Contribution short abstract

Using qualitative research and the Assemblage approach, we examine how community forest management was assembled in the 80s in Burkina Faso, the current/ future implications for the socioecological system. Shifting technical/market-based logic to recognize/empower local agency remains crucial.

Contribution long abstract

In the process of creating the Chantier d’Aménagement Forestier (CAF) or community-managed forests for fuelwood production in Burkina Faso in the 80s, actors, ideas and interests collided, new rules and practices were negotiated and/or re-aligned. Three decades later, the CAFs face ecological and socio-political turmoil that questions their existence. To unearth those dynamics, using qualitative research methods and the assemblage approach, we examine the assembling of the CAF, its working, and the implications for the resilience of the socio-ecological system. The results show that the CAF has delivered largely negative social and ecological outcomes. Despite the rhetoric of commoning and communes, the CAF was anchored in a market model with a clear focus on entrepreneurial collaboration, commodity productivity and market access. Moreover, the CAF leadership instrumentalised ‘legality’ while ignoring adaptive management, accountability, and power asymmetry (in knowledge and relations) in the everyday governance procedures. The CAF management was not flexible to innovate nor enable co-learning. Gradually, the original assemblage of the CAF was fragmented into many new assemblages centred on fuelwood and the forestland sale as a new commodity. These results suggest that what is required are: i) a shift from a technical and market-based logic to recognizing and empowering local people in the CAF model; and ii) bringing power dimension and critical thinking into the assemblage approach in community forest management.