Un « SIG à dires d’acteurs » : décryptage des vulnérabilités environnementales des agro-éleveurs et pasteurs au Bénin

Abstract

In the southeast of the commune of Djougou, surface waters used for pastoralism have become increasingly scarce since the 90s. In order to understand this process and its causes, we developed a tool, a “stakeholders-guided GIS”, which enables a socio-spatial and socio-environmental analysis of resources dynamics, uses and strategies developed in two villages. Firstly, this tool combines a conventional mapping (water system, forests, roads, villages, etc.) with the expertise of local populations. Combined with semi-structured interviews, this tool provides a very detailed spatial and temporal description, showing the agrarian dynamics and the interfaces between the agricultural and the pastoral world. Secondly, this tool highlights the recent and disturbing decline of water surfaces during the dry season, and the pastoral strategies of different Fulani groups. Lastly, this tool brings to attention to the fact that resources scarcity has no climatic origin. Actually, this scarcity is the result of production methods in which resources are not regulated. Besides, the difficulties faced in pastoralism are widely due to social division, not between herders and farmers, but between indigenous and non-indigenous, forcing non-indigenous to practice pastoralism in remote areas.

Keywords

• resource
• socio-environmental dynamics
• agrosystem
• socio spatial dynamics
• fieldwork