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22. Combating desertification is a battle for life which must form an integral part of the socio-economic development programmes for the affected areas. The key aspect is to seek the full participation of the local people. This approach, which is often called global and participatory, is based on five main principles:

(i) The principle of integration affirms the need to better provide for solidarity between generations and between local users of natural resources and other inhabitants on our planet. It is necessary to harmonize the satisfaction of the short- and medium-term needs of the local people with their long-term aspirations. The former are often expressed quite clearly: food, health, education, incomes. Meeting the second set of needs, generally less clearly identified and more confusedly expressed, include the protection, rehabilitation and sound use of existing natural resources. The responses to both sets of needs are interdependent. Meeting immediate needs will prove futile and short-lived if the resources of the local area are not improved and protected; conversely, developing the land and its resources will be obstructed if immediate needs are not being met. This principle of integration also provides for combining traditional knowledge with recent experimental knowledge of comparable ecological and socio-economic environments.

(ii) The principle of concertation involves the participation of local people in decision-making, and is expressed at several levels:

internal concertation within the local community enables them to work out their own decisions, organize actions, manage their land, and solve conflicts between members. This form of concertation requires a village organization. Local structures which are weak in terms of their ability to represent the population, their authority (for example for organizing land-use policy), and their resources (the size of the municipal budget) constitute a major obstacle to controlling desertification;

concertation among communities is necessary when they belong to the same watershed or use the same space or the same resources. It makes it possible for them not only to settle disputes but also to organize mutual aid, exchange experiences, and set up joint organisations for providing credit or managing the land, etc. The implementation of these structures allows for concrete expression of solidarity among those who use the same area (for example, the solidarity between the upstream and downstream users of the same watershed). Their creation is facilitated when the grass roots communities, which form what could be the cells, have internal solidarity themselves; these structures can be set up more easily if there is an appropriate legal framework (cooperatives, offices, agencies, etc.) and if they have the possibility of obtaining financial aid;

concertation between the local communities and regional and national institutions must be organized by the government. The quality of this concertation depends on the political organization of the State and the support services for development; if there is poor coordination between the work being carried out by different technical services, there will be a wastage of government resources and of the resources of the local communities involved, making it impossible to mobilize synergies between actions which, in principle, complement one another. If the situation is to improve, technical services must be better organized, and the working conditions and professional skills of its agents must also evolve;

concertation among development aid organizations (government technical services, NGOs, etc.) makes it possible to avoid contradictions among programmes and to optimize the use of their facilities and the effects of the support they provide.

(iii) The principle of a spatial planning approach is of fundamental importance to ensure consistency of actions. Conceiving regional and national development as a mere juxtaposition of local land development programmes a dangerous approach, and for three reasons:

it is not always possible to act on all the lands at one and the same time, mainly because of a lack of financial resources and personnel. It is necessary to proceed in stages within the framework of logical (and concerted) programming, beginning by test zones. The purpose of this approach is to enable the officials of technical organizations and the leaders of the communities concerned to accumulate experience. These pilot actions will then be exploited on other lands by a joint effort on the part of the technical services and the leaders of the people living on the test lands. Desertification control requires a set of innovations to be designed and disseminated, particularly with regard to natural resource management techniques. In this field, success depends on selected actions in space (designing innovation is facilitated by a judicious choice of pilot lands, making maximum use of local dynamics) and in time (the action must be envisaged for the long term, because a society can only appropriate an innovation at the slow pace of their social dynamics);

the dissemination of innovations designed under local pilot projects (test plans) makes it necessary to develop land management actions which are designed at the regional level. Actions must be defined to make it possible to better structure the space (for example, by capacity-building), encouraging exchanges (improving communications), removing regional economic or land tenure constraints, etc. Consistency must be ensured between these actions and those defined at the national level discussed below;

every community also forms part of a broader community. It entertains relations with other communities, with regional and national organizations responsible for fostering development, and in more general terms with its technical, social and economic environment. The influence of and the pressure exercised by all these various elements which make up the environment of that community, may contradict the actions undertaken to control desertification.

(iv) The principle of decentralizing decision-making powers and the resources needed to exercise those powers is essential for the success of desertification control activities. At their respective levels, the local and regional structures must be able to play their respective technical and policy-making roles. If the "partners" at this level are weak, this leads the organizations responsible for combating desertification to work directly "on" the "local populations" and makes any talk of the vital need for participation rather theoretical. The participatory approach needs the existence of a balanced relationship of forces between the national, regional and local structures. Controlling desertification is, above all, a question of social dynamics, which implies the existence of a well-structured and coherent social fabric. But strengthening local and regional structures is a long-term action, while desertification control demands urgent responses. In this transitional phase, regional and national services responsible for coordinating desertification control are needed. Their task will be to ensure that the initiatives and viewpoints of the local and regional structures are taken into account when working out the actions to be taken, monitoring them and coordinating them, and ensuring continuity of financial and technical support.

(v) The principle of sustainable aid and flexible intervention is important in the fields of rural development and desertification control. Sustainability requires that governments and international funding agencies be committed in the long term, and that they provide funds according to the phasing of national planning. Under the Convention, this principle is called the partnership agreement. The requirement of flexible intervention has two components:

flexible technical assistance to be supplied to communities for adapting action programmes to changing needs and local contexts; and

flexible financial and accounting procedures, which must specifically provide financial support for the requests and initiatives of the local communities for which provision was not initially made.

23. In the final analysis, the participatory approach is a global approach before being a codified method. Its primary aim is to encourage the participation of the people. Its key words are: integration, concertation, spatial development, decentralization, sustainability, and flexibility of technical and financial assistance. The evaluation of desertification control actions being conducted by numerous developing countries over the past ten years confirms the relevance of this approach.

Local Collective Action Conditions in the Sahel

... In many contemporary Sahelian communities, local political conditions render long term collective activities impossible...

... Implications for participatory renewable natural resource management on a collective basis are devastating. In such milieux, local political conditions dictate that villagers cannot, for lack of effective local political frameworks, jointly protect and culture village woodlots, live fencing or windbreaks during critical initial years until they become established. They cannot as a group police woodstock or pasture use on village lands. They cannot develop and systematically maintain watershed management by collective action over the lands of all holders in a single watershed. Joint soil conservation operations and the like are impossible where these depend on the capacity to enforce collective decisions, because that capacity does not exist...

Private Rights in Trees... The current system of national ownership and subsidiary usufructuary rights could be replaced by village, quarter or individual ownership of specific parts of the woodstock (woodlots, trees located on fields, common bushlands, state forests, etc.). Such a tree tenure system assumes the more direct property rights would give userowners a strong incentive to control exploitation and provide for adequate future supplies.

Is this assumption justified? The evidence suggests it is in some places, but not in others...

Localizing Tree Tenure Legal Process. Privatizing tree tenure rights implies as a practical corollary localizing legal recourse and enforcement. This would markedly reduce costs to tree owners of defending their woodstock rights. A villager can generally find his quarter head, village chief, earth priest, or local Muslim cleric much more easily than he can track down a roving forestry agent. Thus authorizing local notables to handle tree tenure disputes would encourage litigation in defense of tree property rights. Such proceeding would slowly clarify those rights in local moots open to all. Decisions would be publicly debated rather than being handled in administrative proceedings between forester and violator. The latter often exclude non-interested parties. Moot proceedings would help inform locals of the new system of tree tenure rights, as well as defining content of rights.

James T. Thomson, "Participation, Local Organization, Land and Tree Tenure; Future Directions for Sahellan Forestry," in Whose Trees?": Proprietary Dimensions of Forestry eds. L. Fortmann an dJ. W. Bruce (Boulder: Estview Press 1988) lmplementation modalities

24. The effectiveness of desertification control depends on the careful interlocking of the aspirations of the people involved and the concerns of governments and technical services in this field. It excludes both actions designed in an top-down or paternalistic way, and demagogic approaches which leave the local communities alone to define and implement actions. The empowerment of local communities and their access to information are needed for the expression of their views and effective representation in the decision-making process.

25. The participatory approach described here can be implemented only if governments comply with the prerogatives of the Convention on Desertification; and combating desertification will only have an impact at the local level if the global and participatory approach is adopted.

26. There is, however, no approach which suits every situation, and which takes account of every constraint. Every country and every community must fad the best possible way of moving ahead in desertification control. The analysis of a few experiences shows that this approach can take various forms. It may be very pragmatic or highly conceptualized; it may be more open-ended or more programmed, depending on the local situation and the people involved.

27. The territorial approach (gestion de terroir) is called for in combating desertification and in guaranteeing sustainable rural development. The living environment of the rural community is often identified with village land. The geographic framework makes it possible to understand the dynamic relations between different local factors of desertification and to design activities suitable to the local situation. This framework may be divided into microwatersheds or croplands, which are homogeneous areas on a smaller scale. Conversely, the framework may be enlarged to take into account factors affecting the territories of several communities, particularly hydrographic factors. This territorial approach makes it possible to understand the socio-economic factors. It is in this socio-economic framework that the community is able to organize and manage the defence and rehabilitation of the productive natural resources in its territory. It is also in this framework that one can understand the position and role of the various members of the community, particularly the women and the children, and support their empowerment and meet their needs.

28. The capacity of rural communities to organize themselves for the sustainable management of their own territories must not be taken away from them by development projects. Assistance is necessary to provide technical proposals that can be reproduced and controlled by the people, and to help them implement those proposals. Assistance is also needed to develop the capacity of the community to design, organize and manage the actions needed. Lastly, this assistance may take the form of direct technical intervention when the financial resources and equipment which are beyond the capactiy of the local community are necessary to remedy certain types of land degradation. The decentralized technical services of competent government departments and agencies should then be able to act.

29. Examples of programmes and projects taking a participatory and integrated approach are becoming more numerous. The democratization and decentralization processes embarked upon by a growing number of countries, the failure of classic development projects, the improvement of the circulation of information, and the increase in the number of grass roots organizations, NGOs etc., are but a few of the factors that have contributed to the emergence of this type of approach. A wide-ranging food security programme, the implementation of an early warning system, the design and implementation of local land management in Africa, and the establishment of sustainable development plans in a number of countries are just some of the initiatives that FAO has taken in conjunction with other multilateral and bilateral partners and NGOs. These initiatives will enable local populations to better confront the problems of desertification and drought.

The Forests, Trees and People Programme

Forests, Trees and People is an innovative programme which is guided by the need to improve the livelihoods of people in developing countries, especially the rural poor. Its goal is to reinforce national and regional institutions that in turn work to strengthen local people's ability to manage and use their natural resources.

This programme operates on the basis of a partnership between a central community forestry team in FAO's Forestry Department in Rome and national and regional institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These partner institutions in effect lead the programme. In consultation with each other, regional facilitators and local institutions identify opportunities and constraints for community forestry development on the basis of which national and regional priorities are identified and activities planned. The planning and development of many of the programme's themes is a joint effort between partner institutions, regional facilitators and the central team.

The programme is unique in that it supports the participatory approach at the local level, while itself operating in a participatory manner. It interacts in a dynamic, two-way communication process, responding to important issues and problems raised by the partner institutions. This global sharing of ideas and experience cuts across language, cultural and national and regional boundaries.

The programme aims to:

deepen knowledge and develop more effective strategies, methods and tools for the self-help participation in forestry of rural people, especially the poor;
strengthen human and institutional capabilities to more fully assess issues in local community forestry situations; adapt strategies, methods and tools to specific conditions; and provide sustained support for
integrate participatory aproaches into on-going forestry activities through technical assistance in the incorporation of strategies, methods and tools developed under the problem;
disseminate information about participatory forestry approaches and experiences through networking, improved comunication and distribution of publications.

Extract from Forests, Trees and People - Phase II, FAO