the impact of decentralised forest management on charcoal production practices in eastern senegal

The impact of decentralised forest management oncharcoal production practices in Eastern Senegal

Johan Post *, Maaike Snel

Department of Geography and Planning, Amsterdam Institute for Global Issues and Development Studies, University of Amsterdam,

Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Received 11 June 2001; received in revised form 1 April 2002

Abstract

In accordance with Senegal�s decentralisation policy, important forest management tasks, including the right to allocate charcoal

production rights, have been transferred to rural councils. This paper investigates the impact of these institutional reforms on

charcoal production practices using the environmental entitlement framework developed by Leach et al. [Environmental entitle-

ments: dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management. World Development 27 (2) (1999) 225]. The

councils have not been able to turn their new endowments into entitlements because they lack sufficient strength and legitimacy.

Informal institutions, notably the coalition between merchants, state agents and village chiefs, continue to run the charcoal business

and are hardly affected by decentralisation efforts. Most rural people, especially those relying solely on agriculture for sustenance, do

not benefit at all from the charcoal trade. They do suffer from the environmental costs it brings with it, however. Although tensions

between pro-exploitation actors and pro-conservation actors are evident, the pro-exploitation actors� firm grip on the informal

institutions will probably lead to a prolonged subversion of the laws that seek to enhance local control and to sustain the forest.

� 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Charcoal; Decentralisation; Entitlements; Environmental management; Sustainable forest management; Senegal

1. Introduction

Senegalese households are largely dependent on wood

fuel for their energy needs. While firewood is widely used

for local consumption in the countryside, charcoal is

produced to satisfy the energy needs of the country�s ur-

ban population. Due to depletion of the wood reserves intheir immediate surroundings, urban centres have be-

come increasingly dependent on supplies from remote

areas, notably the eastern region. Until recently, the

central government and urban-based merchants were re-

sponsible for monitoring charcoal production. Successive

decentralisation laws, however, granted the rural popu-

lation extensive forest management rights that enabled

them, at least in theory, to reduce the ecological, economicand social inequities associated with charcoal production.

Decentralisation has become a major issue in the

development debate and, especially after the collapse of

state-communism, an extremely popular policy avenue

around the globe (Helmsing, 2000). Decentralisation

refers to the transfer of responsibility for planning and

management, and resource acquisition and alloca-

tion from the central government and its agencies to

lower echelons of government or to the private sector

(Rondinelli et al., 1989; Dillinger, 1994). Usually, devo-lution or political decentralisation is considered the ul-

timate or �real� form of decentralisation. In this case

responsibilities and financial means are transferred to

subnational entities, who in turn have real autonomy in

many important respects (Agrawal and Ribot, 1999).

This is the way the concept will be used in this paper.

Several factors explain the current popularity of the

concept. First of all, devolution accords well with pre-vailing views on how to accommodate forces of eco-

nomic globalisation. In an era of post-Fordism (flexible

production) international competitiveness is considered

the key to economic fortune. Local governments have to

be empowered and equipped to respond to the restruc-

turing of the global economy, maximising their ability

to capitalise on their specific competitive advantages

* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Post).

0016-7185/03/$ - see front matter � 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

PII: S0016-7185 (02 )00034-9

Geoforum 34 (2003) 85–98

www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

mail to: [email protected]

(Schuurman, 1997). At the same time decentralisation is

seen to be instrumental to the (neo-liberal) desire to roll

back the central state and create a lean and efficient kind

of government, one that will make optimal use of pri-vate sector and community potentials (Leftwich, 1994).

Decentralisation is also closely related to the aim of

promoting �good governance�, interpreted as greater

accountability, transparency, and pluralism. Decentra-

lised structures offer greater opportunities for partici-

pation and subjecting public officers to popular control.

Finally, by bringing the government closer to the people,

decentralisation is expected to lead to more realistic andlocally adapted development strategies, and to mobilise

valuable local energies and resources and thereby en-

hance productivity (Olowu and Smoke, 1992). Never-

theless, these salutary effects of decentralisation cannot

be taken for granted. Admittedly, decentralisation can

help to empower lower echelons of government and

improve accountability to the public, but it can also work

to extend central authority (Agrawal and Ribot, 1999).Furthermore, whilst it can diminish the gap between the

state and civil society, it can also produce greater re-

gional disparities through the unequal distribution of

competitive advantages and institutional capacities

(Burgess et al., 1997). Although the redistributive func-

tion of the nation state remains indispensable––for lack

of a viable (supra-national) alternative––its position is

being increasingly hollowed out in practice (Hobsbawm,1996). Therefore, in order to fully understand the effects

of decentralisation, the phenomenon should be analysed

in concrete settings and for specific sectors.

This paper examines the impact of decentralisation

policies in the 1990s on local forest management prac-

tices in Senegal, specifically charcoal production. The

so-called extended environmental entitlement frame-

work developed by Leach et al. (1999) is adopted as atool to organise the argument.

2. Evolving views on forest management

The realignment of state and civil society that

underlies decentralisation policy has also affected views

on environmental management in general and forest

management in particular. The classic approach to en-

vironmental management is top-down and state-led,

with strong emphasis on the rational exploitation of

natural resources using �scientifically� founded methods

(Blaikie, 1998, p. 16). This approach views local peopleas being irrational and ignorant, and a major part of the

problem. Despite all the criticism this approach has re-

ceived it continues to appeal to many decision-makers

and officials in the developing world because of its bias

towards professional expertise and because it firmly puts

the state in the driver�s seat. However, since the 1980s

mainstream environmental management thinking shif-

ted towards neo-liberalism, emphasising the logic of the

market. The neo-liberal approach, as expressed by the

World Bank, for instance, relies heavily on incentives

and regulation. It seeks to deal with the externalities ofnatural resource exploitation �by a combination of taxes

and subsidies, market-like pricing systems, establish-

ment of private property rights, and the regulation of

resource use where these fail� (ibid., p. 19). Here, people

are seen as rational economic beings seeking to maxi-

mise their individual gain. Local knowledge is important

only to the extent that it helps to improve information

on which to base decisions on resource use. The neo-populist approach, finally, starts from locally grounded

knowledge and institutions. It treats individuals as vir-

tuous, rational and community minded and strives for

bottom-up and participatory planning and decision-

making in natural resource management and socio-

political processes rather than seeking primarily

economic solutions (ibid., p. 20–21). Elements of the

neo-populist approach have gradually found their wayinto mainstream neo-liberal thinking, notably the idea

of popular participation and more community-based

natural resource management.

Along with these changing views, the top–down for-

estry approach gradually gave way to a focus on social

or community forestry during the 1980s––at least in the

international policy arena. Programmes developed

along these lines shifted the debate over who should ownand benefit from the forests in favour of local commu-

nities. Social forestry is an attempt to tailor forest pol-

icies to the basic livelihood needs of indigenous people.

Despite these good intentions, social forestry pro-

grammes have been severely criticised: they were de-

signed by outsiders and rarely promoted the self-reliance

of the communities they intended to benefit. They also

failed to recognise that locals did not represent themajor threat to the tropical forest; often they barred

local residents access to all but �minor� forest products

(i.e. not timber or firewood), thus reducing their com-

mitment. In practice, national forest policies remained

largely unaltered and geared towards the interests of

governments and logging companies (Groot and Kam-

minga, 1995; Thompson, 1999; Wiersum, 1999).

Social forestry was transformed into sustainable for-est management at the beginning of the 1990s, in line

with the larger debate on sustainable development. This

reorientation coincided with a growing awareness of the

need to protect the forest both for the sake of the live-

lihood of local communities and for the preservation of

global and regional ecosystems. The basic idea is that

community-based forest management is a more effective

way to combat deforestation (Richards, 1997). Sus-tainable forest management seeks to achieve a balance

between greater productivity and forest protection (i.e.

forests should not be harvested beyond their natural

regeneration rate). Although local communities are seen

86 J. Post, M. Snel / Geoforum 34 (2003) 85–98

as the best caretakers of the forest, their efforts to

manage this common pool resource in a sustainable way

need to be rewarded in economic terms. This reflects the

basically neo-liberal slant of the approach. At the sametime, however, participation of the local community is a

key concept in sustainable forest management. Local

control is expected to be more effective and equitable

than state-managed systems, which have often been

deeply troubled by incompetence and corruption and

have tended to bypass local interests (Sharpe, 1998).

The focus on ecological sustainability and the idea of

local control are major tenets of the sustainable forestmanagement approach and distinguish it from the ear-

lier social forestry approach. This paper primarily ad-

dresses the issue of local empowerment through

decentralisation although a few remarks will also be

made on sustainability. The acclaimed virtues of local

control are largely based on the insights gained from the

wealth of studies undertaken in response to Hardin�sextensively debated claim that users of common prop-erty resources are always trapped in an inexorable

�tragedy of the commons� (Feeney et al., 1990). These

studies show that such resources are usually not open-

access and are subject to common property rights

arrangements that result in efficient use, equitable allo-

cation and sustainable conservation. In fact, Hardin�stragedy only arises when institutions are no longer able

to control access as a result of internal or external dis-turbances. (Breemer et al., 1995; Dietz, 1996; Berkes and

Folke, 1998). Scholars of commons (including forests)

have paid a great deal of attention to the underlying

rights and powers of access, exclusion, and management

that govern the use of resources. Changes in these

rules––institutional changes––are often brought about

from the outside, for instance, by policy-makers seeking

to devolve some control over resources to local users onthe assumption that this will help to meet the goals of

sustainable development. The Food and Agricultural

Organisation (FAO) noted in a recent study on forestry

policies (cited in Agrawal, 2001, p. 1650) that over 50

countries currently pursue initiatives to decentralise

control over common-pool resources. This paper dis-

cusses one such case.

3. Environmental entitlement framework

The entitlement approach was developed by Amartya

Sen (1981) to understand why people may go hungryeven in the midst of an ample food supply. Sen showed

that availability was just one factor determining access

to food, and that this issue had to be seen in conjunction

with various other contextual factors like market or-

ganisation, labour market, and price policy. To explain

this, he introduced the twin concepts of endowments

and entitlements. The first refers to a person�s initial

ownership of assets (labour, skills, land etc.), while the

latter refers to the way in which access to food is ob-

tained (e.g. producing it with one�s own land and labour,

by selling labour or cash crops to buy food, or throughtransfers). The process of transforming endowments into

entitlements is called entitlement mapping. Although

Sen�s approach was severely criticised––for example, by

failing to produce a coherent socially and historically

rooted causal analysis of famines, by paying too much

attention to the market as the primary way of gaining

access to resources and to the formal legal system for

legitimising such access and control, or for being biasedtowards micro-level analysis (see for example Gore,

1993; Blaikie et al., 1994; Fine, 1998; Devereux,

2001)––it ignited ardent debate on the study of famines

and, more generally, access to natural resources.

In this paper we will draw on the extended environ-

mental entitlement framework designed by Leach et al.

(1999). Their framework builds upon Sen�s concepts but

highlights the central role of institutions in structuringaccess to and control of natural resources. In the Leach

et al. approach, the environment is disaggregated into

a bundle of environmental goods and services whose

availability and quality are determined by ecological

dynamics and human action. The interaction between

social actors and the environment is described using

three concepts: endowments, entitlements and capabili-

ties. Endowments refer to �rights and resources thatsocial actors have�, while entitlements are defined as �the

alternative set of utilities derived from environmental

goods and services over which social actors have legiti-

mate effective command and which are instrumental in

achieving well-being�. In fact, entitlement boils down to

the effectuation of endowments. It results in capabilities

which are �what people can do with their entitlements� to

enhance their well-being. Capabilities refer to the out-comes––in this case, charcoal or the revenue from

charcoal sale. The process of endowment and entitle-

ment mapping is mediated by various institutions op-

erating at various levels of scale ranging from micro to

macro. The interaction between these institutions is of

vital importance in determining which actors gain access

and control over local resources (Leach et al., 1999, pp.

233–234; see Fig. 1).The framework developed by Leach et al. has several

distinct advantages as it incorporates much of the crit-

icism raised on Sen�s original approach. First, the au-

thors provide a dynamic and historical perspective on

human–environment interaction. They acknowledge

that communities and environments are entities subject

to continuous change. Similarly, the mapping of en-

dowments and entitlements is seen as a dynamic process;access profiles of individual actors change in the course

of time. Second, communities are made up of differen-

tiated social actors divided along economic, gender,

ethnic, age etc. lines. Leach et al. argue that entitlements

J. Post, M. Snel / Geoforum 34 (2003) 85–98 87

are the outcomes of negotiations among social actors

involving power relationships. The authors therefore

reject the familiar notion of the community as a rela-tively homogenous entity. Third, the resource claims

and management practices of different social actors are

mediated by institutions––defined as �regularised pat-

terns of behaviour between individuals and groups in

society� (ibid., p. 237)––operating at a range of scale

levels from the micro to the macro. Among these insti-

tutions are, for example, intra-household dynamics,

local food systems, market organisation, environmentalcontrol agencies, and international aid interventions. It

is important to note that Leach et al. recognise that the

vulnerabilities of local actors are at least partially de-

termined by structural inequalities within the prevalent

political-economic context (the macro-level). The inter-

play between various institutions––sometimes working

in concert, sometimes in conflict––determines which

actors will gain control over particular local resources.Finally, the designers of the framework distinguish be-

tween formal and informal institutions, that is, those

conditioned by the rule of law, and those based on es-

tablished social practices.

4. The study

The reason for adopting the Leach et al. conceptual

framework is because of its focus on institutions and

institutional reform in the process of mapping naturalresource endowments and entitlements. In particular it

allows us to study the impact of a top-down and formal

reform (decentralisation) on local charcoal production

practices that are embedded in various institutions, most

of which are informal. It is essential to note that the

model should not be seen as an explanatory framework

or a coherent set of causal relationships, but rather as a

mode of investigation (cf. Fine, 1998, p. 643). It has

served to draw our attention to a number of important

analytical dimensions, notably the interplay between

formal and informal institutions and between macro andmicro level developments, as well as the heterogeneity of

interests within local communities.

The investigations on which this paper is based were

carried out in the Tambacounda region in Eastern

Senegal during the last four months of 1999 (see Fig. 2;

Snel, 2000). The study was largely qualitative in nature

and consisted of numerous open interviews with a range

of actors directly or indirectly engaged in charcoalproduction. Interviews were conducted with officials and

dignitaries from regional and rural (semi-) governmental

institutions, representatives of traditional institutions,

charcoal traders, woodcutters, and inhabitants of the

rural communities. The aim was to see if and how the

decentralisation reforms affected activities in the char-

coal production and distribution chain. Although the

most recent reforms––the 1997 Decentralisation Lawand the 1998 Forestry Law––gave occasion to the study,

it would be naive to expect anything significant to have

occurred in the course of just one year. Therefore, we

extended the time horizon to consider the impact of

earlier waves of decentralisation, especially since the

early 1990s. The latest reforms did not so much create

new institutions, but rather altered the balance of power

between them (at least on paper). By assessing what hashappened over the past decade to the functioning of the

various institutions involved in forest management we

will also be able to say something about the likelihood

of recent changes to produce a meaningful effect.

Two rural communities were selected for this study,

one where charcoal production was recently banned,

and another where it is legally practised. This was ex-

pected to shed light on both the management of pro-duction and protection efforts. Special attention was

given to the distinction between formal and informal

management arrangements (Snel, 2000). It should be

added that we greatly benefited from the work carried

out by Jesse Ribot on the organisation of charcoal

production in the research area prior to the most recent

decentralisation effort (Ribot, 1990, 1995a, 1998, 2000).

His investigations have helped us to gain an under-standing of the different actors involved as well as dis-

parities in access to and control of assets in the

Senegalese charcoal market. Ribot also contributed to

the debate on the impact of decentralisation on Sene-

gal�s forestry system (Ribot, 1995b; Agrawal and Ribot,

1999; Ribot, 1999).

5. Decentralisation in Senegal

Senegal has been praised for its long-time dedication

to democracy and its commitment to decentralisation

Fig. 1. The extended environmental entitlement framework.


(Gellar, 1990; Hesseling and Kraemer, 1996). A com-

bination of political, economic and ecological factors

accumulated in the 1960s to create the �right� circum-stances to embark on the road to decentralisation. The

droughts that hit the country during this period aggra-

vated falling world prices for the country�s major export

crop (peanuts), resulting in a loss of employment and a

national feeling of resentment against the centralised

regime. This situation, known as the �malaise paysanne�,created growing popular demands for political, admin-

istrative, social and economic reform, and changes in thepresidential monarchy (Gellar, 1990; Hesseling and

Kraemer, 1996). The government was obliged to take

action to sooth the unrest. In 1970 the constitution was

revised and the first steps towards decentralisation were

taken in 1972. This reform, however, can more ade-

quately be described as deconcentration than decen-

tralisation. It involved the establishment of a new

collectivity at the lowest political administrative level:the rural community. These new institutions were sup-

posed to provide the people with a feeling of represen-

tation with three-fourths of participants being elected

members from nationally registered political parties.

The remaining quarter was chosen by a general council

of state-organised producer and marketing cooperatives

and associations from within the community (Agrawal

and Ribot, 1999, p. 487). The president of the rural

council was chosen by and amongst the rural council-

lors. The decentralisation policy created a new authority

at the local level next to the traditional village chiefs andmarabouts who continued to play an important role in

local politics.

The rural councils were intended to become motors of

development (Jacob, 1997). However, an evaluation of

the first fifteen years of decentralisation shows that this

objective was not really achieved because the councils

were not given a sufficient resource base to back their

new responsibilities. Furthermore, most rural council-lors were not really prepared to properly execute their

duties, with illiteracy being a major stumbling block.

The government�s technical support agencies that were

meant to boost development efforts at the local level

suffered from gross under-financing and under-staffing

(Adamolekun and Laleye, 1988, p. 331).

In addition to these local level problems, the state and

its agents––notably the appointed prefects and subpre-fects––retained full supervisory control over all aspects

of local level action (Vengroff and Creevay, 1997, p.

215). Besides, the electoral system was based on the

winner-take-all system, which not only compromised the

idea of fair representation, but also led to a situation

where the national ruling party (the Socialist Party)

controlled most rural councils. These became platforms

for party politics and an important new avenue for

Fig. 2. Senegal�s administrative regions and the location of our research localities.


patronage. Finally, the duality between the newly cre-

ated institutions and the long-standing traditional ones

complicated the situation. Rather than rely on the feeble

system of modern local administration, many peoplecontinued to depend on local notables and religious

leaders (marabouts) to gain access to scarce resources

(Jacob, 1997, p. 54–55).

Acknowledging these shortcomings, the Senegalese

state planned a second reform to breathe new life into

the rural communities. In 1990 the budgetary powers

and the mode of election were changed: proportional

representation and strengthened independence increasedthe representativeness of the rural councils. The sources

of local revenue, however, remained the same. The

budget relied heavily on the rural tax, and was thus

dependent on the financial participation and the wealth

of the population in the rural community. And al-

though members from the opposition could from then

on enter the rural councils either as a minority or ma-

jority fraction, in practice the ruling national partycontinued to be virtually omnipotent at the local level: in

1994, 300 of the country�s 317 rural councils were con-

trolled by the national ruling party. This led Agrawal

and Ribot (1999, p. 487) to conclude that �the elections

in Senegal are not structured to create a downwardly

accountable rural council�. No meaningful positive

changes in either the functioning of the rural councils

or their development efforts have been observed sincethis reform, and many of the shortcomings of the first

phase also hold for the second (Vengroff and Creevay,

1997).

A third phase in the decentralisation process started

in 1997, and concentrated on the creation of strong re-

gional governments. The reform was motivated by the

desire to spur regional economic development and to

accommodate demands for greater regional autonomy(notably in the region of Casamance). It fits in well with

prevailing neo-liberal views on the retreat of the central

state and the concomitant demand for decentralisation

as expressed by the leading Bretton Woods institutions

and many other donor agencies. Nine competencies

were transferred to the regional and/or local level––in-

cluding natural resource management––and resources

were to be transferred to enable these new collectivitiesto carry out their new responsibilities. Simultaneously

they were urged to develop a capacity to collect and

manage their own resources.

The implementation of the most recent decentralisa-

tion phase is once again having difficulty. Kante points

to the financial inadequacies––an extremely weak tax

base––as one of the major bottlenecks. In addition, it

will take a very long time before individuals and insti-tutions will be in a position to perform their new roles

(Kante, 2000, p. 4). These weaknesses also resonate in

the subsequent analysis on the transfer of forest man-

agement tasks to the rural councils.

6. Organisation and history of charcoal production

The Senegalese charcoal market can be looked upon

as a vertical chain of actors, ranging geographicallyfrom producers in the bush (surga) to the retailers (di-

allo kerin) in the big cities. Producers 1 cut and carbo-

nise wood for the merchants (patrons) that hire them.

Intermediaries (kontrapalaas) often stand between the

producers and the patron, setting up a kiln and dis-

tributing credit. The patrons arrange for trucks to be

sent to the production site and have the charcoal

transported to the cities, where they sell it to wholesal-ers. The latter distribute the charcoal to vendors who

sell the charcoal to the urban consumers.

The history of forest exploitation in Senegal shows a

continual strengthening of state power and merchant

capital interest. Large-scale commercial production of

charcoal dates back to the Second World War period

and was related to the inability of the French to provide

their colony with fuel. The state indicated the areas forcommercial production and set volumes and prices.

Urban-based charcoal merchants (with French citizen-

ship) were able to control production through the gov-

ernment-controlled licence and permit system.

In the course of time, charcoal production was

pushed further and further away from Dakar as a result

of acute deforestation in the areas surrounding the

capital. Means to fight the deforestation process werestructured around attempts to regulate the charcoal and

firewood markets. In the 1970s, quotas and a limited

production season (restricted to certain months in the

dry season) were introduced. At the same time, charcoal

merchants became organised in co-operatives, which

were made mandatory by the government in 1983 (in

accordance with its socialist ideas). These co-operatives

became powerful formal forest managers, with entryinto their group––and therefore access to charcoal ro-

duction––occurring via social and economic channels

(Ribot, 1998, p. 326). The centralised, co-operative

structure of charcoal marketing represented a barrier to

individuals such as villagers, to enter the formal market.

Despite an elaborate bureaucratic system of regula-

tion, illegal production thrived and formal procedures

were circumvented on a massive scale. A study in 1987,for example, showed that the quota production ac-

counted for just over half of the urban demand (Madon

in Ribot (1990, p. 124)). State agents used licenses,

permits and quotas to establish mutually beneficial re-

lationships with the merchant class. Forest officials

abusing their formal position were often important in-

1 Until recently, producers were mainly Guinean Fulbe, given the

low regard Senegalese have for charcoal kiln building. However, an

increasing number of Senegalese are trying to enter the profession to

secure their livelihood.


formal conduits for channelling a supplementary supply

of charcoal to influential charcoal merchants, and (in

exchange for bribes) exempting them from prosecution

for infractions (Ribot, 1998, p. 325). The prime actorsin the formal market therefore also dominated illegal

production and trade.

Patrons––organised in forestry co-operatives––were

allocated quotas in rural communities. These rations

were based on reports written by Forest Service staff on

the basis of ecological criteria such as vegetation cover.

Although these reports determined whether and how

much charcoal production should take place in thesurrounding forests, the community itself had no input

in their design. Since Guineans almost exclusively

practised charcoal kiln construction at that time, the

only way the local community benefited was by renting

rooms and selling meals to the producers. According to

Ribot, village chiefs were able to extract 3% of the total

profit of the charcoal trade by charging patrons a forest

access fee (Ribot, 1998, p. 318).

7. Forest management under decentralisation

The successive forestry laws of the 1990s have tried toaffect the situation described above in favour of rural

communities. In 1993 a new Forestry Code was enacted

giving rural councils the opportunity to sell rights to

harvest forest products approved of by the Forest Ser-

vice. The original idea was that revenues from selling

forest rights would enable rural communities to replant

and protect their forests as stipulated by law. To support

them in their new management obligations, they evengained some access to a new National Forestry Fund,

fed by annual taxes and fees. However, the new code

gave the councils privileges rather than rights. In case

they would opt to conserve rather than cut the trees in

their area the Forestry Service could still legally hand

out concessions to outside commercial interests (Ribot,

1995b, p. 1594). As a result, the practice of charcoal

production remained virtually the same as before. Fur-thermore, the rural councils did not know how much to

charge for forest access. The immediate cash needs of

councillors and the community, together with the pres-

sures from the Forestry Service and the merchants in-

cited them to accept almost any offer (ibid., p. 1594).

Our investigations in Koussanar and MakaColibantan

also show that allocations from the Forestry Fund never

materialised.A more sweeping intervention took place with the

introduction of the 1998 Forestry Law. This reform was

prompted by the governments� most recent decentrali-

sation policy as well as the desire to combat deforesta-

tion more effectively. It gave rural councils the right to

manage all forests––except for private, classified and

nationally protected ones––and to keep the revenues of

commercial use––or, in case of conservation––the ben-

efits of a continued supply of wood for local use. In the

new situation, the exploitation of forest reserves must be

based on a Management Plan to be drawn up by therural council and approved by the central state. The

function of the Forestry Service will change from direct

managers of the charcoal production to technical ad-

visors of the rural councils in preparing the Manage-

ment Plan. Although it will continue to issue permits for

cutting, storage and transport of wood and charcoal, the

net revenues they yield are supposed to be transferred to

the rural councils.The quota system was abandoned by the 1998 For-

estry Law and will be replaced by an annual amount of

wood to be cut, regardless of purpose. The amount is to

be decided locally and specified in the Management

Plan. The presidents of the rural councils have to sign

the allocation note enabling patrons to arrange for

production in their jurisdiction. In other words, legal

production cannot take place unless the president per-mits it on behalf of the council. The complete intro-

duction and functioning of the new laws is expected in

2001, with a transition period of three years. Rural

councils must be in a position to take over management

when quotas are abolished in 2001.

With the introduction of the new forest management

regime of 1998, the position of the rural councils was

strengthened considerably, while national interests(charcoal supply to urban consumers) and, to some ex-

tent at least, wider ecological concerns became less

pertinent. The councils are empowered to favour the

local population over outsiders in the allocation of

carbonisation rights and can also refuse charcoal pro-

duction in the community if this is considered appro-

priate. However, much will depend on the functioning of

the rural councils, the performance of the councillorsand the president of the rural councils, their account-

ability to the population, and on the relationship with

the Forestry Service and powerful charcoal patrons.

Developments in our two research localities will reveal

how the institutional reforms that occurred in the course

of the 1990s affected the mapping of endowments and

entitlements to wood fuel. The remainder of the paper

will show the actual roles of the various institutionsinvolved in forest management, and then discuss two

local community responses to entitlement failure.

8. Entitlement dynamics

Tambacounda is Senegal�s easternmost and largest

region, and often stereotyped as being �backward� both

socially and economically. It is the least populated of all

regions and has a relatively dense forest cover. Agri-

culture and cattle raising are the two main income-

generating activities. The first rural councils in the area


were only created in 1984––more than a decade after the

start of the reform––while the Regional Council started

operating in 1997. The two rural councils taken up in

this study, Koussanar and MakaColibantan in the re-gion of Tambacounda, have had severe operational

problems from the start. To a certain extent, both are

trapped in a vicious circle. Due to their financial

weakness they cannot perform in a way that would

strengthen their legitimacy in the eyes of the general

public, and a low regard in the eyes of the public di-

minishes the willingness of people to pay the much-

needed rural tax. Traditional leaders usually do not siton the rural councils. However, revenue collection

within the community, including rural tax collection,

remains the responsibility of (traditional) village chiefs.

These are not necessarily loyal to the modern system of

administration, particularly when it provides them few if

any fringe benefits.In Fig. 3 an attempt is made to capture recent de-

velopments using the extended environmental entitle-

ment framework. A distinction is made between formal

and informal institutions. In the subsequent analysis,

only those institutional mechanisms will be discussed

that are supposed to have been affected by the decen-

tralised framework. Furthermore, a special emphasis is

placed on local developments.As a result of decentralisation in forest management,

endowments (the rights and resources social actors have)

Fig. 3. The extended environmental entitlement framework applied to the decentralisation of forest management in Senegal (this figure needs to be

seen in conjunction with Fig. 1. The right-hand side of that figure is elaborated here.)


to forest resources, including charcoal production

rights, have been passed on to Senegal�s rural councils,

at first somewhat half-heartedly (1993), and later on

(1998) more seriously. In practice, however, these en-dowments have not yet been turned into entitlements, at

least in the two areas studied: rural councils have not yet

been able to profit from the control they obtained over

forestry rights and resources. As far as charcoal pro-

duction is concerned practices have continued much as

before. The 1998 production season––which had not yet

been closed in December 1999 because severe rains had

delayed production and transport––had been opened upunder the quota system (top-down) as the new legal

provisions under the 1998 Forestry Law still had to be

put in place. But although the rural councils were not

yet charged with the design of Management Plans––

giving them the exclusive right to determine if and how

much charcoal would be produced––the 1993 Forestry

Law had already given the rural council the possibility

to manage the use of their forests. Nevertheless, at thetime of our fieldwork, patrons and their intermediaries

still arranged the organisation of charcoal production

together with the Forestry Service. After having been

given the quota at the national and regional level, the

local Forestry Service Office determined where the pa-

trons should produce.

Our investigations of late 1999 attest to the structural

weakness of the rural councils. The internal function-ing of the democratically chosen rural councils is ob-

structed by lack of communication, co-operation and

trust among rural councillors. In the Koussanar com-

munity, councillors from the main village seemed to be

somewhat more active and engaged than their colleagues

in poorly accessible and remote hamlets. In the other

rural community, the president of the rural council,

chosen by and amongst the rural councillors, effectivelyruled the council all by himself. Most representatives

are illiterate and poorly informed about their rights

and responsibilities with respect to forest management

issues. Nobody knew, for example, about the rural

council�s right to authorise the legal production of

charcoal since 1998. In both cases, the president of the

rural council decided on authorisation without con-

sulting either the councillors or the population atlarge. 2 Both the 1993 and the 1998 Forestry Laws were

introduced with rural councillors hardly being aware of

their existence, let alone their implications. For the time

being, the idea of local control is still a hollow phrase.

The relative position of the president of the rural

council vis-�aa-vis village chiefs has changed. While the

chiefs used to be the sole informal managers of the forest

whose collaboration had to be bought, nowadays the

president of the rural council has become another im-

portant broker. Decentralisation has favoured modern(formal) institutions over traditional (informal) ones, or,

to be more precise, between the personifications of these

institutions: the president of the council and the local

village leaders. However, the shift in the local distribu-

tion of benefits of charcoal production––which, once

again, is only a fraction of total profits––has not affected

extraction practices at all. Patrons simply buy the

president of the rural council�s consent with �the price ofkola� similar to the way patrons obtained and continue

to obtain support from the village chiefs. 3 Despite the

shift in the local power balance, charcoal production

activities must still gain the approval of the traditional

leaders if they wish to get off the ground.

The role of the Forestry Service in the two rural

communities studied also merits attention. Both in

Koussanar and in MakaColibantan, a district office(brigade) was present. Up to 1998, the task of the For-

estry Service brigade in MakaColibantan was to regu-

late the official production, while the task of the

Koussanar-based office was to prevent illegal produc-

tion in accordance with the official ban effective in this

rural community since 1994. Both Forestry offices,

however, were understaffed and under-financed. Ad-

ministrative duties––issuing authorisations and deliver-ing various permits––consume most of the time, at the

cost of forest monitoring, education, interaction with

the rural councils, and the execution of ecological

studies on the forest. In Koussanar, forestry officials

concentrated their efforts on the neighbouring district of

Sinthiou Maleme where production was still allowed,

while ignoring law enforcement elsewhere. Although the

1998 Forestry Law has changed their role from au-thorisers of production to technical advisers to the rural

councils, in practice not much has changed since the new

law became effective. Forestry officials continue to use

their control over licences and permits to allocate enti-

tlements to woodcutting, either legally or extra-legally.

The newly required authorisation by the president of the

rural council has never obstructed the decisions of local

Forestry brigades. The President more or less feels ob-liged to sign the papers presented by the Forestry Ser-

vice. Furthermore, no evidence could be found of a

transfer of funds (capabilities) from the Forestry Service

to the rural councils in conformity to the new allocation

of management rights and benefits.

The Regional Council�s new role in forest manage-

ment is to provide general guidelines on environmental

protection through the Regional Plan of Action for the

2 It serves to note that people did not seem to bother much about

the lack of performance and accountability on the part of the RCs,

probably while this institution only has a marginal impact on their

everyday life.

3 This used to be a gift of kola-nuts, but currently it involves the

transfer of (substantial) sums of money.


Environment (PRAE). However, hardly any money is

set aside for the implementation of this plan and,

therefore, the document is little more than a statement

of good intentions. The majority of regional councillors,elected by direct universal suffrage, live in Dakar, and

not the regional capital Tambacounda, which illustrates

their weak commitment. The only action taken with

respect to forest management in the region was the

distribution of the regional quota at the beginning of the

1998 campaign. 4 The president of the Regional Council

decided on the issue in a reunion where only a few re-

gional councillors and presidents of rural councils werepresent.

One of the reasons to grant the rural council primary

forest management rights in the 1998 Forestry Law was

that it would contribute to a more sustainable use of

natural resources. This was based on the assumption

that local communities are the best guardians of the

ecological equilibrium (as their livelihoods depend on

it). In addition to theoretical reasons for doubting thebenevolent role of communities or the idea of a static

�balance of nature� (see Leach et al., 1999) our empirical

investigations also show that this assumption cannot be

taken for granted. Ecological sustainability 5 is partic-

ularly threatened by the widespread prevalence of illegal

production––e.g. over and above what is officially (yet

arguably) considered ecologically justified––either be-

cause merchants organise supplementary production, orsucceed in avoiding prosecution for violations. Rural

councillors and the population are expected to signal

illegal production and report it to the Forestry brigade.

However, if and when the rural population does this, it

is usually through the village chief or the president of the

rural council, both of whom have a stake in woodcutting

practices and hence prefer to ignore complaints.

In Koussanar, where all production is illegal, inter-vention by the Forestry Service is highly irregular and

selective. It is common knowledge that state agents are

bribed with money or charcoal. Popular attitudes with

respect to these practices differ. While the Koussanar-

based councillors and villagers are overwhelmingly

positive about the practice of the Forestry Service,

people from elsewhere in the rural community are much

more critical (although a sizeable group demonstratedindifference or resignation). Koussanar residents are less

dependent on the state of the local environment, and

directly or indirectly benefit from the economic spin-off

effects of charcoal production, while farmers and cattle

raisers in rural areas increasingly believe that continued

production will jeopardise their livelihood (the forest is

considered an essential element in ensuring rainfall, for

example). Policies within the rural councils, however,

were severely biased towards the interests of the former

group. At the same time it has to be admitted that ob-jections to current charcoal production practices are

certainly not motivated exclusively by conservationist

beliefs. According to Ribot, protests also concerned the

disruption caused by migrant woodcutters, and, nota-

bly, by the fact that villagers cannot cut and sell forest

products themselves for their own direct profit, because

they lack the necessary means and connections (Ribot,

1998, p. 322).This brings us to the next point, the necessity of

looking at the entire network of institutions circum-

scribing resource use. Even if villagers would be able to

assert their claims on forest resources more effectively

through their rural councils, and would endeavour to

take charcoal production into their own hands, this is

unlikely to yield immediate success. To do this, they

must be able to combine their forest resource entitle-ments with effective claims to credit and labour for

logging and transport, and trading networks for effective

marketing. So far, only the patrons are in a position to

arrange for all this by using their economic power and

social and political ties to strategic actors in the charcoal

production chain. Decentralisation has only affected

(albeit still marginally) the access to forest resources (the

wood), but it has not changed the other factors deter-mining the benefits derived from charcoal production

and trade.

9. Attempts at local forest management

The local population is largely unaware of the insti-

tutional changes decentralisation has brought about

concerning forest management. When asked who is le-

gally responsible for charcoal production most people

say �the Forestry Service�, because �they own the forest�.The actual participation of local people and their official

representatives (the councillors) in forest management isstill minimal. Practically no one had heard of the 1993

or 1998 Forestry Laws or the changes these could bring

about. The following discussion deals with two attempts

of the local population to become more involved in

forest management. The first took place in the early

1990s in MakaColibantan. The second occurred in

Koussanar at the end of the decade after Forestry and

decentralisation laws had substantially changed the in-stitutional landscape.

One of the research villages in the rural community of

MakaColibantan, has a long history of (illegal) charcoal

production. Recently, production increased through

involvement of the Mandingue population. The Guin-

ean Fulbe––who have been living in the village for sev-

eral decades––have found companions in the local

4 A temporary function of the council to bridge the three-year

period before the final abolition of the quota system.5 The concept is used here to denote the desire to minimise the

depletion of environmental capital.


Mandingues who entered the sector as a result of di-

minishing incomes from agricultural activities. Over

time, economic hardship has broken down ethnic bar-

riers to entry for charcoal production. Anyone who has,or can arrange the resources to set up a kiln, will pro-

duce. The �prices to be given to the Forestry Service� are

common knowledge and an accepted cost factor. A rural

councillor who lives in the village––openly admitting to

be engaged in production himself––claims that he and

his colleagues are powerless to stop it, basing his view on

the failed attempt of councillors in the preceding rural

council to do so.This failed attempt to halt production was fuelled by

tensions created by illegal production in the early

1990s 6––a time at which decentralisation reforms had

not yet made their way into the Forestry domain. This

exemplifies the willingness of the rural population to

become involved in forest management, even without

the backing of formal institutional arrangements. The

attempt to halt production was caused by several ten-sions. First of all, the inconvenience created by having

so many producers in the villages was mounting. Fur-

thermore, the villagers themselves wanted to benefit

from charcoal production in their forests. Rural coun-

cillors were sympathetic to the complaints of the vil-

lagers and presented the prefect (the central state�srepresentative in the region) with the demand of forest

protection against commercial charcoal production, andthe opening of forests for use by the rural population.

Additionally, rural councillors asked forest revenues to

be invested in local development through a fund man-

aged by the rural council. Finally, they demanded that

assets of the forest be sustained by protecting certain

areas, concentrating on logging in designated areas, and

promoting reforestation. To use Leach�s terminology,

the rural population asked for both endowments andentitlements to be devolved to them so they could use

the resulting capacities to develop their area. Rural

councillors acted as spokesmen for the population,

strongly encouraged by the prospect of gaining au-

thority and strengthening their position vis-�aa-vis the

traditional authorities. The local population expressed

strong disapproval towards the current practice where

they had no say at all. After five years of protest andactivism, none of these demands were met, despite their

correspondence with the principles of the 1990s For-

estry Laws. A laudable initiative of the people to take

forest management into their own hands broke down

against the informal alliance between the Forestry Ser-

vice––calling upon a highly questionable report that

claimed commercial charcoal production would not

have any detrimental effect on forest ecology––and the

capitalist merchants and traditional leaders. Both vil-

lagers and councillors were deeply frustrated and losttheir faith in the rural council as an effective and re-

sponsive modern institution. Decentralisation helped to

create rural councils, but failed to empower them. The

result is that when villagers are asked about the rural

council�s potential to manage the forest, they often use

the example of this failed attempt to illustrate that this

government institution is incapable of representing and

defending their interests.Another attempt at local participation took place in

the rural community of Koussanar after the implemen-

tation of the 1998 Forestry Law. This rural community

has logged much less intensively than MakaColibantan,

and especially villagers living far away from the centre

of the community seem to attach importance to con-

servation and reforestation. To more actively involve

the population in the activities of the rural council, astructure of Village Committees for Development

(CVD) was created in 1998. These committees cover

four to five villages, and consist of people chosen within

their villages. Usually, the CVDs are composed of vil-

lage chiefs, notables, marabouts and representatives of

women and youth groups and peasant organisations.

The Intervillage Committee for Development (CIVD)

collects the concerns and questions of these CVDs, andis expected to present these to the rural council every

three months. This initiative has motivated many vil-

lages to think about developing their areas. Spontane-

ously, an initiative was born whereby villagers would

signal illegal charcoal production and other infractions

in the bush and report them to the person responsible in

the village who would then report this to the president of

the CVD. The latter would inform the president of theCIVD, who should include these findings in the report

sent to the rural council. However, action ceased at this

last level. The CIVD president never seemed to report

the concerns, and the villagers became discouraged. �Of

what importance is our work if it is not considered? If

we could act as we wanted to, no charcoal production

would take place in our bush. We would ban it if we

were authorised to do so. But it is not our forest� (cattlefarmer, October 1999). Residents feel that the rural

council does not recognise them, and even a request for

a bicycle to patrol larger areas more effectively was

never honoured. It will not be surprising if the system of

reporting illegal charcoal production will have ceased

before the rural council officially starts its full manage-

ment duties in 2001.

In such a situation, circumventing formal institutionshas become the norm. Having lost trust in the official

institutions regarding forest management, the popula-

tion now tries to confront the problems directly where

and when they present themselves: �We do not speak

6 This attempt has been investigated and documented by Ribot

(2000). His material was used to describe the situation, and was

completed with talks and interviews with several individuals during

Snel�s fieldwork in 1999.


with the Forestry Service or with the rural councillors

because they do not act anyway. We speak to the illegal

producers directly� (cattle farmer, October 1999). Sev-

eral factors explain the disrespect of formal institutions:they are ineffective in controlling the forest due to their

structural weaknesses, their illegal stake in forest ex-

ploitation, and the sheer remoteness of controlling

bodies to the areas where most production takes place.

This attempt to strengthen the downward accountability

of the rural council was nipped in the bud because it

conflicted too much with the interests of key agents in

the charcoal business. This reduced trust even further inthe rural council as an effective institution for forest

management.

10. Conclusion

The extended environmental entitlement framework

has given us a device to conceptualise an externally

conceived and implemented institutional reform and to

assess its impact on the institutional dynamics that de-

termine access to and control over forest resources.

Decentralisation and the resulting new Forestry Laws

have fundamentally altered the allocation of officialrights to forest resources by giving rural councils ulti-

mate control. However, the rural councils have not

managed to turn their new endowments into entitle-

ments. The lack of administrative capacity and financial

strength renders the rural councils unable to perform the

developmental and monitoring roles assigned to them.

In addition, their operation as modern, democratic in-

stitutions is frustrated by the prevailing culture of au-thoritarian and patrimonial rule. This is apparent,

among others, in the power and dominance of the

president of the rural council whose conduct largely goes

unchecked. Furthermore, the political affiliation of most

rural councils implies that their loyalty does not rest

primarily with the local constituency but rather with the

ruling party. In other words, the decentralised structure

of forest management put at centre stage an institutionthat is rather marginal in the organisation of rural so-

ciety, at least in this remote and poor part of Senegal,

and at the same time not really downwardly account-

able. The only person really on the entitlement map is

the president of the rural council––especially since the

1998 reform.

Although effective control over direct access to the

forest in a rural community is now shared between vil-lage chiefs and the president of the rural council, they

both can only translate their entitlements to the wood

into capabilities (benefits from logging) if they join with

the much more powerful merchants (providing access to

charcoal markets, and to labour and capital for cutting

wood and turning it into charcoal), and with Forestry

agents (to officially sanction woodcutting and trade).

Decentralisation has not really affected the power rela-

tions that underlie the distribution of entitlements to

charcoal. The regularised practices in the production

and trade of charcoal are pretty robust and attest to theclaim made by Leach et al. that �institutional change in

society may be a slow, �path-dependent� process, even if

formal institutions, such as legal frameworks. . .change

quickly� (Leach et al., 1999, p. 238).

As far as the Forestry Service is concerned, a big gap

exists between actual practices and official tasks and

responsibilities. Members of this institution use their

control over licences and permits––and up until 2000also quota––to allocate entitlements to woodcutting,

either legally or extra-legally. Although recent institu-

tional reforms have reduced its official power vis-�aa-vis

the rural councils, in practice, Forestry officials continue

to control access to forest resources. They selectively

provide preferences or exemptions from prosecution to

merchants depending on the latter�s economic power,

social prestige and political influence. Our findingsconfirm the strength of established social practices as

well as the flexibility of informal arrangements such as

those between forestry agents and merchants to adapt to

new circumstances (cf. Leach et al., 1999, p. 240). A

change in this situation is only likely if the flaws affecting

the operation of the rural councils are effectively re-

dressed. Above all, this requires political will.

Another major conclusion from our analysis, again inconformity with claims made by Leach et al., is that the

rural councils constitute a socially divided rather than

homogeneous community. There was a clear divergence

of interest between those economically benefiting from

charcoal production and those suffering the adverse ef-

fects of a degraded forest (usually people who entirely

depend on agriculture for a living; albeit that a sizeable

group demonstrated indifference). Therefore, if policiesof rural councils would be more representative of pop-

ular needs and priorities, the outcome––higher levels

of resource exploitation or better conservation of the

forest––would be uncertain. This is an important reason

why �desired� courses of ecological change often require

co-management or partnership arrangements in which

at least one party is genuinely committed to the goal of

ecological sustainability.Efforts to improve the record of the decentralisation

policy––in terms of more effective local control over

forest resources and more sustainable use of natural

resources––have not too much to build upon. Attempts

by some rural councillors and villagers to persuade the

rural council to use its legal powers to this effect have

broken down in the face of opposition by the local es-

tablishment and merchant class (mobilising their polit-ical friends in Tambacounda and Dakar). This attests to

the link between macro and micro-level developments as

mentioned by Leach et al. The impact of the alliance

between state and capital that characterises the overall


Senegalese political economy manifests itself at the local

level, affecting local processes of endowment and enti-

tlement mapping. The informal institutions that actually

control charcoal production and trade primarily reflectcommercial and non-local (urban consumer) interests

rather than ecological and local concerns. Furthermore,

they are even less open to democratic control and pop-

ular participation than are the rural councils. In the

short run, it is unlikely that a marked change for the

better will materialise. Only through a process of em-

powerment––probably with a crucial role for NGOs to

provide access to vital information and to educate andtrain people––can one hope that countervailing forces

will gradually gain strength and, hence, that people will

become more successful in effectuating the claims that

decentralised forest management should provide.

Finally, one word of caution is in order with respect

to the extended environmental entitlement framework

as a mode of investigation. The preoccupation with the

interplay of institutions in shaping access to environ-mental resources might lead us to forget the importance

of particular conditions to forge change. An activist

council president or a major disaster such as a pro-

longed drought (blamed on deforestation) can make a

great difference in the way formal and informal institu-

tions function and interact. In other words, we should

also have an open eye for the �unregularised� patterns of

behaviour or contingent events that influence social andecological history.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Isa Baud and Prof.

Dr. Ton Dietz for their valuable comments and discus-

sion. We also gratefully acknowledge the constructive

criticism of three anonymous referees and the editor on

an earlier draft of this paper.

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