The FP7 Afromaison project (2011-2014) aims to propose and validate concrete strategies for integrated natural resources management in Africa in order to adapt to the consequences of climate change. The challenge is to get to efficient integrated natural resource management (INRM) plans actually engaging all stakeholders and supported by the existing or emerging institutions, under the critical constraints of coherency and implementation.
A common operational framework has been implemented in 5 countries (TN, SA, ET, UG, ML) by local partners. It intensively and directly engages the communities (farmers, inhabitants) and all-level stakeholders in assessing the situation (resources, well-being, drivers) and the envisioned evolutions in front of global change, in proposing and specifying various actions (natural resource use and management, regulation instruments, information, organization…), and structuring them in coherent multi-sectorial multi-level strategies. These plans are explored and tested through dedicated role-playing games locally designed by actors to represent their issues and complex linkages between society and the environment. These games lead to strategy improvement and appropriation, and ultimately to the emergence of new meso-scale institutions implementing these plans. A continuous monitoring and evaluation protocol provides information about the process and its outcomes.
This session proposes to introduce this complex but operational action-research project through the following sub-topics:
