Will the 2010 'Code Pastoral' Help Herders in Central Niger? Land Rights and Land Use Strategies in the Grasslands of Abalak and Dakoro Departments

Abstract Based on a visit to Niger's pastoral zone at the height of the 2010 drought crisis and shortly after the 'Code Pastoral' legislation had been agreed by the interim government, this article compares land use trends in two Tuareg-led administrative communes. The code has been found to be too late and too weak to bring much support to full-time mobile pastoralists, whose livelihoods are increasingly under threat from demographic pressures and the loss of grazing land. Mobility of people and herds persists, not only in relation to herding but also complementary crop farming and the migratory search for paid labour; at the same time sedentarization is also occurring, not only among impoverished herders but even among the administrative elite. Indeed certain herders' leaders are encouraging it as a way of consolidating herders' land rights. This policy, however, entails further loss of grazing land, further squeezing of the only sustainable livelihood in these semi-arid areas, and renders more likely the recurrence of drought-related crisis and the necessity for exceptional mobility and out migration. Keywords: pastoral mobility, sedentarization, land privatization, land tenure, Pastoral Code Introduction 'Weather Chaos. 12 million in Niger are prey to hunger. 80% of people classed as only 10 days from the threat of starvation' were the headlines of the Guardian Weekly on 6 August 2010. On that very same date, I found myself in Niger, but far from the media hub of the capital Niamey and its agricultural surrounds: I was in the livestock-keeping valleys of Central Niger, visiting some families I have kept in touch with since I lived with them for thirteen months in 1973-74 as part of my doctoral studies at SOAS, University of London. That first visit followed hard upon the big drought of the early 1970s, and here I was again, seeing the heart-rending sight of carcasses of animals that had fallen to the ground from starvation a few weeks back, but with the bright green points of new grass piercing the sand around them, following the first rains which had arrived too late to save them. The big difference is that, whereas a severe drought-linked crisis was exceptional in the 1970s, today it has become recurrent. The literature on the response of herders (1) to the variable climatic and environmental conditions typical of these semi-arid zones stresses the key roles of mobility: both mobility of herds and of the people living off the herds (White 1997:93 and Scoones 1995: 3); both 'exceptional mobility', part of a strategy to minimize the impact of drought, as well as 'routine mobility', which is seen as a key factor in enhancing pastoral production (Kratli 2008; Kratli and Schareika 2010). Given this expected mobile response, it is all the more surprising to see that, in times of increasing occurrence of drought-related crisis, there is a gradual trend of sedentarization of previously nomadic pastoralists right across the Sahelian zone. Speaking about the Tuareg, Claudot-Hawad (2006: 655) reports 'in less than five decades, there has been a dramatic decrease in the nomadic way of life . It is in rapid deterioration and steep decline in the Sahelian states, where once, in the 1960s, the nomads were the most numerous and wealthy group of the Tuareg and of the Saharan peoples in general. ' Shortly before my arrival in Niger, in May 2010 at the height of the drought, the interim military government agreed the Ordonnance 2010-029 Relative au Pastoralisme, usually referred to as the 'Code Pastoral' or Pastoral Code (Republique du Niger 2010). This document was the result of years of lobbying effort on the part of local and international NGOs in order to represent the interests of herders, (2) following the 1993 Code Rural which was felt by herder representatives to confirm the unjust precedence given to the land rights of farmers over those of herders. The Pastoral Code defines the fundamental principles and the rules governing pastoralism in Niger (ibid. …