Sustainable resource management in Benin embedded in the process of decentralisation
Abstract
This article gives an overview on an integrated socio-economic approach to meet the complexity of resource use in a representative catchment area in Benin, West Africa. Main objective of the studies is to analyse interdependencies between resource availability and socio-economic, respectively, demographic development, incorporated in the process of institutional reorganisation. The ongoing decentralisation in Benin encounters obstacles, as responsibility is shifted from a national to a local level without being embedded in a framework of constitutional security. In this article we focus on crucial problems and highlight significant though preliminary results with reference to the decentralisation process, regarding basically the resources water and land. Results of field surveys are presented together with a modelling tool to integrate these data in an agricultural sector model. Water will become scarcer due to growing population and changing water consumption patterns. Migration flows aggravate the competition over land and water. The detailed knowledge on these shortly outlined processes allows to identify sustainable strategies in order to mitigate the impending crises. Resource management approaches like CBNRM (“Community Based Natural Resource Management”) form a conceptual basis, which must be accompanied by a long-term planning of state institutions to steer resource use and by the introduction of locally adapted land use systems (like Cashew-plantations in the catchment). The decision support system BenIMPACT supports the quantitative assessment of different development paths. The dominant basic needs strategies of all national and international development agencies operating in Benin have to recognise the process of the shortening of the basic natural resources water and land to ensure their sustainability in the future.
- Publication:
-
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth
- Pub Date:
- 2005
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.pce.2005.06.016
- Bibcode:
- 2005PCE....30..365M