-head Bouza forester, Daouda Adamou, aided by a Peace Corps volunteer, proposed the windbreak project to the non-governmental organization CARE and obtained funding. The two foresters organized nurseries to produce neem trees (Azadirachta indica) for windbreaks and mesquite (Prosopis juliflora) for live hedges. The foresters then sought to convince valley farmers that the windbreaks were technically sound and not the opening wedge in a government scheme to dispossess farmers by establishing tree-based property rights to their fields. Initially the project planned to plant 20 kilometers of double-row windbreaks per year; later this was successfully and substantially increased. The live hedge component was dropped by the end of the 1970s.

The farmers were initially skeptical about the value of the windbreaks. Having had no prior experience with this form of agroforestry, they were understandably worried about windbreak- . related problems which the foresters might not have foreseen. The current problem that the neem trees cause by providing dry season refuge for crop-destroying aphids -- which have become a real plague in the southern half of the valley -- indicates that the farmers' skepticism was rational.

Daouda tried to calm fears about tenure claims by assuring villagers in the initial group of windbreak villages -- Garadouméds Hayi, Kware, and Lougou -- that the planted trees would belong to them. But when Kadri Hama replaced Daouda as Bouza head forester in 1979, he treated the trees as project/government property. A 1984 survey of valley residents indicated that 88 percent believed the windbreak trees belonged to the forester.33 Nonetheless, valley farmers now on balance strongly favour the windbreaks.34

The standard format for windbreak creation was developed by the Bouza Forestry Service during the period 1974 to the present. Seedlings are produced in nurseries at several locations in the valley. The tree lines are created in orderly fashion, initially from north to south, but more recently a second planting front was established in the south, to speed completion of the work. Forestry agents generally ask villagers, in the areas to be planted each year, what types of trees they want in the windbreaks. The choice, in practical terms, has been limited to neem and Acacia nilotica, ssp. scorpioides.

The tree lines are surveyed by the foresters so they run out perpendicularly a kilometer or more from the main stem of the Majjia watercourse at 100-meter intervals. Once the lines are marked, forestry agents convoke villagers from the immediate area (residents of one or more villages and hamlets) to dig holes under their supervision along the surveyed lines. Some time later, after the rainy season is well started, the same people are again convoked to plant the seedlings. The trees are planted in double rows, using a 4 m x 4 m tree spacing within each line.

Once the trees are planted, local guardians, selected by the foresters and paid with CARE funds, are hired to patrol the new windbreak lines until the trees are tall enough to escape pressure from browsing animals. The trees grow rapidly and, generally after only five years, are beyond danger from all species of local livestock except camels. Until that time, guardians keep animals out of the valley during the day. During dry season nights, however, transhumant Fulbe pastoralists often put their animals into the windbreak areas unchallenged by the guardians. When the trees in an area grow tall enough to no longer need protection, generally when they reach a height of five to six meters, animals with the exception of camels are again allowed to forage freely during the dry season in that part of the valley bottomlands.

The trees attain a height of 10 meters or more within 10 years. The crowns meet within the rows, forming a barrier which forces passing wind up, easily protecting the 100-meter space downwind of each tree line. As the trees grow up, their crowns spread. Eventually the horizontal growth shades out the areas immediately adjacent to the lines, reducing crop productivity or making farming impossible in shaded areas. To relieve this problem, trees can be cut back at the top of the trunk (pollarded) or at the base of the trunk (coppiced). Pollarding is preferred because the trees do not have to be protected from livestock while they regenerate, as the new branches sprout some three meters off the ground. In the season immediately following a pollarding operation, a production spurt occurs in the formerly shaded areas next to the tree lines. This periodic advantage disappears as the tree crowns develop, again shading out nearby areas.

The developed root systems of mature trees produce rapid regrowth. Tests show the windbreaks must be harvested every four years, if not more frequently, to maintain agricultural productivity on valley fields. The wood produced by the pollard cuts represents a valuable resource for valley residents and others, as will be discussed presently.

ATTRIBUTES OF GOODS AND SERVICES

The windbreaks as a natural resource system generate a complex set of goods. They produce both on-site services and consumptive products. As they occur on the fields--some 400 kilometers of double-row stands in 1987--the windbreaks produce on-site services which are predominantly public in nature. The trees function as wind baffles, inducing turbulence and slowing currents in ways which significantly improve the microclimate on protected lands. It is difficult to exclude people who farm in areas protected by the trees from enjoying the on-site benefits of the windbreaks, whether or not the trees are physically located on lands they use. Consumption of benefits by those who use the protected area is joint or non-rivalrous. The improved crop or garden yields which Farmer X experiences on his protected fields do not reduce those on the adjacent fields of Farmer Y, protected by the same windbreaks.

Consumptive products generated by the windbreaks have by contrast the characteristics of open access or common property goods. The neem trees produce building poles, firewood and some browse. Several other species, notably Acacia nilotica, sp. scorpio ides, produce seeds and seed pods which contain high percentages of tannin, used locally to tan hides. Other trees might be planted in the windbreaks to produce a range of additional products, for example, fruits, nuts, bark forrope, medicinal products and browse. All of these consumable goods are highly divisible and separately consumed. Excluding potential consumers using some form of fencing technology is, however, a difficult problem. The tree lines could be enclosed, but this would require presently some 800 to 900 kilometers of fencing. The cost of imported barbed wire is prohibitive. Various live fencing alternatives are unacceptable because they would remove additional rich, scarce land from agricultural uses and require much effort to create and maintain.

Given current land-use patterns in the Majjia Valley, the windbreak trees have the characteristics of open access goods during the seven-month-long dry season. A shifting cast of local and transhumant pastoralists as well as local agriculturalists regularly move through the valley and, in the absence of controls, would consume windbreak resources for firewood, building materials and browse. So long as pastoralists can find water for their animals, they can wander with them where they will during this season. Local stockowners can do likewise, or simply turn their animals loose to forage for themselves.

During the farming season, animals are excluded from fields, but local residents still move freely through the area on their daily round of agricultural tasks. The trees during this period of the annual cycle have more the characteristics of private goods: exclusion is less difficult because farmers working their fields can informally patrol windbreak activity as a costless side effect of their farming activities. The group of potential users of consumptive products can therefore be restricted. Figures 12a and 12b (see pages 64 and 65) illustrate the seasonally changing attributes of windbreak goods and services.

INSTITUTIONS GOVERNING WINDBREAKS

If one excepts commitments made in 1974 by the then-chief forester in Bouza, Daouda Adamou, to the farmers at the three Garadoumd villages where the first windbreaks were planted, namely that windbreak trees on their lines would belong to them as their private property, the Majjia windbreak project was conceived and executed as an effort to provide a public good. That good is improved environmental management through protection of valley agricultural lands from wind erosion. Within the domain of the good -- protected fields -- no farmer could be excluded from benefitting from the improved microclimate created by the mature windbreaks. Consumption of windbreak benefits would be joint or non-rivalrous.

As worked out by successive Bouza foresters, CARE advisors and others, the rules underlying development and management of this public good clearly recognized the difference between provision and production of the public good. The rules implicitly recognize the necessity of having a public jurisdiction undertake provision if free rider problems are to be avoided. They likewise indicate that both the Forestry Service and CARE knew rules were not self-enforcing and considered that project success depended on the ability to make and enforce protection rules.

The rules were as follows. The Forest Service established a de facto special jurisdiction for windbreak creation and management in the Majjia Valley. The boundaries of the special jurisdiction expanded in tandem with the advancing lines of windbreaks. Officials of the jurisdiction were the Bouza head forester, his subordinates and the local guardians they hired in the valley to patrol windbreak lines. Officials were appointed, not elected. Officials controlled activities of valley people concerning the windbreaks.

Figure 12a - Types of goods and services

Windbreaks

Growing season:

Owners work in fields near windbreaks

 

EASE OF EXCLUSION

Difficult

Feasible

 

A costless side benefit of crop cultivation and harvesting

Joint

CHARACTER OF CONSUPTION

Separable

Public- goods and services

Toll goods and services

(on-site)

    - protection against wind erosion

 

Common pool goods

and services

Private goods and services

 

(on-site)

    - nutrient pumping

    - improved garden crops

(consumptive products)

    - firewood

    - poles and beams

    - browse

    - tannin

Figure 12b - Types of goods and services

Types of goods and services

MAJJIA VALLEY PROJECT Windbreaks

Dry season:

Owners rarely in fields near windbreaks

 

EASE OF EXCLUSION

Difficult

Feasible

Unless patrolled full time (local thorn fencing not available)

 

Joint

CHARACTER OF CONSUPTION

Separable

Public- goods and services

Toll goods and services

(on-site)

    - protection against wind erosion

 

Common pool goods

and services

Private goods and services

Open access

(consumptive products)

    - firewood

    - poles and beams

    - browse

    - crop stubble

    - tannin

(on-site)

    - nutrient pumping

    - improved garden crops

Protection rules stipulated that livestock were to be kept out of the areas planted with windbreaks until foresters judged the trees sufficiently established to withstand browse pressure. During the five or six years from seedling plantation to reopening of the valley floor as a dry-season pasture area, owners of animals caught in the restricted areas had to pay a fine to the foresters, through the guardians, to get their animals out of the pound. The earliest areas planted -- around the Garadoumés in the northern part of the valley -- were reopened to livestock in the early 1980s. A trial period revealed that goats, sheep and cattle could not damage the mature trees. Camels, however, could impair the windbreak effect by browsing on and destroying branches of the neem trees up to a height of 12 feet. This created a wind tunnel effect under the trees, which seriously aggravated the soil erosion problem. As a result, camels have been permanently banned from the windbreak areas.

Negotiations may not yet be terminated concerning windbreak protection after the trees have been established.35 At the moment it appears the rule will place those who own the fields on which windbreak trees grow under a duty to protect the trees on their land. Landowners are to be held responsible for replacing damaged trees, but it is not clear how this will work in practice.

Use rules were straight forward during the first part of the establishment phase. Consumptive uses of the trees by humans were prohibited outright because no one expected the trees to grow too large. It was only in the early 1980s that the need for systematic harvesting was gradually recognized. Rules governing harvesting are still evolving. Basic rules can be listed, however:

Figure 13 (see the opposite page) presents authorized transactions among field owners and other claimants of windbreak goods.

INTERACTIONS

    The windbreaks were regularly extended, starting with the first planting season in the summer of 1975, from the northern part of the valley southwards towards Birnin Konni. By 1978, the project was gaining increasing acceptance in the valley, as the trees matured to a size where the first protection benefits of the windbreaks became clearly visible. Kadri Hama, the new Bouza head forester, continued the windbreak plantings, but on the basis of firm Forest Service control. Villagers were convoked to assist with surveying, ground preparation and planting, and usually were rewarded for their efforts with Food for Work (1H1-W) payments. At that point their active involvement terminated.

Figure 13 - Authorized transactions

MAJJIA VALLEY PROJECT Mature windbreaks -- Post-1984

 

CORRELATIVES AND EQUIVALENTS

Citizen A

Citizen B

Citizen A

Citizen B

Field owner

Other claimants

Other claimants

Field owner

RECIPROCALS AND LIMITS

Right

Duty

Right

Duty

Other claimants will avoid damaging or cutting trees or harvesting products except in accord with management plan; retains one-quarter of quadrennial harvest

Avoid damaging or cutting trees, or harvesting products from trees except in accord with management plan; leave field owner one-quarter of tree products cut in quadrennial harvest

Field owner will protect trees, replace those illegally harvested, and cede three quarters of wood harvested from field to other claimants

Must respect management plan, protect trees, replace those harvested illegally from his land; must cede three-quarters of wood harvested from his field to other claimants

Exposure

Liberty

Exposure

Liberty

Competes with other claimants for dead wood, seeds, etc., fallen from windbreak trees on her or his field; crop damage from insects sheltering in windbreak trees; price consequences of other, public or private, claimants' disposition of three-quarters share of windbreak harvest

May collect dead wood, seeds, etc., fallen from windbreak trees on owner's field; may dispose of windbreak harvest personal share, as wishes, and argue for her or his preferred distribution of three-quarters share

Competes with field owner for dead wood, seeds, etc., fallen from windbreak trees; crop damage caused by pests sheltered in trees on field owner's land; price consequences of field owner's disposition of her or his quarter share of harvest

May collect dead wood, seeds, etc., fallen from windbreak trees on own field; allow pests in trees without attempting to control them; sell her or his quarter share if wishes, without regard to impact on wood and wood product prices

In accord with the rules developed during the early stage of the project, local guardians were hired to protect planted seedlings by patrolling the windbreak lines and preventing livestock from browsing in the planted areas. With forester backing, they adopted the standard system of impounding stray animals caught in prohibited areas until their owners paid a fine to secure their release. A number of valley residents had to pay fines or, when they could arrange it, a cheaper bribe. While petty corruption was something of a problem, its existence did not really vitiate the effectiveness of the protective system.

The system had a few weaknesses. Fulbe transhumants occasionally entered the valley at night with their animals during the dry season and allowed them to browse in the breaks when the guardians were at home in their villages. The foraging animals destroyed some trees, consumed along with crop residues.

Generally, however, the system worked well enough, given the extraordinarily favourable silvicultural conditions which characterized the valley, so that protective measures could be lifted after five or six years. Trees grew rapidly. Those destroyed in the first years were quickly replaced and the windbreaks were quickly established as highly effective shelter belts. During the first period when the windbreak areas were reopened to livestock, camels foraged along with the other animals. However, their height allowed them to browse and tear off limbs high up on the trunks in a manner which created major gaps in the windbreaks. The foresters decided camels should be banned permanently from the Majjia bottomlands to prevent them from destroying windbreak trees.

OUTCOMES

Windbreak development changes land-use patterns in protected areas of the Majjia during a period of roughly eight years in any given area while the trees are being established. Protecting the young trees by keeping livestock out of bottomlands where seedlings are being established biases dry-season use patterns against livestock and in favor of cultivation (flood recession agriculture and gardening). To the extent that foraging animals are in fact kept out of the valley, protection costs for dry-season agriculture and gardening drop off. It maybe possible to cultivate without fencing the crop.

The land tenure pattern in the protected areas takes the form of a mosaic composed of pieces differing sharply in size and shape. Imposing straight-line, double-row windbreaks on this mosaic will reduce arable surfaces more for some farmers than for others. Some smallholders in fact reported losing more than 25 percent of their valley fields to the windbreaks, once the trees matured. This inequitable imposition of the costs -- calculated in useful agricultural surface foregone by individual farmers -- was in no way compensated by the Majjia Valley Windbreaks Project during the early part of the establishment phase. Indeed, the foresters who guided development of the system seemed unaware of this unintended, negative side effect of their agroforestry programme. A form of compensation not originally foreseen by the project is described below.

Most farmers accepted the necessity of the windbreaks once their positive effects became apparent. Those who suffered net reductions in crop output seem to have accepted the land loss as an inequity against which they had no recourse. It may be impossible to plant windbreaks along property boundaries and still preserve their effectiveness. Another approach -- trees scatter-sited on the fields in the bottoms -- would probably be as efficient as the windbreaks at controlling soil erosion. However, such an approach might be more difficult to police and, therefore, less efficient than the straight-line windbreaks where both casual harvesting and its effects are more visible.

Many of the transhumant herders based in the valley -- Kel Gres Twareg and various Fulbe groups -- shifted their animals to other pastures, often working out arrangements with relatives and acquaintances in other parts of the country. Local agriculturalists who also owned livestock -- principally Hausa women who kept herds of goats and the occasional cow -- did not have this option. Many were unable to find a reliable herder and had to sell some of their animals to pay fines, and liquidated the rest. The windbreak protection system made no provision to compensate them for this foregone investment opportunity.

After the trees are established and livestock is again permitted to browse in valley fields, stockholders, except for camel owners, regain their liberty of access to the bottom lands. Crop residues are probably far more abundant than they would have been without the windbreaks. Lower branches of the windbreak trees amount to a one-time source of dry-season forage, until animals browse them up as far as they can reach. Thereafter, the trees do not contribute much directly to the supply of forage in the valley.

Financing for materials and the salaries of all officials, as well as FFW payments for local people who helped survey and plant seedlings, were provided by CARE. Thus the recurrent cost issues inherent in long-term management of the windbreaks were not addressed at all during the first 10 years of the windbreak establishment phase.

Windbreak harvesting -- From 1984 on

OVERVIEW

The windbreaks have helped stabilize bottomland soils in the Majjia Valley. They have increased productivity of those same soils by improving the microclimate for crop production in protected valley fields. However, two major problems have arisen in recent years. The first problem is technical: the windbreak trees have grown so rapidly that they must be pruned to prevent them from unnecessarily shading out valuable agricultural lands. The second is that CARE wishes to reallocate its funding assistance in Niger to other areas or projects. Thus some means to finance windbreak management must be developed.

The first problem, crop shading, is largely technical in nature and amenable to technical solutions. Once the trees reach 10 meters (33 feet) in height, they shield against wind erosion the entire 100-meter-wide band of fields which lies between two breaks. If allowed to continue growing, lateral branches eventually shade out those crops planted closest to the breaks. After several years of technical experimentation, it was decided that periodic pollarding on a four-year rotation (see below for details) would effectively reduce shading. Subsequent tests suggest that a spurt in crop production occurs just below the pruned trees during the growing season immediately after a pollarding cut. The pollard cuts also produce large amounts of useable wood for construction beams, building poles, tool handles, firewood, as well as valuable browse.

ATTRIBUTES OF GOODS AND SERVICES

This section analyzes the characteristics of the mature windbreaks. The mature trees are protected from animals, camels excepted, by their height. However, given available technology, they cannot be easily protected against human users. Exclusion is a problem, especially during the dry season when fewer people frequent the valley than during the summer growing season. Harvested products listed above are all subject to rivalry in consumption. The mature windbreaks thus have the character of an open access resource.

Harvesting of the earliest windbreak rows was long overdue by 1987. After repeated tests on a limited number of kilometers, to measure the effects on both windbreak regeneration and crop protection, a full-scale harvest was undertaken in the spring of 1988. Thirty-five kilometers of trees were harvested and are now being marketed. The method adopted involves a four-year rotation in which two adjacent windbreak lines, each composed of two rows of trees, form the basis of the rotation.37

INSTITUTIONS GOVERNING MATURE WINDBREAKS

A design for windbreak management institutions has been evolving over the last five years. The' Forestry Service, CARE representatives, Government of Niger administrators and Majjia Valley residents have all contributed to the design debate. The design was provisionally tested during 1984 to 1987, mainly in the Garadoumé communities where the first windbreaks were planted in 1975. The design is still evolving and may be modified in light of future experience.

Major design elements include harvesting, division of the harvested products and windbreak protection. Each will be discussed in turn. The relationships between these elements will also be highlighted. To succeed, the working rules of windbreak management institutions must ensure that the trees are treated year round as common property resources, rather than as part-time (dry season) open access resources.

The harvesting plan has been finalized by the Forest Service after a series of studies undertaken with CARE funding. The Service has consulted to some small extent with Majjia Valley residents about harvesting schemes, but settled on pollarding as the best way to reduce protection costs while harvested trees regenerated. Foresters preside over the cuts and direct local people who actually cut the trees. This approach has the advantage of sanctioning harvesting under controlled conditions during a concentrated period of time. By implication, it emphasizes the illegality of cutting wood in the windbreaks at any. other time and reduces the information costs involved in determining whether a violation of windbreak protection rules has occurred.

Division of the cut has long posed one of the most difficult issues of management design. Several factors must be considered. This includes the initial investment in creating the windbreaks, the rights and duties, liberties and exposures of landowners who have windbreaks on their fields, and the persistent problem of limited excludability of the windbreaks.

By local standards, valley residents who participated in the creation of the windbreaks by digging holes or planting trees have no special claim to use rights or ownership of either the trees or harvested products. They received FFW payments financed by CARE and thus, as labourers, took no more risk in their part of the windbreak activity than does a paid labourer who helps harvest a field of millet. By contrast, those who lost land to the windbreaks, particularly in the northern end of the valley, have some standing to claim ownership of harvested products. They not only lost arable areas as the trees grew, but ran the risk that crop-damaging parasites (birds and insects) would find shelter in the trees.

The rules which now govern "ownership" and "exploitation" of the windbreaks involve a curious effort to treat the windbreak trees, at one and the same time, as private resources and common property resources. The rules define the windbreak trees as the private property of owners of land on which they grow. They also make landowners subject to substantial duties to maintain the windbreaks on their lands and vest ownership claims to products harvested from the windbreaks in Majjia Valley people at large through their residence in valley communities. In their simplest form the rules state that:

  • owners of lands with windbreaks own the trees;
  • owners of lands with windbreaks are responible for protecting windbreak trees on their lands;
  • mature windbreaks will be harvested on a four-year rotation under forester supervision;
  • owners of lands with windbreaks have a claim to one-quarter of the forest products harvested on their lands;38 and
  • THe Majjia Valley cooperatives have a claim to three-quarters of the forest products harvested within the domain of the cooperative.39

Closer examination of these rules reveals that they create significant incentives and disincentives for important classes of actors involved in managing and using the windbreaks. Those who own land on which windbreaks have been established by project efforts are considered to be the "owners" of the trees. They have the following rights, duties, liberties and exposures. Owners have a right against all others that they will avoid damaging the trees, harvesting forest products from them or cutting them down, except when these acts are executed as part of the management plan.

Owners of land with windbreaks are themselves subject to a duty to avoid damaging the trees on their lands, harvesting forest products and cutting them down, except as provided for through the management plan.

In addition, owners of land with windbreaks are subject to special duties which are not shared by other classes of valley residents and non-residents. They are required to protect the trees on their land against any unauthorized use and replace those which are destroyed at their own expense. In principle, this rule covers replacement of all trees missing for any reason, for example, wind damage, disease, camel browsing, wood cutting or fire. Acquiring and planting a neem seedling to fill a hole in a windbreak would probably not involve major expense. Protecting a seedling while it matured during a period of three to seven years against animal damage from roving livestock is another matter. In effect, the field owner must ensure 24-hour surveillance year-round during the entire period because the Majjia bottomlands protected by mature windbreaks are no longer off limits to foraging animals.

Field owners have a specially recognized right concerning control of forest products which are cut from the trees. They are accorded a quarter share in the harvest (all others must avoid taking it, and landowners are at liberty to take 25 percent of the harvest for themselves). How soon after an authorized cut landowners are at liberty to take their share is uncertain. If they can claim beams, building poles, firewood or browse as soon as the cut is complete, the value of the share is increased. If they have to wait, as do all others, until the harvest is physically divided among all claimants or is marketed with the proceeds being distributed in cash to claimants, then the value of the wood has to be discounted by the time delay and by the probability that some amount of wood or money will be lost or diverted before they receive it.

Field owners stand exposed under the rules to damages caused by crop pests which Shelter in the trees. This is happening already in the southern half of the valley. They are exposed to potential reductions in their legitimate shares as outlined above. In the event that available markets for Majjia Valley wood products are saturated, they stand exposed to the liberty of all valley communties, in accord with the management plan, to put wood products on the market and thus occasion, through oversupply, depressed prices for the harvest.

All other residents of valley communities (individuals who have no windbreaks on their fields or who control no fields) enjoy exactly the same right against all others that they will not use, cut or destroy windbreak trees except in accord with the management plan. That right runs against owners of fields with windbreaks just as it does against all other landowners, non-owning valley residents, transhumant pastoralists and others who may occasionally move through the valley.

All other residents are subject to the reciprocal and equivalent duty to avoid unauthorized damage, use or destruction of trees. They are at liberty to share in the proceeds of three-quarters of the harvest in the area controlled by the cooperative unit associated with their community. Their share is determined by rules defined in part, apparently, by the local cooperative and in part by wood marketing procedures and price conditions.

All other residents are exposed, as are owners of windbreak lands, to the risks of wood marketing operations of other valley communities, to pests associated with the trees if their lands are close enough to windbreaks to be affected by them and to the decisions about harvest allocation taken by cooperative or administrative officials.

Foresters associated with the district office in Bouza will undoubtedly enforce these rules. Whether they will be aided by valley residents or by officials of valley cooperatives or by communities is uncertain. In any case, it is clear that the foresters at the field level will exercise significant determining powers in interpreting and enforcing the rules. The long history of Forestry Service involvement in implementation of the Majjia Valley Windbreak Project, in the context of the Forest Service's overall responsibility for environmental management in Niger, has established a pattern in which foresters play a strong if not dominate role in making, interpreting, applying and enforcing rules governing windbreak management. They also adjudicate most disputes concerning violation of windbreak management rules, through administrative judicial proceedings. The authoritative relationships are illustrated in Figure.14 (see page 74).

A critical issue for windbreak survival is whether valley residents, including but not limited to owners of windbreak lands, have standing to bring suit against those who violate windbreak protection and management plan rules. As a practical matter, they probably do. A second critical issue, if they do have standing,40 is whether they will exercise it, or whether they will consider the transactions costs of pursuing rule violators too high to justify action in light of the probable benefits to them. Valley residents, confronted with violations, will almost certainly make this sort of calculation. The windbreaks will probably be destroyed over time if valley residents conclude that their short-term or long-term interest in preserving the windbreaks and the management system is not sufficient to justify preventing or stopping violations ("informal social pressure"); or if they cannot prevent them, notifying officials when they find evidence of cutting in the windbreaks; or preventing embezzlement of part of the harvest products; or serving as witnesses in judicial proceedings to deal with violations.

Given the top-down origins of the system, it is not clear that many residents will consider it their responsibility to co-produce protection services for the windbreaks. It is for this reason that the allocation of benefits from the windbreak harvests is so delicate. Those incentives should be used, not only to discourage illegal use on the part of beneficiaries, but to encourage them to help prevent illegal use by others. In particular if most field owners do not co-produce protection services, the windbreaks are probably doomed because the foresters cannot themselves mount effective patrol services. The current plan to award owners a quarter share of the harvest proceeds may well be enough to enlist their support. The only other alternative would be to continue to employ windbreak guardians authorized to exercise police powers, using a part of the harvest proceeds to finance the activity.

INTERACTIONS

Since these rules have only been in effect since early 1988, it is too soon to report on their effects in channeling behavior concerning the trees. It is possible, however, to report on results of some of the trial cuts in 1986 and 1987 and speculate about probable effects of the rules.

Figure 14 - Authoritative transactions

MAJJIA VALLEY PROJECT

Mature windbreaks -- Post-1984 enforcement

 

CORRELATIVES AND EQUIVALENTS

Official A

Citizen A

Citizen B

Official 2

Forester

Any claimant

Any claimant

Subordinate forester or windbreak guardian

RECIPROCALS AND LIMITS

Power

Right

Duty

Liability

Can enforce any claimant's right that windbreak management plan be respected by requiring subordinate or guardian to punish violations

Windbreak management plan will be respected

Must respect windbreak management plan

Must punish any claimant guilty of violating wind- break management plan by cutting or damaging trees or taking windbreak products other than during quadrennial harvest

Disability

Exposure

Liberty

Immunity

Cannot compel subordinate or guardian to punish collection of fallen windbreak products

Other claimants will compete to collect windbreak products on their fields

Can collect products fallen from windbreaks anywhere in the valley

Cannot be compelled to punish claimants who exercise their liberty to collect fallen windbreak products

 

Most residents of the valley continue to feel that the trees belong to "the Government", represented by the Bouza foresters. Even in the Garadoumés, where the local residents have received wood from the trial cuts, landowners continued to maintain in the fall of 1987 that they did not really control the windbreaks. This exactly reflects the current situation, despite the major harvest undertaken in the spring of 1988. Residents are hesistant to take responsibility for management as long as this state of affairs persists. Probably they can be easily discouraged from doing so if important management and dispute resolution rules are developed without their participation and imposed upon them, rather than their having to take responsibility for developing important elements of the management system. It is not clear whether the rules governing the first major harvest, in the spring of 1988, were developed with popular input. It is probably the case that Majjia communities had, in effect, little to say about the rules. They were almost certainly not able to veto rules proposed by either the administration or the Forest Service.

The current Bouza subprefect wants the valley cooperatives to take control of the bulk of harvest proceeds. To achieve this, he proposes requiring that the Majjia Valley cooperatives handle all wood sales and that proceeds be placed in blocked accounts established for the cooperatives. He argues that the Majjia Valley residents do not own the trees, that they were paid to plant them, and that the proceeds of the harvest (with the single exception of firewood) should be marketed41 and subsequently invested for the public good of valley residents in management of the valley watershed or other activities of public interest. He also asserts, correctly, that those whose fields lie behind the windbreaks benefit directly from increased agricultural yields made possible by the positive modification of microclimates in those areas. If the subprefect advances this position energetically, probabilities are good that no valley residents will oppose his policies.

In the Garadoumé villages -- Hayi, Kwari and Lougou -- where 35 kilometers of windbreaks were cut in the spring of 1988, cooperative officials and foresters supervised the harvesting process. The wood was then moved, in trucks supplied by CARE, from the fields to a central collection point in Garadoumé. Private entrepreneurs were reportedly arriving to purchase the wood. Some poles were transported to Bouza, either for sale there or transhipment to other markets.

It is not clear yet what effect the rule providing the one-quarter to three-quarters division of the harvest respectively between landowners and cooperative units will have on the behaviour of those who use the valley. Villagers report that some people take wood surreptitiously from the windbreaks, especially those parts which are far removed from dwellings. As noted, excludability will continue to be a problem.

If field owners actually do get a quarter of the harvest on a regular basis, their incentive to protect windbreak trees on their fields from unauthorized use will be positive as well as negative (duty to replace destroyed trees at their own expense). Just how strong the positive incentive will be depends both on individual landowners' need for wood and other windbreak products and the price tree owners receive for any windbreak products sold. The positive incentive will vary over. time, depending on technologies used for processing wood products (charcoaled wood can be transported much further to market than can untreated wood), changing market conditions and new uses for windbreak products (for example, green browse for livestock during the difficult last months of the annual dry season).

The rule placing owners of land with windbreaks under a duty to replace trees destroyed by any cause has not yet been tested. There is reason to question whether it can ever be made enforceable as currently formulated. Most landowners faced with this situation would probably conclude that bribing an enforcement agent (forester or community representative) would be a far less expensive solution to the problem.

Other valley residents who do not own windbreak lands do not face direct negative incentives to preserve the windbreaks, other than the duty to avoid unauthorized use or destruction. Just how compelling that duty will be depends on how effective enforcement measures are. Vesting landowners with a right to a quarter share of the wood harvested gives them a potentially strong incentive to prevent unauthorized use, if they can do so as an essentially costless side action associated with other production activities. During the growing season, when agriculturalists work their fields daily, surveillance of trees on their land is essentially a costless operation.

Protection during the dry season is another matter. In the southern half of the valley, where flood recession agriculture is practiced after the annual harvest, people continue to work in the fields much longer than in the northern half. Gardening occurs throughout the valley and gardeners can likewise provide windbreak surveillance at low or no cost.

Where windbreak protection requires a special effort to mount patrols, the transactions costs will probably dissuade individual landowners from providing the, service. Some form of collective action is likely to be necessary. Landowners in a community might agree among themselves to organize an informal patrol on a rotating basis. Cooperative officials might organize such an operation, but again, uncertainties are rife. It is not clear that they have authority to spend money on such activities, although they might be permitted to allocate a portion of harvest proceeds to finance windbreak protection. It is extremely unlikely, given current rules governing public finance arrangements in Niger, that Majjia communities could legally tax themselves to finance windbreak protection activities. The threat that valley residents face identification and punishment for unauthorized use of the windbreaks is thus problematic, and can be expected to vary over the annual cycle and among various parts of the valley. In many areas, it may not be enough to prevent minor violations of windbreak management rules. Over time these might result in slow destruction of the windbreak system.

The positive benefits that valley residents are likely to derive from controlled harvesting of the windbreaks will be determined by the way harvest proceeds are distributed. A possible option for allocation of wood -- adopted in fact by Garadoumé Kware during the first cut -- would involve, in order of priority though not necessarily amount, the following:

  • payment of the field owner;
  • payment of workers;
  • division of windbreak village shares among participating villages;
  • financing of locally selected public works or other activities of public interest; and
  • division of the remaining wood among villagers.42

At this point it is not clear how much authority, if any, community cooperative officials will have to allocate proceeds of windbreak harvesting in accord with this or any locally determined pattern. If, as the current subprefect wishes, the three-quarters share is controlled exclusively by, cooperative officials, then chances are good that a subprefect who wishes can control use of those funds by dominating cooperative processes.

To ensure widespread popular coproduction of windbreak protection services, valley residents as a class must consider that they have a long-term personal interest in helping preserve the windbreaks. This will require a high degree of consensus among valley residents about the value of the windbreaks and the importance of preserving them. Some variant of the above distribution which gives each individual, or at least each family, a personal interest in the windbreaks because they know that if the trees survive they will receive separable benefits (such as firewood or building poles) seems necessary in addition to the public good of stabilized environmental conditions.

Transhumant pastoralists will pose a separate problem. They have perhaps the greatest incentives to violate the general duty of avoidance, particularly during the dry season when the trees are likely to provide the most abundant source of green forage in an enormous area. Trees which are producing new leaves and branches after pollarding will be especially tempting targets. Pastoralists also face the least danger of detection because they often operate at night, when agriculturalists normally stay in their villages. The current plan makes no explicit provision to include transhumant pastoralists in the benefits of the windbreak harvest: this may turn out to be a serious flaw in the system.

Windbreaks and environmental management in the wider valley region

OVERVIEW

Environmental problems in the Majjia Valley region are not limited to wind erosion of rich bottomland soils. While that was the salient issue in 1974, subsequent events have to some extent overtaken the success of the windbreaks. The plateaux and slopes running down to the valley floor form an enormous catchment basin which concentrates limited rainfall into useful amounts not only for rainy season cultivation, but also for dry season flood recession agriculture and gardening. In former times, the plateaux and slopes were covered with trees, brush and grasses. The woodstock and grasses slowed surface water runoff into the valley. As waters arrived gradually onto the valley floor, they lacked the velocity necessary to gully out deep channels.

Surface waters spread out slowly and gently over much of the lowlands throughout the valley, thoroughly soaking the rich soils and adding nutrients carried down from the highlands. This created the basis for highly productive flood recession agriculture in the valley. The woodstock and grasses also facilitated infiltration and recharge of the aquifers, which keep the valley water table high enough during the dry season so that hand bailing from shallow wells is a feasible, low-cost strategy to irrigate gardens.

This situation no longer exists. Most of the highlands and almost all the slopes have been denuded. Local herds, prohibited from foraging on the valley floor during the period of windbreak establishment, have overgrazed the hillsides. Valley residents searching for firewood and building poles also helped strip the slopes and hills of vegetation. In recent years, surface waters arrive as flash floods on the valley floor with two effects. Particularly in the northern half of the valley, the main stem of the Majjia has been deepened to the point where flood waters no longer overflow the banks. Instead they run rapidly down the channel and only slow to the point of spreading in the southern half of the valley. Thus flood recession agriculture is no longer possible in the northern half. Furthermore, valley aquifers are no longer recharged by the slow infiltration of rainfall on the slopes and highlands. As far as the northern half of the valley is concerned, this water disappears without enriching the local production potential.

Two different physical actions are required to reverse this trend: revegetation of slopes and plateaux on a permanent basis, and installation of water harvesting and control devices capable of slowing the descent of surface waters into the valley. Technically, these are relatively simple processes. Institutionally, they are much more complex. It will be useful to explore these points at least briefly before ending this section.

Evidence exists from work elsewhere in Niger and other parts of the Sahel that large areas can be revegetated at low out-of-pocket cost by simply prohibiting or restricting grazing and wood collecting in target areas. Grasses revive first, then bushes and eventually trees. Once ground cover has been restored, a sustained-yield system can be setup by controlling grazing and wood harvesting. However, enforcement of necessary controls may prove even more difficult than protecting the windbreaks from unauthorized use.

Local farmers already use simple water harvesting techniques on many of the Majjia's hillsides and highlands and, in some communities, have developed at least the germ of a rudimentary system governing rights to flowing surface waters.43 These efforts could be supplemented by more complex water-harvesting arrangements on the hillsides to slow the descent of rainwater. They could be complemented by water spreading installations on the valley floor, to fill the gouged-out main stem and other gullies with sediment, and so permit surface waters once again to flood over the Majjia's banks into surrounding fields. These measures, together with permanent revegetation of large parts of the surrounding catchment, would recreate the status quo ante deforestation, stabilize double-cropping on the valley floor and so restore or enrich the Majjia's production potential.

An examination of the nature of the resources in question and the institutions potentially available for their management will permit an initial assessment of the feasibility of such an undertaking.

ATTRIBUTES OF GOODS AND SERVICES

The resources in this instance are of two sorts: ground cover and water harvesting and water control installations. Ground cover in the Majjia watershed that affects the valley's hydrological regime includes trees, brush and grasses on the highlands and hillsides. The goods produced by ground cover (pasture, browse and wood products, such as building poles and fuel) are presently open access resources as far as consumptive uses (grazing, browsing and wood harvesting) are concerned. While small areas might be enclosed using traditional methods, it would be economically infeasible to fence large sections without outside assistance. Exclusion is impractical. Thus all potential users are at liberty to enter the area, at least during the dry season, and to take what they find there. Consumption is rivalrous. Given rising demand from growing human and stock populations, and drought-induced concentration of demand on the watershed, ground cover resources have been severely eroded.

Ground cover also produces a second type of benefit, that of water harvesting. This service increases the productive potential of all lands downhill from the ground cover site by increasing and husbanding soil moisture. This service has the attributes of a common property: the primary group of beneficiaries are those who farm fields downhill and who receive anti-erosion and water-harvesting benefits. They cannot be excluded: they consume the service separately.

The water harvesting and water spreading installations can be differentiated into structures which are essentially private and those which have the characteristics of a common property resource. Rock or soil bunds, berms, small check dams and the like, which can be constructed and maintained within individuals' or families' fields, are primarily private goods. The service they produce is water-harvesting. The cultivator reaps most of the benefit directly through better crop yields in her or his field than would otherwise be the case.

These structures also often produce positive spill-overs for those who farm fields lower down the watershed. By slowing the velocity of surface water run-off, they reduce the threat of erosion for downhill holders, increase the likelihood of water-spreading under the topographic conditions of the Majjia Valley and replenish the underground aquifers which maintain -the valley's high water table. These effects have the attributes of common property resources because downhill holders cannot be excluded from enjoying them, while consumption -- in the form of increased water use to improve crop yields -- is separable. However, the private benefits associated with bunds, berms and small check dams probably outweigh the common property benefits.

Another set of water control structures are clearly common property resources. These are often larger, for example, small- to medium-sized dams. They serve a wider group of users, either by protecting hillside fields from gully erosion or by promoting water-spreading and infiltration on bottom land fields. Their construction requires more sophisticated and costly inputs. These structures have the characteristics of common property resources because the service they provide -- promotion of water spreading -- is available primarily to those whose fields lie within the flood plain. Once again, those individuals make separate use of the water to produce private crops on their own fields.44

See Figure 15 on the opposite page.

Figure 15 - Types of goods and services

MAJJIA VALLEY PROJECT

Environmental management within the Majjia watershed

Attributes of goods and services given technology without rules

 

EASE OF EXCLUSION

Difficult

Feasible

Unless patrolled full time (local thorn fencing not available)

 

Joint

CHARACTER OF CONSUPTION

Separable

Public- goods and services

Toll goods and services

   

Common pool goods

and services

Private goods and services

Open access

(ground cover)

    - trees

    - bushes

    - grasses

Common property

(on-site)

    - water spread on valley fields and soil erosion controlled by medium-sized and large dams

(on-site)

    - bunds and berms

    - check dams

    - water harvesting on fields

    - erosion control on fields

Institutional arrangements for construction and maintenance of waterworks and ground cover

At present institutional arrangements to construct and manage water works are worked out on an ad hoc basis, usually at the village level. To date, such efforts have been extremely limited. Ground cover on the Majjia Valley watershed is an open access resource. No one controls access, and consumption of ground cover products is separable. In both cases institutional arrangements will have to be created to a very considerable extent to deal with these two emerging and interrelated problems.

The current Bouza subprefect, as well as Nigerien technicians (foresters, civil engineers and the like) and the technical assistants employed by CARE, have speculated about appropriate institutional solutions to these problems. The problems and possible solutions were also discussed briefly with valley residents, as related below. The subprefect would like to capture as much as possible of the revenue from the windbreak harvests. He proposes to use the valley cooperative union to achieve this end. The cooperative union would then allocate most or all of these funds, presumably at administration behest and under administrative supervision, to finance water harvesting installations on the slopes of the watershed. The issue of ground cover restoration and protection, while probably critical to the effectiveness and survival of the waterworks, has not been much discussed. While the subprefect made no specific mention of maintenance issues, presumably waterworks maintenance and watershed ground cover protection could both be financed from the same source assuming the market for forest products remains stable and prices satisfactory.

Several problems can be foreseen with this proposal. First, if all or the greater share of resources generated by harvest and sale of windbreak products is allocated to water harvesting, a risk exists that many individuals in local communities will lose interest in supporting the windbreak management plan and will begin to exploit the windbreaks in violation of the management plan. That could be fatal for the windbreaks over the medium- or long-term.

Second, by treating the valley as an undifferentiated whole, this proposal dilutes the incentives for any individual, community or group of communities to mount long-term efforts to create and operate a watershed management system on that section of Majjia highlands and slopes uphill from their holdings. The subprefect would increase his control over resources available in the valley to finance environmental protection measures, but at the risk of seriously weakening windbreak management institutions. Even with the quarter share of harvest proceeds allocated to owners of fields with windbreaks, it is probable that patrols to guard the windbreaks against unauthorized use will be necessary during at least part of the year. Funds to finance protection cannot be raised by taxation at the local level. The only apparently reliable source of publicly available monies would be the proceeds of windbreak harvests. To siphon mostof those monies off for worthy environmental projects, without making provision for protection and maintenance of the resource which produces them, appears questionable as a matter of policy.

The share allocated for local disposition, that is, by the community cooperative units or by village development council officials, should be, at a minimum, one-third. A two-fifths or one-half share would provide an additional margin of surplus to consolidate support for the windbreaks. If one or the other of these proportions can be enshrined as a basic constitutional rule, the possibilities for self-management of the windbreaks and other resources at the local level will be measurably strengthened.

This rule should be subject to change only through a special process, for example, by an extraordinary vote of the valley village development councils or village heads in favor of changing the proportion, followed by a majority or two- thirds vote approval by the populations of at least 60 percent of the villages. This situation would in no way prevent any village from deciding to expend some or all of its earmarked share on environmental management efforts, for instance, within its own watershed (see below).

This would allow close to one-half of the marketed product of the cut to be turned over to the cooperative union for directed investment in environmental management (as well as in other, perhaps agricultural production-related activities). This share allocation of windbreak wood sale proceeds to finance provision or management of common property resources of general public interest will serve as a preemptive defense against assertions that the valley residents are greedy and think only of their own short-term self-interest.

For the principle of substantial local control combined with local contribution to the valley environmental management effort to work, it will have to be applied as a general condition throughout the valley. That means all cooperatives will have to earmark the same amount of funds for the collective fund. Otherwise, individual communities may well be tempted to reduce the amount of their contributions to the valley-wide management effort in favor of more local interests.

Another option, suggested by an elder of the village of Karayé, would be to organize the valley through three subdivisions of the valley cooperative unions. These could be located in the east, center, and western parts of the valley. At present, the 26 villages of the valley are formally constituted in a single local cooperative union. This would probably reduce transaction costs of deciding on environmental activities, as the shared or common interests within these three subregions of the valley appear to be somewhat greater, with a greater incentive to motivate positive behaviour, than those which unite all valley residents (for example, water control throughout those sections of the Majjia Valley which lie within Bouza Arrondissement).

Still another option within this framework, would be to define the physical limits of the constituent watersheds of the Majjia and assign responsibility for managing them to the nearest village or villages. This would simplify and strengthen the personal interest motivating individuals to participate in watershed management activities and respect rules for the management of the common property resource. It would shorten the line of cause and effect between investment in water, woodstock and pasture management. This would reduce the chances for organizational failure at that level. It would increase the probabilities of success in promoting water spreading on the valley floor into the fields of those who participated in environmental management work.

The system would have to incorporate an arrangement through which subwatershed management districts would be able to invoke assistance of neighboring units, or even of a substantial portion of the valley population, as well as GON technical services (notably the Rural Civil Works Agency) when their own resources proved insufficient for a necessary water management work.

Just as establishment of the windbreaks did not give rise to a land redistribution movement, in order that all valley residents desiring fadama farmland could enjoy equal access, so existing land tenure rights on the hillsides must be recognized and honoured. The current subprefect has expressed support for this position. Otherwise, the transaction costs of developing a cadastral map of the valley and using it to redistribute existing holdings will almost certainly prove politically impossible to support.

Local people would have to arrange and enforce their own rules concerning the required level of participation and the penalties for failure to comply. The procedures by which infractions of the rules are to be resolved should be settled within local communities as a condition precedent for exercise of local authority in this area.

This will be particularly important in situations where non-residents are involved in legal proceedings, because of the long-standing practice in Niger of accepting judgment only from one's own politico-administrative leader (such as the sedentary village chief or the pastoral fraction head). Under the terms of this rule, infractions can only be heard by a judge who coifs the leaders of both or all litigants.

This arrangement could lead to extremely high transactions costs in some of the most difficult cases, for example, those involving valley farmers and herders who frequent the valley, but are registered for tax and politico-administrative purposes in Madaoua Arrondissement.

If local leaders are to judge local cases, it might be advisable to develop special judicial moots to decide cases which arise concerning environmental management activities. These moots should be designed to provide fair representation to all classes of litigants. The patterns of appeals procedures from local moots should also be discussed and fixed, so that recourse will be predictable. These rules should be committed to paper and widely broadcast by the town crier. A copy should be placed on file at the Arrondissement and at the Cours de Première Instance -- the first level of the national court system.

The administration should make a public commitment to support these local environmental management units and the rules they propose to apply, so long as they comply with agreed standards of fairness. Rules, and decisions based on them, should not be biased against nonresidents, or against particular classes of valley resource users.

The administration should also make an extraordinary effort to honor that commitment from the time the system is initiated. This will make a special demand on administrators' and technicians' time at start up, but once people see that the state supports a degree of local autonomy in resource management and resolution of disputes related to management issues, fewer people will be tempted to contest local rules and local fair rulings.45 At that point, the backstopping burden will drop off.

The role of herders in watershed and pasture management must be worked through very carefully and their interests taken into account in developing systems.. This seems unavoidable in a situation where the herders have appreciable power to destroy management systems, the physical investments in them, and the products which are expected to flow from them.


33 James M. Delehanty, Marilyn Hoskins and James T. Thomson, "Final Sociological Report: The Majjia Valley Evaluation Study," (November 7, 1984), p. 68.

 

34 Delehanty ..., pp. 80ff.

 

35 Timothy Resch, a U.S. Forest Service employee, visited the Majjia in June 1988 and provided information on the evolution of windbreak management rules and harvesting procedure. He is the most recent source of information on these points. Materials presented at this point and in the section on harvesting incorporate his comments.

 

36 This rule was formalized apparently by a council of Bouza administrative officials, technicians and representatives of valley residents during the spring of 1988.

 

37 In the first year, the leeward row of Line I is harvested by a pollard cut (removal of all branches down to the level of the top of the tree's trunk). In year two, the leeward row of Line II is pollarded. In year three, the windward row of Line I is pollarded, and finally, in year four, the windward row of Line II. In year five, the rotation begins to repeat itself. This harvesting scheme ensures adequate protection of valley soils, regular regeneration of the windbreaks, and a stream of products which can be marketed or used in the local economy. It will be extended throughout the valley as windbreak lines mature.

 

38 Information is not available as of this writing on whether the landowner's share is to be calculated as a quarter of gross harvest proceeds or a quarter of harvest proceeds net of harvesting costs. The latter would include, for example, wages for those who supervise the harvest, cut, guard and transport the wood to market, possibly sales commissions and other fees paid to those who market the wood.

 

39 See preceding footnote.

 

40 The issue of standing arises herein part because the Nigerien Forestry Code has made foresters the prime enforcers of tree tenure rules over the last half century. Only recently, as wood shortages have made themselves felt, have some rural Nigeriens begun to take a more aggressive role in defending woodstocks on their fields. This includes court actions, as well as simple surveillance and dissuasion of unauthorized cutting on their lands.

 

41 In order of priority: first in the villages, then in the areas close to the valley, then in Bouza, and then outside the Arrondissement.

 

42 This was the system adopted by Garadoumé Kware at the time of the first test cut. Variants on this scheme were suggested in a number of villages where interviews were conducted.

 

43 The fundamental principle appears to impose a duty on uphill holders that they not gratuitously or maliciously waste or divert water which would otherwise flow to downhill holders willing and able to put it to beneficial use.

 

44 Some benefits of water spreading may be available as an open access resource during the dry season in the form of more forage, when animals cannot be easily excluded from fields. Whether there will be more forage for freely wandering animals or shepherded livestock depends on whether farmers collect crop residues and grasses and stock them in private stores, or whether they leave them on the field after the harvest, available to all comers.

 

45 There are numerous residents who are very skeptical about their ability to control collectively the behaviour of resource users.


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