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2-4 Oct 2024 N'Djamena (Chad)
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Home Please note: The conference will be held as planned on Wednesday October 2 and Thursday October 3, 2024. But side-events have been integrated into the program:
(see detailed program below)
A. Context and rationale of the conference
Throughout the world, environmental awareness has led to the strengthening the nature protection. The CITES convention which limits international trade in protected species, the annual COPs of the United Nations Conventions on “climate change”, “biodiversity” or “desertification”, or the regional, national or local regulations inherent to the management and establishment of protected areas, have enabled progresses in environmental protection. Then the fifteenth meeting of the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP 15) held in Montreal, Canada, on 19 December 2022 adopted a historic agreement intended to guide global action for nature until 2030 and beyond (UN, 2022). This agreement, known as the “Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework” includes several global targets to be achieved for the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity. From 23 to 25 January 2019, the international conference of Ministers in charge of defense, security and protected areas dedicated to the fight against poaching and other cross-border criminal activities was held. It adopted the “N'Djamena Declaration” on the need to guide regional transhumance dynamics by better taking into account the issues of security, wildlife management and the increasing degradation of ecosystems following climate change (COMIFAC, 2019). This series of political dialogue was recently enriched with the “Climate Chance Africa 2023” Summit, which resulted in a set of proposals to improve relations between conservation and agropastoralism in the central Africa and the Sahel. Currently in many protected ecosystems, pastoral breeding, which traditionally played a role in the management of natural resources, tends to be reconsidered. Be it tensions relating to the growth of predators in European, North American and Asian contexts or the difficulties of cohabitation n between livestock and wildlife on the outskirts of African national parks, tensions arise between breeders and protected area managers. However, most agropastoral communities claim to be full stakeholders in the management of pastoral ecosystems. The latter posit that agropastoral systems contribute to the supply of ecosystem services through their management of rangelands and soils which they ensure over the long term (production of manure for soil fertility, recycling of harvest residues), contribution to the biodiversity of these areas, know-how linked to local plants, production and valorization of non-wood forest products, etc. In Central Africa and the Sahel, in particular, the interface zones between agropastoral activities and protected areas are increasingly numerous, in a context of multiplication of financing mechanisms for conservation programs and tourism development. The Kunming-Montreal conferences of 2022, the Ndjamena Declaration of 2019 or the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) Summit of Yaoundé in 2023 made it possible to put on the table frontally and explicitly the question of relations between conservation & agropastoralism. In Tanzania, protected areas represent 11.6% of the country's total surface area. In Chad, protected areas cover 10% of the country's total surface area. And for Central Africa, they are equivalent to around 15% of the surface (Doumenge et al., 2021) Furthermore, the ecological and agropastoral transformations over the last 50 years have led to an extension of agropastoral zones towards the South, whereas in the 1970s they were more concentrated in the Sahelian part of West and Central African countries (Boutrais, 2009). This southward descent of herds, due to both ecological and political factors, coincided with both the expansion of transhumance towards more humid regions, but also the development of livestock breeding within Sudano-Guinean agricultural systems. In this context, a number of protected areas which had initially been designed in regions free of agropastoral activities found themselves inserted in territories newly exploited by agriculture and livestock (Boutrais, 2009). The interfaces between agropastoralism and conservation areas are very diverse in nature, due to the multiplicity of management methods for protected areas of different status (national parks, wildlife reserves, forest reserves, classified forests, etc.) which also vary depending on the countries. To this diversity of management methods is added, in many cases, a diversity of land statuses of the surrounding agropastoral areas (private land, customary land, pastoral commons, etc.) which create a mosaic effect, and complicate the management of these interfaces (Bart, 2018). These tensions are exacerbated by the demographic growth of human and livestock, and by the extension of the agricultural pioneer front which further reduces the range of animals as well as the transhumance trails. In some regions, the natural corridors which link protected areas, and which allow the movement of wildlife, are threatened by the development of crops and pastures for livestock, thus gradually leading to the ecological confinement of the parks. On the other hand, these tensions lead mobile herders to change mobility trajectories, which requires renewing their traditional alliances with sedentary populations and with water point managers, alliances on which transhumance circuits are based. This results in new tensions within territories that must be prevented and curbed through local consultation mechanisms.
Some experiences show that solutions exist to secure interface areas. Foremost, the issue relates to the modes of governance of the protected areas themselves, which can be of different nature. We differentiate in particular between public, shared (between public and private), private or community governance. In Central Africa, “85% of protected areas currently benefit from a public governance system. Shared governance represents approximately 14% of management types, and the remaining 1% includes rare cases of entirely private or community governance. As part of shared governance, it is most often organized with private non-profit organizations, such as NGOs or foundations, via public-private partnerships and, more rarely, with communities” (Doumenge et al., 2021). During the 1990s, the countries of Central and West Africa gradually transferred the management of their protected areas (PA) to private organizations under the effect of several and sometimes contradictory dynamics. Indeed, this period which saw the rise of environmental concerns (Rio summit) was also marked by the IMF/WB structural adjustment which pushed many States to reduce the financial resources devoted to PAs. On the other hand, the opening of these countries to democracy with citizen demands required less State – and coercion – in the management of PAs. In this context and with hindsight, work must be carried out to better understand the reciprocal interests of these different modes of governance. Furthermore, it is a question of analyzing these management methods taking into account not only the protected areas only, but also the broader territories in which these protected areas are inserted. Recent work shows the difficulties encountered by agropastoralist in exploiting rangelands, especially when the ban on passage in the peripheral spaces of protected areas is coupled with the development of crops outside these protected areas. The governance of the pastoral sector must be considered in the reflection on conservation in the sense that pastoralism has benefited from significant support with a view to financing pastoral hydraulic works (wells, dams, boreholes, ponds) which leave a mark on territories in terms of new claims not always in line with the local regulatory system and pre-existing land control (Krätli et al., 2013). It is obvious that local consultation between resource users makes it possible to build sustainable solutions accepted by all. A rising question also remains to be considered in the reflection: that of single health. There is in fact an interaction between anthropogenic activities around PAs impacting human and animal health as well as ecosystems. Furthermore, we are increasingly recognizing the role of so-called “marginal” agropastoral areas in the supply of ecosystem services. These areas can in fact serve as biodiversity corridors that allow the movement of wildlife between protected areas. But above all, pastoral management of ecosystems contributes, under certain conditions, to the production of ecosystem services, particularly in carbon sequestration, conservation of plant biodiversity, or soil fertility. These new insights highlight the interest in supporting “territorial (or local) development plans” seeking to reconcile the coexistence of several complementary activities, and to encourage the negotiation of local agreements between resource users. Recently, insecurity (rebellions, extremist groups, road cutters) in many cross-border areas has seriously disrupted the seasonal movements of herds and forced herders to carry out complex modifications of transhumance routes to sometimes encroach on PAs. In certain countries such as the Central African Republic (CAR), these armed groups have control over these areas (see Pabamé and Ankogui-Mpoko chapter to be published in the book on livestock breeding in Chad). However, there are positive experiences which give hope for concerted and sustainable management of PAs, such as the case of the involvement of populations in the protection of giraffes in Niger and the use of breeder networks Launchers of upstream alerts for the management of transhumance flows around PAs in the south-east of the CAR. All this progress and the issues inherent to the agriculture-livestock-protected areas triptych will be debated at the N’Djamena conference.
The Conference aims at: i. Presenting the state of knowledge on the causes and consequences of tensions between agropastoral activities and protected areas within the Sahelian and Sudano-Guinean ecosystems; ii. Reviewing the modes of governance and technical innovations making it possible to better manage the interface zones between agropastoral areas and protected areas, in order to promote the sustainable development of agropastoral territories; iii. Encouraging the establishment of consultation bodies between territorial governance stakeholders so that they can together build future scenarios integrating the demands of agropastoral households and environmental conservation issues. B. Organisation of the conference
The Conference will be held October 2, 3, and 4 (morning) 2024 in N’Djamena (Tchad) at « l’Hôtel de L’Amitié ».
The conference will be held during 2,5 days. It will include plenary presentations as well as workshops to present experiences or work. Particular attention will be paid to debates between resource users in order to bring about consensus between points of view. Themes to be given preference for contributions are: - Developments in agropastoral activities and conservation approaches in Central Africa and the Sahel; - Technical solutions for agropastoral production and biodiversity conservation; - Territorial governance issues; - Co-construction of the future of agropastoral territories in the Sahel and Central Africa: the place of territorial foresight.
Tuesday October 1st, 2024 : 5 p.m. Registration of participants 7 p.m Video presentation at the French Cultural Center : "Les Eaux de la Discorde" Wednesday October 2nd, 2024 morning (plenary session) : Conference Opening and framing presentations Afternoon (Plenary and Parallel sessions): Framing presentations and Thematic workshops Thursday October 3rd, 2024 morning: Thematic workshops and Experience reports afternoon: Plenary feedback and Round table Friday October 4th, 2024 morning : Side Event (Borderland Project and PFBC)
Registration and propositions must be sent through the web site: https://pasto-protect-2024.sciencesconf.org/. Registration (creation of user name and password) is necessary before proposition submission. Participants wishing to submit plenary presentations must send their « complete texts » (file attached) in addition their abstract. For workshop communications, « long summaries » are expected (no file attached). For all inquiries, please contact the following address: agropasto.conservation.2024@gmail.com with a copy to koffi.alinon@cirad.fr.
For all information on accommodation related to special rates for conference participants at – l’Hôtel de L’Amitié - located in N'Djaména (Chad), please contact +23562921099 / +23562932497 or send an email to hassan.kara@meridianahotelsndjamena.com. Price : 65.000 Fcfa/night.
Scientific Committee is responsible for publicizing the call for papers, selecting the papers to be presented at the conference and finalizing the session program.
8. The organizing committee This committee is in charge of organizing the conference from an institutional, logistics and financing point of view.
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