Livelihoods and institutional development in the Malian Sahel: A political economy of decentralized natural resource management.

Abstract

Decentralization creates opportunities to increase local control over natural resources and thereby improve the efficiency and equity of resource management. Yet experience shows that the outcomes of decentralization depend more on the specific institutional arrangements than on the fact of decentralization alone. Under decentralization, the relationship between customary and statutory laws is frequently left unresolved due either to policy design or tenure complexity. The issue is ultimately addressed in the local arena of decentralized government following the contours of local political economy. This study explores natural resource management efforts in four communities in Mali's Mopti Region to highlight applied and theoretical concerns related to the impact of decentralization on livelihood security and biodiversity conservation. Community studies are built on mixed methods that integrate social and ecological variables, including individual and household surveys, semi-structured interviews, institutional analysis protocols, GIS, and forest inventories. It departs from previous work on decentralization and natural resource management by focusing on: (1) relations between communities and the different organizations involved in decentralized NRM, including local government; and (2) community experience in reconciling inconsistencies between local practices and natural resource policy under decentralization. In taking a bottom-up approach, the study addresses the fundamental questions of what becomes of local institutional capital under decentralization. The key argument is that institutional analysis of decentralized natural resource management must look at the interplay between institutions at different levels---community, 'local' (i.e., decentralized) and national---to discern what disjunctures exist between them, how they are reconciled and how this shapes incentives and opportunities for local resource managers. A paradox of decentralization in Mali is that powers are devolved through policy that imposes strict administrative requirements. Yet these policies give local elected officials great discretion in how they engage with communities and customary institutions. The likelihood that decentralized local governments engage synergistically with communities depends on the political nature of their jurisdictions and the bargaining power of the communities. By placing natural resource governance under the discretionary power of local government in an ambiguous institutional environment, decentralization runs the risk of undermining livelihood security and management capacity in communities.