During my brief field visit to Ndangane communal area in Senegal on 8 October 2024, I was struck by the lush green native trees, shrubs, grass and plants fenced and gated in the midst of the village. This was a “green enclosure” where the community land was enclosed for purposes of advancing the environmental agenda. In local parlance, they called it a community protected area and it covered 3.5 hectares of customary land, with plans to extend it to 7 000 hectares. The specific green agenda in this village was to safeguard local species of plants and trees in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem and protect and restore biodiversity in line with the global climate change agenda. However, the community-protected area did not have the same legal status as the national protected areas.
Biodiversity can refer to all species and living things on earth in an ecosystem. A more technical definition by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity refers to “the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”.
The green project in Ndangane village, signifies the trend in changes of land use due to green projects on the African continent. It was supported through the Seen Suuf (Your Land) project; which is a collaboration of civil society, powerful local traditional, religious and other community leaders, as well as the government department of water and forestry; all supported by international donors. The diverse actors converged around the environmental agenda and saw community protected areas as the magic bullet and cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. From conversations with the community leaders, the land for the project was identified by the community through a participatory process. However, experience from Africa shows that such land-based consultations are usually a preserve of the all-powerful traditional leaders, religious leaders and local authorities who are usually men.
According to a representative from the forestry department who was clad in military regalia to show the urgency and seriousness of the environmental agenda, a total of 500 trees had already been planted in the community protected area. I noticed that the baobab tree was among some of the planted trees. Local legend in Ndangane had it that Senegalese villages used to be built around a baobab tree because it provided everything from food, clothing, and water, to medicine and shelter.
According to the project drivers this was an appropriate response because Senegal was facing a crisis of degradation and biodiversity loss on which the entire ecosystems depended. One of the village elders said that “some local species are disappearing faster than we have ever witnessed in this village”. This is a common story across the world, as the London School of Economics and Political Science estimates that at least 1.2 million plant and animal species globally are under threat of extinction, many of them before the year 2100. In Senegal, there is dearth of reliable data on biodiversity and conversation status at national level. However, it is generally agreed that Senegal has been facing a crisis of land degradation, growing poverty and the adverse impacts of climate change. Again, Senegal is not an exception as the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2022 ranked biodiversity loss as the third biggest threat the world will face in the next decade and that a human response was urgently needed.
In Ndangane village, the land being converted into biodiversity conservation areas has a particular history embedded in common property relations and livelihood realities of cattle herders. Historically, cattle herders used the land carved as a protected area for grazing. They invoked historic-, tradition- and livelihood-based claims to the land now suddenly subject to restrictions. I am inclined to agree with Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones that in general, green projects do not arrive on a blank slate. The grazing land was important for people in the village because they kept cattle as a source of milk, mea, draft power, and family income. It was a livelihood asset and important for household food and nutrition security. In addition, cattle also had social, cultural and ethnic belonging value. As the green agenda gathers pace, the cattle herders will be squeezed more into marginal areas across the country. A study by Ernest Habanabakize showed that livestock farming is practiced by almost one in three households and occupies nearly 60% of agricultural households in Senegal.
Consequently, changing the land use and the carving of a protected area within Ndangane village has generated conflict between the project owners and the cattle herders. It is a struggle for land based resources such as grass and water embedded in local contestations over competing claims to land use rights. To the cattle herders, the protected area is a traditional common property resource. On the other end, some community members invoke the green and environmental agenda to protect the land from biodiversity loss, degradation, and to promote sustainable use in line with the climate change agenda.
The situation has resulted in cattle herders deploying strategies that reflect James Scott’s sociological model of “everyday resistance“. The cattle herders deploy what Scott called “weapons of the weak”, such as cutting the fence and herding their cattle to graze inside the protected area as a form of resistance. However, some cattle herders were caught. One was fined about US$300 for “encroachment”. He risked going to jail if he failed to pay.
Despite the harsh penalties imposed on local herders, the village leaders expect the conflicts to escalate from January to June in 2025. I observed that the grass was still green and there were plenty water sources for livestock. This was because my brief visit was just at the end of the rainy season, which starts from June and ends in September. So, around January, the village will be dry and there will be competition over access to the scarce grass and water. More cattle herders were expected from the north during the dry period and the conflicts are likely to escalate. The situation is of major concern to an extent that the local chief had to publicly ask us for support to monitor the cattle herders as they are viewed to be a threat to the sustainability of the green agenda. A colleague who worked in Ethiopia told me during the field trip that conflicts were also escalating between cattle herders and green project owners. In Ethiopia, they would slaughter a cow if the cattle encroaches on a green project as a form of punishment but the problems were not going away.
One of the problems is that some of the proponents of biodiversity projects in Ndangane saw cattle herders as ignorant, backward and not conversant with the green agenda. One of them told me that the cattle herders needed to be disciplined to be eco-citizens. It seemed that well documented historical narratives by social historians such as Jocelyn Alexander about mischaracterisation of the peasantry to justify modernist interventions seem to be dusted off and revived, but this time in the name of the green agenda linked to climate change. Yet the cattle herders were far from ignorant in a contested terrain of land use rights where they see cattle farming as the only major option to continue their livelihoods.
In as much as the protection of biodiversity is a priority for the world, there is need to seek consent from all community members including the cattle herders. It seemed to me that some of the cattle herders in Ndangane village faced “green exclusion”. This means they were excluded or ignored by other more powerful groups in society on the intention of the green agenda. This is already the trend across Africa, as cattle herders are seen as spoilers to what seems like clear solutions to many, especially state actors. However, green exclusion has become a direct threat to the green agenda in Ndangane community.
Salubrious social relations should be at the heart of success of community based projects. These social relations can be improved through strengthening local consultations for community consent and mediation tools for bottom up sustainable community-based solutions as Moeniba Isaacs highlights in her works. Litigation and the arrest and prosecute approach is only likely to exacerbate community tensions and conflict.
There is also a possibility that the ecological impacts of herded cattle on protected community areas might be more nuanced than the generalised green crisis narratives. There is need to effectively balance the needs of people and livestock in order to reduce poverty, prevent biodiversity loss, and mitigate climate change impacts. As a result, biodiversity projects should consider herbivore ecology, local land use histories, livelihoods, social well-being, the ecological integrity and the global politics of the green agenda in Africa’s rural enclaves in a way that leaves no cattle herder behind and minimises “green struggles” in Senegal, Africa and the Global South.
