Moroccan Forestry Policies and Local Forestry Management in the High Atlas: A Cross Analysis of Forestry Administration and Local Institutions

Abstract

This paper examines how local forestry management has evolved in the Aït Bougmez Valley (Central High Atlas, Morocco) in the last three decades and how this evolution has affected forest ecosystem conditions. It focuses on the impact of the forestry administration on 'traditional forestry management' since its introduction in 1985, and of recent innovation in forestry policy. The relatively new Strategic Environmental Management Analysis (SEMA) framework is applied, rather than a more 'classical' new institutional framework. This approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of both strategic interactions between various actors and ecological consequences of these interactions. An interesting empirical findings is that instead of a quite simple opposition between the forestry administration and local populations, negotiation opportunities exist that are taken by the actors. This leads to specific actor configurations and sometimes unexpected environmental outcomes, even if from a global point of view, forest stands have been seriously depleted over the last 40 years mainly due to exploitation by local population and the absence of economic alternative to forest exploitation. On the other hand, the implementation of a new policy tool in such a context has to be understood as an opportunity for new actors to take part in forest management rules definition.

Can traditional forest management buffer forest depletion? Dynamics of Moroccan High Atlas Mountain forests using remote sensing and vegetation analysis

“…Thus, exogenous state regulation is poorly 18 compatible with local lifestyles (Aubert, 2009). Despite the progressive introduction of gas 19 for cooking in the last few years, wood harvesting is still necessary for heating and to provide 20 leaf fodder, especially for the poorest families whose purchase capacities are very limited.…”

Pastoral systems and their interaction with spatiotemporal vegetation dynamics in the Atlas Mountains, Southern Morocco

“…The Agdal institution is also very common in other parts of the Moroccan High Atlas and has been studied by many authors (i.e. Mahdi 1999; Aubert et al 2009;Dominguez et al 2010). It was shown that the Agdals are very important for sustainable use of rangeland and forest resources (Auclair et al 2011).…”

Endogenous Berber Forest Management and the Functional Shaping of Rural Forests in Southern Morocco: Implications for Shared Forest Management Options

“…While legally all forested areas belong to and are managed by the state authorities (Aubert et al 2009), a village's forest territory is usually divided into a poorly regulated area where the major extractions of firewood and fodder occur and one or two agdal areas (between 20 and 200 ha). In both cases, they consist of open woodlands composed of pure or mixed tree stands of holm oak and junipers.…”