Community dominance in the use of pastoral territories: Impacts on livelihoods and implications for rangeland management in the Oriental region of Morocco

Abstract

Fifteen years after the creation of the pastoral cooperatives in the Oriental region of Morocco, collective management of the rangelands still represents a great challenge. in order to better understand how the pastoral zone is appropriated and exploited by the different groups in presence, a multi-level analysis has been undertaken on the area traditionally controlled by the Northern Beni Guil tribe. The rangelands were delimited and characterized following a participative approach, and then socio-economic surveys were conducted in an exhaustive way for all the segments of the tribe (fraction, douar, fiakhda) and in a representative way with 137 households. Main results of this study show that two types of dominance in rangeland use prevail in this zone: some fractions select the best rangelands and are able to exclude other groups from it, others respond by ploughing extensive areas as a way to secure access of the surrounding pastures. After detecting the main determinants of this dominance phenomenon by linking it to the community (douars) characteristics (demographic structure, governance, heterogeneity of assets, social capital...), their impact on the individual pastoral strategies is studied. Findings show that herders belonging to the fractions that are dominating the area by appropriating the best rangelands, are the less vulnerable since they have a lower probability to quit the breeding activity and to migrate. Therefore, to be equitable and effective, rangeland management in this zone has to be organized at tribe level, where pastoral cooperatives have to address these conflicting forces. The recently created union of cooperatives offers a formal and functional framework to initiate negotiations.