This paper attempts to examine four inter-related areas of concern: first, why despite subsantial contriubtion to food production, pastorlaists have not been accorded sufficient attention by policymakers and planners. Second, the linkages between the externalities and internalities which produced a pastoral ssytem of production incapable of coping with an increasing economic and ecological pressures. Third, responses to the crisis which has alrgely been heralded by the neglect and underestimation of pastorla production systems and the possibility of a linkage between the envrionment and development in the Sahel. Fourth, agro-pastorlaism as a regional production sytem and what policies can be pursued to fully utilize this potential for the benefits of the pastorlaists and states of the Sahel.
In most Sahelian countries, pastorlists represent the minority of the populaiton, except in Djibouti, Chad, Mauritania, Mali and Somalia, where pastorlists represent the majority of the populaitons (table 1). However, even when pastoralists are in the majority, they are largely amrgainlized and their welfare neglected as far as the allocation of development projecs is concerned. This occurs despite the common knowledge that over 90 percent of the anitonal herd in most Sahelian states is owned by pastoral nomads (table 2).
The pastoral sector of production provides between 10 to 25 percent of animal protein intake in Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger and Senegal and between 40-65 percent of animal protein intake in Kenya, Mauritania and Somalia, in the form of milk, meat (table 3). Moreover, internal ytrading in livestock and hide as an export commodity, play an important role in the national and local markets. Livestock are exchanged for cash, grain and other range of commodities which cannot be produced by the pastoralists themselves.
The national accounts of the Sahelian countreis give conradictory reports as to the share of livestock production in their Gross Domestic product(GDP). In most cases, livestock produuction is subsumed under agriculture, added to that fishing and hunting. However, my own calculations of the share of milk and meat production in the gDP shows that the role of livestock in the national accounts of the Sahelian countries is grossly underestimated. Table 3 suggests that the GDP of most Sahelian countries, either does not consider food items such as meat and milk as important products or that the planners are not concerned with their contribution to the national economies. The underestimation of the contriubtion of any sector of the economy to the national accounts often has some seirous implications for how that sector is perceived by policy makers and planners. it would also have some negative implication for the allocation of development priorities and the direction of investment.
Apart from Kenya, Sudan and Nigeria which spent over 10 per cent of development allocations in livestock development projects. All other Sahelian countries have spent or proposed to spend less than 5 per cent in the livestock sector (ref. EIR, 1992, Europa, 1993). Ironically, about 75-90 per cent of livestock development projects are externally, and at times one gets the feeling that they have been imposed by foreign donors, which teh national planners would have preferred that investment to go to agriculture or agro-industry. Except a few cases, the bulk of the investment was allocated to livestock production with little interest in pastoral development. For instance, recurrent expenditure on livestock services, during the 1980s as percentage of agricultural services expenditure was as follows: Birkina Faso, 16.2%, Chad, 4%, Ethiopia, 10%, Niger, 7.9%, Senegal, and 8% in the Sudan. Kenya is the only country which spent 34 in recurrent services, table 4 below. All percentages are grossly disproportionate with livestock contribution to the national economy.
Table 1: Pastoralists as Percentage of the Total Population in some Sahelian Countries
Country |
Population |
Pastoralists (in millions) |
As percentage of Total Population |
Burkina Faso |
9.001 |
1.10 |
12.2 |
Djibouti |
0.540 |
0.16 |
25.0 |
Chad |
5.428 |
1.40 |
25.7 |
Ethiopia |
49.200 |
3.90 |
7.9 |
Kenya |
24.000 |
3.50 |
14.5 |
Mali |
9.200 |
1.00 |
10.8 |
Mauritania |
2.000 |
1.25 |
62.5 |
Niger |
7.700 |
1.00 |
12.9 |
Senegal |
7.000 |
0.60 |
8.5 |
Somalia |
7.500 |
4.50 |
60.0 |
Sudan |
25.200 |
3.50 |
13.8 |
Total |
146.769 |
21.91 |
14.91 |
Sources: (1) FAO, Yearbook, 1990
(2) ILCA, Handbook of Livestock Statistics, 1991
(3) Europa, Africa South of the Sahara, 1993.
Table 2: Livestock Population and TRLU in some Sahelian Countries (in million)
Country |
Cattle |
Goats |
Sheep |
Camel |
TRLU |
TRLU per pastoralist |
Burkina Faso |
2.90 |
5.70 |
3.15 |
0.05 |
2.92 |
2.08 |
Djibouti |
0.70 |
0.50 |
0.15 |
0.07 |
0.20 |
12.93 |
Chad |
4.17 |
1.90 |
2.80 |
0.54 |
3.93 |
2.80 |
Ethiopia |
29.00 |
18.00 |
24.00 |
1.7 |
26.20 |
6.71 |
Kenya |
13.45 |
7.50 |
6.32 |
0.80 |
11.59 |
3.31 |
Mali |
5.00 |
5.80 |
5.80 |
0.25 |
4.90 |
4.91 |
Mauritania |
1.23 |
3.32 |
4.20 |
0.82 |
9.71 |
7.77 |
Niger |
3.61 |
7.62 |
3.54 |
0.42 |
4.06 |
4.06 |
Senegal |
2.74 |
1.20 |
3.92 |
0.15 |
2.58 |
4.30 |
Somalia |
4.90 |
20.00 |
14.30 |
4.90 |
11.76 |
2.61 |
Sudan |
18.00 |
13.10 |
15.40 |
2.71 |
18.16 |
5.18 |
Total |
85.70 |
84.64 |
73.58 |
12.41 |
95.91 |
4.377 |
Source: FAO Yearbook, 1990.
Table 3: Value of Meat and Milk as Percentage of Agriculture GDP
Country |
Meat 000'MT |
Price/MT (000' USD) |
Value in million USD |
Milk 000' MT |
Price/MT in million |
Value million USD |
Total value of meat and in million USD |
Meat and Milk as % of Agric. GDP |
FAO, World Bank and World Resources Institute Liv. GDP as % of Agric. |
Burkina Faso |
60.0 |
1690.0 |
101.4 |
99.0 |
850.0 |
84.15 |
185.55 |
86.7 |
24.0 |
Chad |
69.0 |
- |
- |
236.0 |
840.0 |
198.24 |
198.24 |
1619.6 |
34.0 |
Ethiopia |
6.0 |
- |
- |
9.5 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Kenya |
600.0 |
510.0 |
306.0 |
794.0 |
410.0 |
325.54 |
631.0 |
13.5 |
35.0 |
Mali |
466.0 |
490.0 |
228.34 |
2467.0 |
330.0 |
814.11 |
1042.45 |
45.8 |
33. |
Mauritania |
120.0 |
850.0 |
102.0 |
164.0 |
450.0 |
738.00 |
840.00 |
410.5 |
33.0 |
Niger |
44.0 |
- |
- |
253.0 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
84.0 |
Senegal |
104.0 |
- |
- |
252.0 |
540.0 |
136.08 |
136.08 |
62.1 |
78.0 |
Somalia |
211.0 |
- |
- |
138.0 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Sudan |
146.0 |
- |
- |
1545.0 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
80.0 |
395.0 |
1150.0 |
454.25 |
2875.0 |
400.0 |
1604.25 |
1604.25 |
29.4 |
37.0 |
Sources: (1) Annual Meat and Milk Production, FAO, 1990
(2) Meat and Milk Prices compiled from ILCA, Handbook of African Livestock Statistics, 1991.
(3) World Bank, World Development Repport, 1990
(4) World Resources Institute, World Resources, 1990-1991.
Table 4: Livestock Services Recurrent Expenditure (SRE) as Percentage of Recurrent ASRE
Country |
LSRE as % of ASRE |
Burkina Faso |
16.2 |
Chad |
4.0 |
Niger |
7.9 |
Senegal |
4.9 |
Ethiopia |
10.0 |
Kenya |
34.0 |
Sudan |
8.0 |
Source: Anteneh, A. 1991, The Financing and Staffing of Livestock Services in sub-Saharan Africa, ILCA, Addis Ababa.
If this substantial contriubtion to national food production has not satisifed the national planners and policy makers, the contribution of livestock to the local communities is far from being appreciated. The Sahelian pastorlaists have been successful to eke their living from such a harsh and unpredictable environment for centuries. Livestock provided not only a valuaable source of food, but also acted as a wealth reserve, a redeemer from damage, a sacrificial gift and a means for marriage and other ceremonial payments. The exchange value of livestock and its conversion into grain has provided in some instances the only means to gain access to grain. Not to mention the transport value of the burden beasts and their silent contribution to local and regional transport sytems in the Sahel.
To stop at enumerating the virtues of an underestimated production system, is nothing more than stating the obvious. My task from hereon is to establish a link between the underestimation of pastorlaists and its effect on their ability to cope with the ahrsh conditions of the Sahel. Therefore, it is argued that the neglect of pastoralists ahs compounded the problems confronting them and made them vunlerable to the rationality (or irrationality) of the market economy, the ill-planned large-scale mechanized schemes and the deteriorating socio-economic conditions as a consequence of the deteriorating prices of their sotcks relative to grain and the manufactured goods. These and other issues will be highlighted in the following section of this essasy.
By the eco-economy of neglect, I refer to the underestimation of agro-pastorlism contribution to food production and the impact of that on the ecology and economy ofthe Sahelian communities. The main contention here is that, most interpretations of the relaitonshiop between ecology and food producton int he Sahel are based on explicit or implicit reconginition that the modern market economy is an important external factor with direct impact on pastoal and peasant communities (Franke, 1980; Sen, 1981; Redclift, 1984; ICHI, 1985; Watts, 1987; Hjort and Mohamed Salih, 1989; George, 1990; Winpenny, 1991; Thomas, 1992). In the process of incorporating the Sahelian communities into the market economy, they ahve lost much of the characterisitcs of the so-called self-sustainting societies. Their social structures have expeirenced tremendous change and became increasingly oscillating between modernity and traditionalism. Long gone the days when (Firth, 1961; Bohannan and Dalton, 1962; Nash, 1966) the Sahelian societies exchanged narrow range of products, when buyers and sellers did not derive their produce for market sale and when changes in market priced did not redeploy factor resources in response to market profitability. The prevalence of cash crop production, trade and marketing boards can now be encountered in the poorest and most famine sticken countreis of the Sahel. The exchange of products such as gum arabic, sesame, groundnuts and livestock for cash also points out that the use of general purpose money has been transformed into an entry into general prupose economic arrangements which invite structural changes in the traditional economy and its relationship to the state society and ecology.
However, as the local communities aspirations have increase, their purchasing power decreased, relative to the prices of munfactured goods to the extent that cash returns from their prudcts are much lowe today than many years ago. It is evident that the deteriorating living conditions ofthe Sahelian communities have much to do with internationalt rade (ordivision of labour) and the decline of the prices of primary products. Many a society have been compelled by economic reasons to put more land into pastoral or agricultural production to maintain the status-quo, cut more wood for sale or for charcoal making to satisfy an increasing need by urban dwellers and an accelerating need for commodities manifold expnsive than their own products. In Hutchison's (1991:145) words, "with few options of survival, they have little choice but to exploit key environmental resources to provide food and income for survival". Tree felling for sale in the form of irewood, charcoal or construciton material, land "mining", overstocking in preparaiton of long spells of drought or over-cultivation ... etc.
The outcome of subsuming the local Sahelian communities into the international division of labour and the raitonality of the economic-man have ushered a derive towards more inattentive exploitaiton of the natural resources. Unfortunately an increase in the capacity of the Sahelian communities to consume have not been accompanied by sustainable production or envrionmental conservaiton stragegies. Excessive utilization of resources both in the modern and the traditional sector has been heralded by unfavourable climatic conditions which in the long-run ruined the very basisi of survival. The Sahelian people's willingness to expand agricultural production and multiply their herds has increased in order to be able to avoid the bad years which may be laying ahead.
Although many studies have shown that the traditional systems of range management and pastoral production are well suited to the Sahelian ecology (Ahmed, 1979; Baxter, 1991; Hjor, 1985, Mohamed Salih, 1991; Behnke, et al, 1992), such views have always been engelected. The argument that pastoralists ahve developed through the years an efficient system of resource mangement and that social development services can be provided to pastoralists while theya re on the move, have in most cases fell in deaf ears. Tehre is also the predicament of appropriating land from the traditional producers, both peasants and pastorlists, and its allocation to the already welathy and powerful large scale farmers for the production of cash corps to satisfy the demands created by the international market economy.
An answer to the dilemma of appropriating land from pastoralists and its allocation to peasants and wealthy farmers is establish grazing reserves and allocate them to pastoralists. Such grazing reserves should have not been imposed or conceived as they only alternative to traditional forms of pastoralism, when the later poses no obstacle to other sectors of food production. Moreover, the objectives of such alternative settlement polciies should be conscious of the importance of livestock-agricultural integration. Such policies cannot oeprate adequately without an intensive interaction with the market economy in order to increase off-take while securing a relaible sytem for the provision of health, water and education facilities. These policies were adopted under the guise that the traditional systems of herd management represent a waste of labour and valuable land resources. Hence, the settlement is expected to make availablevast stretches of land for cultivation and the production of food crops. An association between social development and settlement has, therefore, been perceivedas the most pertinent way of developing pastorlaists.
However, the opponents of development intervention to make land available to pastoralists (in the form of grazing reserves) argue that the concentration of livestock in limited reserves would ultimately contribute to over-grazing. In other words,the very facilities which ahve been provided for thedevelopment of pastoralists have eventually contributed to ecological imbalance within the reserves and in the areas surrounding them.
Instead of creating contact points between externally induced needs and locally perceived interests, the local systems of knowledge were forced to give way to modern sytems of knowledge which ranked higher in the hierarchy of intrests implied in the international division of labour. The situation came to a new low when after years of experimenting with modernization or radical transformation, it became obvious that the two existing sytems of knwoledge (indigenous and modern)were incapable of handling either the economy or the ecology. Redclift (1984:64) ascertains that, "one claose examination of many of the problems associated with resource use in the Sahel, and the cycle of drought, and famine which have become synonymous with the region, can be attributed to underlying structural processes. The Sahel provides a vivid illustration of the danger in assuming that the specifity of environmental povertyreduces the explanatiory role of structural analysis".
The policy implications which emerge from such an understanding pertain that food prodution in the Sahel is dependent of livestock as much as crop production and that more than any other subregion the relationship between the so-called ecology of poverty and food security are closelya ssociated. Second, any expansion of one food system at the expense of the other would lead to ecological imbalance and hence enhance the process of resource depletion and creates conflicts between different land use systems. Third, eco-ecology of neglect is also an eco-economy of rural poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity. On the other hand, the eco-economy of a conscious integration of the environment and development is one of sustainable food production.
As has been shown earlier, there is a clear linkage between the deteriorating socio-economic conditions of the Sahelian communities and the decline of the productive options available to them. In this sense, the ecological dimension of the disastrous impacts of the incorporation of the Sahel into the market economy has resulted in political crises which challenged its societal structures, their survival as well as their ethical and moral foundations. Poverty, hunger and destitute of such a preponderant magnitude have also been accompanied by aggressive pursuance of political goals. In the process, the state became an arena of competing interests and political objectives inconsistent either with its role as the main monopoliser of the use of coercion or the sole arbiter of divergent ethnic and reigonal interests. The intersection of ecology, economy and polity has produced an unprecendented wrangling over the control of any of three factors to gain access to the others. Access to political power facilities the use of its deciion-making capacity to gaina ccess to the control of natural resources. The same principle applies to the utilization of natural resources, not for mere subsistence, but for commercial and large-scale production with less interest in ecological sustainability.
One of the striking features of pastoral development policies which continued from the colonial legacy to postcolonial or independent Africa is the state's ownership of land and its bias towards large-scale agricultural enterprises vis-á-vis small scale producers. This shows a conspicuous disregard of pastorlaists and lack of apprecaition of their production system.
In this respect, most African states have created a small group of privileged farmers, pasrastatals or private enterprises which monopolized agricultural production, marketing and distribution. Most African states have a free hand to evict traditional paeasants and pastoralists from their farming and grazing lands to establish projects "of national interest", such as mining and large-scale planatations for the production of cash crops, without compensation. Eviction of peasants and pastoralists from their cultivable lands and pasture is a common practice which has been very well documented in the literature (Bernstein and Campbel, 1985; Lawrence, 1986; Henderink and Sterkenburg, 1987, Glantz, 1987; Mohamed Salih, 1987; Mohamed Salih, 1987 and 1991). The end result is the emergence of a tendency towards the concentration of land in the hands of a few financially capable wealthy farmers. Consequently, social differentiation increased and the income gap between those who solicited the support of the state to gain access to better landed resources and those whoa re evicted from their lands became apparent.
The expansion of large scale mechanized schemes in the Sahel has meant that a large number of the small peasants and pastoralists (Mohamed Salih, 1991b) have been denied access to local resource rights which are based on traditional activities, such as seasonal grazing or the seasonal extraciton of materials for food, medicine, fuelwood and construction purposes (Hutchison, 1991:145). Pastoralists and peasants are instead forced to settle in more poorly poulated areas, some of which might have already been targeted for conservation. An illustrative example is the case of some parts of South Kordofan where 6 million acres of large-scale mechanized schemes owned by the private sector have been allocated since 1968 (Mohamed Salih, 1987, 1990, 1991, Ahmed, 1987).
In response to the decrease in the fertile lands available to them due to the expansion of large scale mechanized schemes, pastoralists began to practise continuous cropping which consequently contributed to the reduction of fellow periods. Second, shifting cultivation which was adopted in the past to regulate land fertility is no longer practiced. Fixed farming or large scale clearance of tress and shrubs have now been adopted to solve the problems engendered by the low fertility induced by the short fellow periods or alck of sufficient land to practice shifting cultivation. The ecology-economy linkage here is self-explaining.
It is by now obvious that the understanding of the state policies is of vital importance to any integated approach towards understanding the association between poverty and the manner in which people utilize their natural resources. Economic rewards, in this case, seem detrimental to long-term sustainable environment. The political relationship between states and civil societies can be translated into attitude towards economic opportunities and their ecological consequences. The context of this relationship offers a clear case of contradictory perceptions of resource management objectives. For instance, the state ownership of land has reinforced traditional patterns of ownership therefore denying the rural populations the potential of transorming production systems into investment assets that invite initiative. The persistence of labour exchange arrangements which involves little cash (Ziche and Mohamed Salih, 1984) is a clear indication that peasants and pastorlaists prefer not to be dependent on cash transactions which might radically transorm the social basis of production. Certainly the reduced peasant and pastoralists capacity to cope with economic pressure is a direct response to the state agrarian policies as far as land and the rural labour markets are concerned.
Scarcity of fertile lands due to appropriation by the state has in some areas contributed to malnutrition as land, which supports subsistence became scarce. Small producers were pushed to lesser fertile lands and in some instances were compiled to expand horizontally in order to be able to survive (Hjort and Mohamed Salih, 1989; UNICEF/UNSO, 1991). Land appropriation policies have encouraged rural/urban migraiton as land without title can also be considered a land with little or no commercial value. In some areas traditional producers have lost their lands to the large-scale commercial sector while they were deprived the commercial value of that land which eventually became an economic asset owned by "outsiders". Statecontrolled or restricted land markets have alowed down agrarian transormaiton at the local level and restricted it either to state capitalism or to the business class which enjoyed the fruits of more fertile lands, credit facilities, subsideis and access to imported inputs. There is no reason to separate the impact of such policies from the overall development/environment problemtique since each has an intimate relationship to the other.
A limited exchange of land for cash was adopted by the peasants as a response to external factors rather than to factors pertaining to internal transformations. Such transactions represent a pliece-meal solution which aggravates the problems of the rural poor. Although such change may be capable of solving immediate problems whithin the peasant family budget and it may not be in a position to provide long-term solutions to thea grarian crisis. In short the present land policies are not conducive to factor changes in production. Land markets have an intimate association with rural labour markets whicha re in most cases fragmented. Rural wages were kept low to reduce costs and hence secure cheap food for the politically-vocal urban consumers. Low wages usually reduce the already limited purchasing power of the rural labourer, which is not conducive to the expansion of trade and enterprise. This has contributed to the alienation of the rural households from their production and hence relegated many to poverty and destitution. In retrospect this implies that, in a situation of near stagnating technology, more land has ahd to be put under production, not to improve the standards of living, but to maintain the status quo. A depleted countrside cannot afford the labour nor the land required for such an undertaking.
The national context within which the Sahelian system operates has imposed three major externalities which have reshaped society and its relationship to ecology. There are: the expansion of the amrket economy and the encapsulation of the rural areas into the internaitonal division of labour. Seocnd, agricultural policies and their bias towards large-scale mechanized agriculture vis á vis pastoralists and arable cultivators. Third, recurrent drought whicha ggravated the impacts of the economic and ecological pressures exerted by the state agricultural policies and iits intereferences with the envrionment. Such externalisties have invited an array of regional consequences and resposnes. All three externalisities are detrimental to food production because of their insensitivity to the impact they might impose on local communities on the borders of the Sahelian states. The evidence available suggess that pastorlaists migratory patterns do cross national borders of the neighbouring states, not only for markets, but also for seasonal pasture and grazing lands. Nationally conceived pastoral or agriucltural development projects could be disastrous to the economy and ecology of more than one state. It is within this context that, agro-pastoralism should be viewed as a regional food production system with serious ecological consequences of the Sahelian societies.
An important aspect of resource management in the Sahel pertains to the fact that conflicting interests over natural resources, wheter between individauls, groups or states, have increasingly been taking a regional dimension as a result of peoples movement fromt he degraded ecology to regions more suitable for sustenance. This has also another dimenstion of conflict not only over their sustainability, conservation or long-term objectives versus short-term needs. Sahel is a case in point, where its fragile envrionment has to cope with responses to market economy, large scale production and the demands of the more disadvantaged rural poor.
Agro-pastoral production in the Sahel offers an ample evidence of regional interdependence between farming communities and pastolaist or nomads communities. While riverine reigons and valleys are important for the production of food corps, pastoral communities depend on these very resources as dry season pastures. Pastoral communities which inhabit the more drier regions in the northern frontiers of the Sahel, depend on imported grain for a greater part of their subsistence and in many instances on the local markets and water sources outside heir naitonally perceived political boundaries. Ecological variations within and between states militate, especailly for people for whom the existing political boundaries represent a hindrance rather than a facility, have to be met with careful utilization of resources (land, labour, inputs and herds), wherever they may exist. Such arrangements include cross-border farming, grazing or trading with the communities in the other side of the border, and who in most cases might not be of a different ethnic stock.
State policies have far-reaching impacts on the regional context of resoruce management, administration, use and control. Ecological crises which result from human interferences are not country-spceific and their consequences can be felt by distant communities within the region (mass flight of refugees to neighbouring countries) or even by communities in different continent (Third World refugees in the North). I argue elsewehre that (1991b:118), "environmental conflicts are interrelated to the extent that it is impossible to divide the world into fragmented regions hoping that one nation or continent would survive the consequences of a major disaster". Hence, the most obvious regional response to ecological crises (drought, floods, epidemics ...etc.) is mass population movement in search of new survival opportunities, stagegies and mechanisms to make ends meet amidst ataggering deteriorating socioeconomic conditions.
If similar market mechanisms operated, among pastoral communities, in more than one country, then ecological interdepdnence is ultimately linked to economic interdependence between those inhabiting various ecological zones. The regional context of lviestock/grain terms of trade is one such mechanism which links pastoalists inhabiting the arid zone and agro-pastoralists and farming communities ecology has ben enhanced by the linkages between the local economies and large national and reigonal economies. And due to the fact that different ecological zones (are likely to) produce different goods, ecological itner-changability is a very important factor in creating dependency between various sets of consumers. It is also linked with the regional context of trade between livestock and grain; an argument which ahs been in the agenda for quite some time (Swift, 1979; Hjort; 1981; Sutter, 1982; Little, 1983; MOhamed Salih, 1988; Kerven, 1992). The argument presented here is that livestock prives tend to deteriorate relative to grain prices during dorught periods and when grain is most needed by pastorlaists. Such price mechanism is not determined by local communities, but influenced by the regional context of trade on grian and other goods of services.
The state eco-economy of neglect and the state context which I reviewed in previous sections illustrate that state and regional policies are hinderance to the emergence of a regional economy based on peoples systems of production. The fact that most Sahelian borders are contested bystates and pastoral groups is a clear indicaiton thatthe state is largley marginalized by these pastoralists the opportunity to take advantage of proximity to border societies and nations with which they could trade their produce without state intervention. I am afraid that the policies which can enhance reigonally-based production and distribution systems between different states are explicitly political and therefore political decisions have to be made to liberalise trade and free the movement of peoples, goods and services fromt he stamps of the customs officers. Without such policies being put in place, the Sahel and other socio-economic and cultural unit in Africa will suffer from famine and malnutirition, depend on imported food from Europe and the New World, while plenty of food is available in the neighbouring country or countries.
The relationship between pastoralists and the economy is an important feature both at the regional and national contextx within which the Sahelian system operates. This pint has recentlybeen stressed by Thomas (1992:6) whoa rgues thaht, "the international economic system, the philosophy informing it and the culture accompanying it undermine the natural development and pose further obstacles to cooperation to meet global envrionmental challenges. They have resulted in unsustainable production and consumption in the North, and the adoption of inappropriate, and similarly unsustainable, evelopment in the South". The Sahelian region of Africa is not an exception to the overall picture of the North/South relaitons to the environment/development debate. By and large the incorporation of the environment into developmental thinking is becoming a major challenge for the survival of millions of peasants and pastoralists who eke their living from the fragile drylands of the Sahel.
Hence any response to the underestimation of the Sahelian system calls for environmentally induced development startegies. The strategy has to take seriously the contribution of pastoralists to the national as well as the local economies and at the same time ensure sustainable development. In a clear note about the debate, Palmer (1992:184) points out that five key issues have to be taken seriously if our is to secure a sustainable future. These are: 1) unsustainable population growth, 2) poverty and inequality, 3) unsustainable food production, 4) unsustainable energy use and unsustainable industrial production- wherein the term unsusttainalbe means that these activities endanger or destroy the Earth's natural lifestupporting sytems. Following such lines of thought, it is bovious that food production, poverty and inequality in the Sahel are key issues that link-up with unsustainable energy use where 90 percent of the fuel used consists of firewood and charcolal. It again links up with population growth and an increasing food deficit where from 1985 to 1992 the general trend is that two out of every five Sahelian citizens are dependent on relief food for survival (UNSO, 1991).
The above discussion raises some of the fundamental quesitons on internaitonal responsibility or the ethics and global issues pertaining to the environmental question (Cooper and Palmer, 1992). In the same context,Trusted (1992:27) asks the question, "what is our moral obligations to the destitute" and by saying that, "in one sense poverty will always be with us, for it is a relative condition, but we have the means to abolish destitution. We need the will". But according to Palmer (1992:184) good-wills have to be accompanied by action because, "if politicaland economicchoices and decisions are to be made on any international agenda, it would seem essential that compromises are made of alternative policies, possible priorities and respective costs and benefits". Hence, the discussion in this section seems to be leading to whether the present response to the Sahelian crisis is adequate?
It is ironic that most of the so-called pastoral development projects are, to a large extent, externally financed or externally induced. Even though, it is premature to pass judgements on the full extent of their successes or failures in the space available to this presentation, there is an ample evidence to suggest that the linkage between the envrionment and development or ecology and economy at the larger synthesisi has been established thanks to international efforts and their support to the environmentally informed projects which ahve been born in the most unfavourable economic climate.
In an attempt to answer the question of how to tackle the issue of the neglect of the linkage between ecology and the economic systems that the connected with it, Ahmed (1992:12) argues that, the quest for using natural resources and skills which the poor countries of the Sahel certianly do not have. The key issues to be handled in the long-term, however, have to do with the survival of the small communities since there isno way to separate the externalities imposed on the Sahelian production sytems, respective responses and consequences.
Internationl development assistance to the Sahel (in the form of food aid and others) is determined by humanitarian consolideraitons and a host of ethical and moral obligtions which justify them. However, in the long-run, the Sahelian communities are the most vulnerable to South/North contradictions in their interest in the environmental-cumdevelopment policies. The present derive therefore is short of addressing the long term problems connected with the neglect of pastoral production systems by their national governments. In a nutshell, sustainable environmental policies in the Sahel have to integrate such externalities into their developmental thinking and not to juggle with several levels of intervention as if the sub-systems are separate entities. The present structure of the Sahelian system is very much a product of he impending externlities and underestimation. the ecological crisis, therefore, cannot be solved without due consideration to the consequences of neglect and accompanying responses which failed to address food production in the Sahel as an activity operating at the regional level.
Ahemd, Abdel Ghaffar, M. (ed.) 1976, "Introduction", Some Aspects of Pastoral Nomadism in the Sudan", Khartoum University Press, Khartoum.
_____________________________. 1987, "National Ambivalnece and International Hegemony: The Neglect of Pastoalists in the Sudan", in M.A. Mohamed Salih (ed.) Agrarian Change in the Central Lands of the Sudan, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala.
Ahmed, J.Y. 1991, "International Policies to Respond to Global Environmental Threats", In Winpenny, op.cit.
Baxter, P.T.W. (ed.), 1991, "introduction", When the Grass is Gone, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala."
Behnke, R.H. et. al. 1992, "Rethinking Range Ecology", Issue Paper No. 33. IIED, London.
Bernstein, H. and Cambel, B.K. (eds.) Contradictions in Accumulation in Africa, University of California, Berkely.
Bohannan, P. and Dalton, G. (eds.) 1962, Markets in Africa, Northewestern University Press.
Brandt Commission, 1980, North-South Dialogue: A Programme for Survival, Pan Books, London.
_________________. 1983, Common Crisis
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