Final Evaluation of the - UNEP

noted that the IVP team had trouble working towards the development of CBRM systems
owing to misunderstandings about the project objectives. The interviewees also had little
understanding of the objectives of the IVP project. The project at Nara is clearly popular but
is seen as a project to improve living standards and access to water. Yet social empowerment
remains weak, gender inequality pronounced and the project has no chance of sustainability
without more years of support. It still appears top-down even at village level: some
community members complained that they had had no say in the appointment of contractors
for the wells etc.
79. The Nara settlements have lands with relatively well-defined boundaries. These traditional
rights can form a base upon which to build range management systems. The general situation
in Mali is open access grazing with large numbers of transhumant pastoralists coming from
Mauritania early in the dry season (October to mid-June). The national IVP project response
to the MTE was that overgrazing was not necessarily seen as the main environmental problem
in that communities know that the following rains all the grass will come back. As such,
communities did not even list range management as a solution.
80. Development of range management systems has not begun. Strategies for integrating
transhumants in range management systems have not been developed, nor has there been a
dialogue with transhumants towards this end. The IVP Team said that they could use a legal
tool called a “convention locale” to empower communities for range/resource management.
81. Mali seems to concentrate more institutional change and decentralization than on arid land
policy formulation. This decentralization makes empowerment of communities for natural
resource management easier but it also requires that the district authorities (communes) are
also empowered and yet still possess the capacity to encourage and foster community
development. Even at District level, development can remain Top-down. However, the
Project enjoys good integration and support with local authorities and local technical services
of the government. The highest government authority in Nara (the prefet) is supportive of the
proposal to use convention locale to empower pilot communities.
Water development
82. Unlike in Botswana, boreholes are owned by communities and they are not as numerous.
The deep pastoral wells (puix pastoraux) at Nara are well constructed: water is drawn using
animal traction but these should be seasonally regulated to prevent local overgrazing. The FE
did not sense that communities viewed these wells as a mixed blessing. Water provision opens
up new areas of grazing but usually causes local overgrazing
31