Introduction
During the last decades, Community Forestry Management (CFM) has been a widely adopted approach to forestry globally. CFM has many different purposes and designs (Hajjar et al., 2021), but a common feature is that local communities can and should manage the forests in their proximity (Gilmour, 2016; Murray Li, 2007). The ambitions of CFM are often multiple, aiming at both conservation and equitable sharing of resources for local communities (Agrawal & Gibson, 1999; Galvin, Beeton et al., 2018). Studies have shown that CFM has not been a straightforward model for decreasing deforestation and enhancing well-being in the way those donor agencies, NGO’s and governments envisioned (Agrawal, 2001; Galvin et al., 2018). Instead, CFM has often involved counter-productive, unexpected, and unwanted outcomes (Blaikie, 2006; Hajjar et al., 2021; Shackleton et al., 2010), such as increased inequity and injustices in rural communities (Chomba et al., 2015; Galvin et al., 2018; Karambiri et al., 2020). This study contributes to understanding the complex processes in which unwanted and unjust outcomes occur by following the implementation processes of two CFM areas in one village in Burkina Faso, West Africa and its impacts on everyday forest practices. The study specifically focuses on exploring how worldviews intrinsically shape forest management and how this in turn forms forestry practices and social relations in forestry management.
Theoretically, this article draws on work from critical institutionalism (CI) (Hall et al., 2014; Quintana & Campbell, 2019) and feminist political ecology (FPE) readings (Elmhirst, 2015; Rocheleau et al., 1996) to investigate the dynamics in outcomes and institutional processes of CFM. Empirically, this is explored by following the CFM implementation processes in the village of Tonogo, Burkina Faso. This exploration was incited by observations made during the fieldwork around the contrasting environmental conditions of the two forested areas. In one of the forests the first things you are likely to notice is fire-ravaged stems and wooden stumps. The other forest is dense with trees and you will most likely not encounter any signs of logging activities.
Studying two forests within one community enables a contrasting approach helpful in revealing the power dynamics of CFM (non-)implementation processes and outcomes. This study explicitly shows how CFM implementation in the forest areas is shaped by exercising customary power, autochthony claims, and gendered forest practices. Moreover, it addresses how other intersections of social differences interact with gender to shape how people can participate in forest management. This holds the potential to further our understanding of how CFM outcomes are formed in the context of and in conversation with complex power relations. As such, it specifies how uneven and unequal resource practices and outcomes are formed by specific power relations in CFM implementation dynamics (Cleaver & Whaley, 2018). Such findings highlight the importance of considering historical and contextual power dynamics before initiating implementation in development and forestry projects.
The paper is organized in the following way. I will first examine how CI and FPE have informed my reading of institutional processes and outcomes. This will be followed by a discussion on the methods and methodological choices before the result section of the study begins. The main findings are found in the discussion section and recommendations for future research in the conclusions.
Theoretical framework
The institutional setting in which women and men navigate forest access is a patchwork of institutional complexity that results from the interplay and entwinement of formal and informal, customary and contemporary forms of institutions (Cleaver & Whaley, 2018; Hall et al., 2014; Quintana & Campbell, 2019). Formal institutions here refer to state laws, regulations, and policies. Informal refers to the socially embedded institutions of customary, cultural, socially, and gendered derived norms, rules, and practices. This study explores the (non)-implementation of CFM through a reading of formal and informal institutions as – dynamic, patched together, and continuously changing through gendered everyday forest practices (Cleaver, 2012; Cleaver & Whaley, 2018). This perspective helps explore CFM implementation in Burkina Faso, where local power relations tend to be embedded in a plural politico-legal context (Côte & Gautier, 2018; Hagberg, 2001; Lund, 2006). In forest management, rules and regulations deriving from customary authorities tend to overlap or contradict state regulations. Customary and state authorities can also compete for legitimacy to insert and exert power and rule (Côte, 2020; Hagberg, 2001).
Management models such as a CFM area rarely follows a blueprint where outcomes can be anticipated with certainty (Cleaver & de Koning, 2015; Saunders, 2014). To varying degrees, people resist, contest, comply with institutional change, and adapt their forestry practices accordingly (Benjaminsen, 2017; Faggin & Behagel, 2018; Karambiri et al., 2020; Kimengsi & Balgah, 2021; de Koning & Benneker, 2012; Peloso & Harris, 2017). In this study, I am interested in exploring how these processes within the CFM implementation is shaped by the local, historical, cultural, and social context and how this impacts gender relations of forest access and management (Faggin & Behagel, 2018). This study explores this complexity by showing how the power relations in CFM projects form uneven forest interactions and management relations that are gendered (Resurrección, 2017). The study pays attention to how worldviews are power relations and creates meaning to the management rules and regulations in Tonogo and serves as vehicle for how customary authorities can re-enforce their role as custodians of land in the village on Tonogo (Cleaver et al., 2021).
As previous research in FPE has shown, women and men, tend to be unevenly involved in forest management and have unequal ability to access and control forest resources (Arora-Jonsson, 2009; Mai et al., 2011; Mwangi et al., 2011; Nhem & Lee, 2019; Nightingale, 2011). In such work the forest is perceived as a space in which gendered power relations impact everyday forest practices and environmental and institutional changes. In Burkina Faso, as elsewhere, forest relations are gendered in several ways and on different scales. In the gendered divisions of forest labor, women are most often responsible for collecting firewood (Gausset et al., 2005), a household resource that is of central importance for cooking food in rural Burkina Faso (Arevalo, 2016). The small-scale firewood trade is also an essential source of income, especially for women who lack investment capacity (Friman, 2020; Koffi et al., 2016). To access this firewood, women must adapt their practices to the institutional setting and availability of forest resources (Wagle et al., 2020). This makes it relevant to explore how the exercise of gendered power relations and struggles over access and control to tree resources shapes implementation and outcomes of the CFM.
Power operates in governance structures in a way that produces both exclusion and inclusion and shapes uneven and unequal gendered access and control of forest resources (Agarwal, 2009; Fonjong, 2008; Nightingale, 2019; Rocheleau & Edmunds, 1997). Gender difference intersects with other forms of social difference, such as class, race, age, physical ability, and ethnicity (Mollett & Faria, 2013; Pehou et al., 2020). How these differences intertwine result in different abilities to access and control forest resources and to be included in decision-making and forest management (Clement et al., 2019). Such perspective helps explore differences in forest practices, management inclusion, and how people need to use forests for their livelihoods.
The theoretical framework laid out here enables an exploration of how worldviews in CFM implementation is an exercise of power that impacts how gendered forest practices and management take shape. It moreover provides a foundation for addressing how institutional processes of change impacts forest access and control struggles and the interlinkages to the ecological impact of forest use in Kungin and Tangin (Quintana & Campbell, 2019).
Methods
Study area
This qualitative study has been developed with an ethnographic, methodological, and methods approach (Kwame Harrison, 2018). This study has focused on understanding CFM implementation processes in the village of Tonogo, Burkina Faso. Tonogo village is located 35 km south of the capital Ouagadougou. The names of the villages, forest areas and interlocutors have been anonymized through pseudonyms to maintain their anonymity. The village has about 3000 inhabitants and small-scale subsistence agroforestry farming dominates the agricultural landscape, with smaller patches of bush and forested areas between farm fields and fallows. Customary authorities have a strong presence and are active in the decision-making regarding village matters.
The village of Tonogo was chosen as a study site as it has two areas with naturally generated forest patches that were assigned as community management forest areas in the late 1990s but where each area developed differently. The forest areas were state owned as most land in Burkina Faso at that period in time. The areas were chosen by a state forest research institute that worked together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). According to two representatives from the institute the primary purpose was to protect the forests from ‘random cutting and save the trees from disappearing’.
The first forest, Tangin is a 25-hectare forest patch situated north of Tonogo village center and adjacent to another village. The local forest manager and residents from Tonogo and an adjacent village describe that the forest was in decline when the CFM was initiated in 1999, as ‘people were cutting without any limits’. The research institute reached out to the customary authorities in the village looking for suitable places to establish a CFM area. Tangin was chosen due to its degraded status and, according to one of the research institute representatives, in need of intervention to develop restricted use regulations. Since the forest is close to the village center, it used to be one of the critical places where women collect firewood. After the CFM was introduced, the degradation of Tangin reversed, and a dense forest now spreads out over the place with no visible signs of being logged.
The second forest, Kungin, covers an area of 27 hectares (according to the state forest guard in the commune). The forest patch is situated in the western part of Tonogo village and borders the smaller-sized Odui village. In the 1990s, the research institute approached Tonogo and Odui villages with a proposal to establish a CFM area jointly managed by the two villages. The state forest guards in the commune refer to Kungin as a classified forest, although there are no records to be found on the matter. Since the research institute initiated the CFM, Kungin has become severely degraded, according to the testimonies by villagers in both Odui and Tonogo. As people describe it, forest fires and firewood collection contribute to the forest deteriorating. In large parts of the area, trees have become logged completely or at one-meter height, from which small branches have sprouted.
Data collection and analysis
The data was collected in Tonogo village over seven months between 2014 and 2015 and during a pilot study in 2012. Coming back to the village several times allowed this study to establish trust and relationships with people. This was necessary in order to explore power relations and forest practices as laid out in the framework of FPI and CI but also to gain knowledge about the landscape in and surrounding the village. The qualitative material gathered is based on 120 semi-structured interviews in Tonogo village. Out of these, 71 are with men and 49 with women, more interviews were with men as they hold official positions (such as religious leaders, wise men, CDVs, forest managers). Participants were selected from different quarters of the village and with different socio-economical characteristics. I also conducted one group discussion with women and one with men. These interviews enabled me to understand the struggles, power relations, and forest practices of Kungin and Tangin. The interviews also provided important information about everyday life and practices in the village, such as farming and income activities. This data has been useful for analyzing the implementation process of the CFMs, resource conflicts and the use of forest resources from different areas in and surrounding the village of Tonogo.
Adding to this, I interviewed people in customary or politico-legal power positions in the village and surrounding communities. These included the village chief (naaba), customary counselors (commonly referred to as wise men), youth organizations, women’s groups, and the local forest managers in Tonogo and neighboring Odui village. These interviews were important for understanding the local history, land conflicts, and structure of the customary authorities in the area. Moreover, I conducted semi-structured interviews with officials at the communal, provincial, and governmental levels, such as the prefecture, state forest agency officials, agricultural office, and ministry of environment, to understand current and historic natural resource management narratives. Lastly, I interviewed people in various NGOs working in or around Tonogo village or at the national level, as well as the research institute responsible for implementing the CFM in Tonogo. These interviews were important for collecting data on the contextual specifics in the area, such as historical accounts and environmental aspects of the conservation project. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed from the local language moore to English.
An essential part of the fieldwork was accompanying women to cut firewood and walking through forested areas with the local forestry manager in Tonogo. These walks and observations were important for collecting data on everyday forest practices, especially regarding the how, where, and why women cut firewood and refrain from specific areas. These walks and attending ceremonies also provided insights into how people communicate with the spirits and how this inter-relates to steering people’s forest practices. The data has been analyzed by seeking general themes from the interviews, observations and transect-walk based on the environmental, management and gender forest dynamics in Kungin and Tangin. Drawing on the theoretical framework, these themes were then explored more in-depth to grasp the discursive meaning of authority, institutional processes, and gender in the (non-)making of CFM in Tonogo.
Results
The results are presented by discussing the implementation processes and its impact on firewood access in the two forest areas in Tonogo village separately.
Implementing CFM in the Tangin Forest
From the perspective of the interviewed residents in Tonogo, the forest belongs to the naaba (chief in the local Mooré language). Yet formally, the state holds the statutory land title, enabling formal authorities to enforce and implement conservation management arrangements. The traditional healer describes the forest area as zee bèga, a sacred area where the spirits live. The residents explain these characteristics by that ‘our ancestors told us that the land is good for farming, but when you harvest, you will die’ (forest manager, 2015). Even before the CFM was introduced, farming was therefore prohibited by customary authorities. Collection of firewood and other non-timber forest products was allowed for the household. This was especially important for women but according to the villagers this also brought pressure on the ecological status of the forest.
Despite Tangin’s importance for the female dominated labor of provisioning firewood, none of the interviewed women say that they recall being involved in any dialogue about developing the regulations and management of the CFM. Rather, customary authorities have a central role in how the research institute implemented the CFM project in Tangin. As a first part of the implementation process, the institute initiated dialogues with the village chief, the naaba, to convince him to set aside the two areas for conservation. The naaba was offered economic compensation from the institute for doing this. In an agreement with the naaba, the representatives from the research institute appointed the naaba’s son as a forest manager. He has since then been responsible for protecting and monitoring the forest. This process, where the CFM was implemented through the customary authorities, thereby also re-affirmed their control of the Tangin forest and their power position in the village.
That the research institute choose to initiate the CFM through the customary authorities is described by one representative at the research institute who says “you always have to go through village chief first. He decides if you can stay or not.” The crucial role that customary authorities played in the implementation process is also reflected in how power was exercised to ensure compliance with the new regulations. When the ‘project arrived’ as the local forest manager describes the implementation process, “they performed ceremonies to protect the forest from people entering it to cut.” As villagers described it, these ceremonies were performed by the naaba and the wise men, together with customary authorities from the neighboring village and representatives from the research institute.
As the implementation progressed, the power of the wise men and the importance of the spirits for the project’s success in Tangin forest seems to have grown. As the forest manager explains, “people were not happy about the rules in the beginning and were murmuring that there is not going to be any firewood anymore.” Therefore, women continued to cut firewood. To curb the disobedience of the new regulations and strengthen the forest’s protection, the naaba and the wise men held repeated ceremonies. They called ‘for thunder and demons, and then we told everyone about that’ (forest manager, 2014). With this, people started to comply with the new regulations according to the forest manager.
The Established Community Management in Tangin Forest
Other research has pointed towards a “return” of the customary as significant for how customary authorities can make claims to land (Côte, 2020). In Tangin forest, such return, or re-enforcement of the customary body, encompasses that the spirits are a vital part of exercising power and management. At the same time, as the CFM inserted restrictive user rules, the project in Tangin de-legitimized customary and historical ways of managing land. In this process, the “customary” becomes part of the “white man” (nazara) or modern law as people in the village often refer to state law. This way of relating to laws and regulations tells of a colonial heritage of how a state started implementation of laws and regulations of natural resource use (Smith, 2017). The management in this way re-enforces the power of customary authorities but through rules and regulations that has been imposed from the “outside” (Hagberg, 2001).
As the fieldwork showed, the day-to-day forest management does not reside within the broad community but mainly with the one forest manager. The research institute withdrew its presence in 2007, and the village has maintained the strict user rules. The forest manager expresses his discontent with the withdrawal as he says, “I am alone keeping the forest, and if we had a guard, the forest could be better protected. They don’t pay me, and if you come to my house, you see me making hats as I don’t get any money for protecting the forest.” The expressed discontent by the forest manager could indicate that the incentive to monitor has decreased. Reduced monitoring could, in a longer time perspective, bring the villagers to challenge Tangin as a restricted space for firewood collection.
The forest manager and other male individuals describe that they received training through the project in how to prune trees on their farmlands that allow the regeneration of branches. Given gendered labor norm structures and patriarchal land tenure regulations, women have been effectively excluded from participating in this training. This directly excludes women from knowledge sharing and makes them invisible as woodcutters in the community.
Gendered Control and monitoring in the Tangin Forest
The forest use rules that the customary authorities set up in collaboration with the research institute do not allow cutting trees or branches. It is noteworthy to mention that, regardless of which ethnic groups (there are three major ethnic in the village) or religious (Muslim or Christian) group that women belong to, they all describe how they refrain from cutting firewood in Tangin. That women comply to the forest use rules indicates the solid social control and enforcement mechanisms that the customary authorities have over the population. When asked what they think of the regulations, women often express themselves along the lines of Piiga, a woman from Tonogo in stating that: ‘I think that the rules are good. Otherwise, the forest will disappear.’ However, women also commonly problematize this narrative as they reflect upon the inherent dilemma of the need to access forest resources for the household’s firewood consumption. As women describe, they now cut their wood elsewhere, often about 3–5 km further away. Therefore, women must add time and effort to collect sufficient firewood (see also Kothari et al., 2013 for similar findings), which could otherwise be spent on other household chores or income-generating activities. Forest conservation thereby becomes manifested through gendered embodied labor.
Tangin is, however, not entirely closed for extraction. As an owner of the land, the naaba can extract wood for ceremonies and funerals (interview with the naaba, 2014). The forest is also a vital grazing ground for cattle, which generally are owned by men. Older women and women with newborn babies collect forest medicine (medicine woman, 2014).
The way that the CFM in Tangin has been set into practice reminds us that institutional change is a process of entangling institutions (Karambiri et al., 2020). The forest manager describes that he has seen traces of woodcutting in Tangin but never caught anyone in action. On such occasions, he says he ‘goes back to the village, gathers people, does a ceremony, and asks for the person who did it to show herself.’ This type of ritual is not only communication with the spirits but also a powerful regulation enforcer. The forest manager explains this by saying, ‘if the person who did it doesn’t show herself, then she’ll die’. According to the forest manager, it has happened once that a woman did not ‘reveal herself’: ‘when she cut the wood, she saw me, and she left the place and the wood. I went there and took some of the branches and went to the sacred place and asked the spirits to show the person to me.’ As the forest manager tells it, the woman did not come to him, and after a while, she got ill.
Eventually, the forest manager explains, the woman came to the village elders and confessed what she had done. To cure the woman, the group of wise men sacrificed goats to please the spirits, and after that, the woman recovered. Marie, a woman living close to Tangin says that if she would go to Tangin she would be very scared. She continues and says that if you cut wood in Tangin and get seen by the naaba or by someone who tells the local forest manager, you need to make ceremonies and sacrifice a goat. Marie concludes by saying that ‘if you refuse something can happen/…/ you will die.’
Implementing CFM in the Kungin Forest
In the Kungin forest, the implementation of the CFM area has been characterized by a power struggle between the village of Tonogo and the neighboring Odui village. In Tonogo the Kungin forest is described as belonging to the family of Yamiago, a lineage of blacksmiths. George, who belongs to this family, has his farmland on the border to Kungin and describes that: “it was our ancestors who first settled here, and they lent out the land. It is our land from here [circling his hand from the village] to Kungin.” George explains that people call the area rasmpouiga (meaning ‘empty place’ in Mooré language, suggesting that the site is not suitable for farming), but “all who came here could cut [wood], and they first asked to cut in the forest.” The Yamiago both owned and controlled access to forest resources in the Kungin. George’s narrative is supported by oral historical accounts from other lineages within Tonogo and neighboring villages. Except for the customary authorities in the neighboring village of Odui. They challenge this historical account and claim to be the land’s first comers (autochthons). This means that the Odui customary authorities indirectly claim ownership of what they refer to as the Odui forest (see also Côte, 2020 for similar findings).
The dispute over Kungin forest has its origins from the 1930 (none of the interviewees knows what sparked the disagreement initially). The dispute re-surfaced when the research institute, in liaison with customary authorities from Tonogo, sought to establish the CFM area in Kungin. The protests from the customary authorities in Odui and their claims of owning the forest could, according to speculations from villagers in Tonogo, be motivated by the possibility of obtaining economic compensation for the establishment. The resistance to the establishment of a CFM by Odui village can also be explained by the risk of losing control over the forest management. The management had been done jointly by the two villages before the CFM implementation phase but the research institute had only approached Tonogo village with a proposal. This, in turn, challenges the notion of community-based management being implemented since the forest was already locally managed, however fragile it might have been. Instead, the process dismantled the local forest management.
The research institute tried to solve the dispute through the customary authorities from Odui and Tonogo, according to George, the CVD of Tonogo, and two institute representatives. In the first stage, several ceremonies were held in Tonogo village, in which the head of the Tonogo and Odui naaba, participated. The multitude of ceremonies and the involvement of the head naaba shows that the rift between the villages was deep. The ceremonies did, however, not assist in solving the dissent, as the customary authorities from Odui did not accept the mediation processes. The conflict and claims over Kungin was waged through the struggle to be rightfully autochthons (first-comers to the area) and holder of the customary authority (Côte, 2020). Communication with the spirits was a powerful tool for implementing stricter forest regulations in Tangin. Likewise, it was instrumental in contesting how the research institute approached the implementation process in Kungin. In this case, contextual and historical social relations play a significant role in how the CFM proposal was received. Such findings challenge the notion of unexpected outcomes in this context (de Koning, 2014) as the re-surfaced conflict most likely could have been foreseen with some background research. Similarly to Tangin, women’s perceptions of the proposed conservation area and struggle to access and control forest resources becomes invisible in this process as the struggle is waged by customary authorities.
As the villagers of Tonogo found that Odui had started to fence the forest with barbed wire, they decided to take the case to court. In 1999, representatives from the two villages and the research institute gathered at the courthouse in the department of Kombissiri. The official court document states that the forest is a common forest and belongs to neither village. A few, such as the forest manager in Tonogo and George, maintain that while the court decided it is a common, Kungin foremost belongs to Tonogo through their ancestral inheritance rights. In Odui, on the other hand, people unanimously describe the forest as being Odui’s.
The (Non)established Management of Kungin Forest
The inability of the research institute to account for the context, in this case, an old land dispute and its relation to present power relations in Tonogo and Odui, dismantled the idea of establishing a CFM area in Kungin. The forest manager from Tonogo describes that “they wanted it [Kungin] to be a forest managed by the villages but not after we went to the court with the quarrel.” Several people say that people stopped respecting the rules after the court ruling, and consequently, the Kungin forest started to deteriorate.
Before the conservation process was initiated, management structures were differently organized in Kungin. The Odui naaba had appointed Jilly, a Fulani man who lives on the outskirts of the village, as a forest manager. He explains that as the conflict escalated, the economic compensation was halted, and he stopped monitoring the forest. Jilly continues by saying, ‘the leaders are not so interested in protecting the forest anymore.’ The forest manager from Tonogo describes a similar account. As we are standing in front of a large fire-ravaged tree in Kungin, he exclaims: “This forest used to be the good one. It was even in better shape than Tangin, and look at this place now.” Further on in the visit, he remarks that it is his responsibility to protect Kungin, but as he lives on the other side of the village, he cannot hear when people are cutting. Therefore, he cannot prevent ‘the wrongdoings.’ The forest managers have thus stopped their control and monitoring of the forest.
The inability of the forest managers from Odui and Tonogo to intervene in the logging depends on the uneven power dynamics in the extraction, something which became apparent through my fieldwork. One of the prominent loggers and actors in the conflict in Kungin is a man called Mr. Robert. He is the brother of the deceased Odui naaba and has sidelined the current naaba. In practice Mr. Robert holds the authoritative power in Odui, based on interviews with the youth group leaders and customary authorities in Odui and neighboring villages. The logging activity was visible during a visit to Kungin with the forest manager and George from Tonogo. George showed how several large trees had been felled by a chainsaw (a tool very few people can afford) in the forest and close to his farmland. At that point, Mr. Robert arrives at the site agitated, informing that he carries a gun. The conflict between the two villages is visible in the conversation, as Mr. Robert accuses George and the forest manager of stealing his timber to sell to me (this was before Mr. Robert knew my role as a researcher).
Gendered Control and Monitoring of Kungin
The conflict and logging activities in Kungin is made visible differently when talking to community members in Odui and Tonogo about the state of the forest. When people from Odui describe Kungin, they unanimously refer to it as ‘disappearing.’ Because ‘women from Tonogo are cutting the forest without restrictions’ or because women from Tonogo do not respect the rules anymore. None of the interviewees refer to logging large trees using chainsaws or fire (as described above). This narrative form gendered environmental subjectivities of female forest villains (Robinson, 2021). Women’s woodcutting practices become disconnected from the daily needs of the households and communities at large. Authoritative representatives from Odui, such as the naaba, Mr. Robert, and youth leaders, all describe that they “have forbidden our women to cut wood in the forest.”
In Tonogo, the narrative is turned, and the deterioration is in the interviews blamed on women from Odui cutting firewood. Firewood collection thus becomes a gendered blame game between the customary authorities in the two villages for explaining the forest degradation. This is termed in a vocabulary that the authorities from the other village let the women cut without repercussions, thereby not controlling ‘their’ women’s behavior. This is often set in contrast by expressions of the ability to control ‘our women’ and ‘not allowing our women to cut wood in the forest.’ The making of female forest villains thus relationally produces moral virtues of management capacity – which both villages draw on to de-legitimize each other’s defaulted managements.
On my visits to Kungin, women from both villages cut firewood without trying to hide it – in contrast to when I accompanied women to other forested areas where woodcutting never was done openly or without trying to hide their collected wood when they heard someone approaching. The collapse of local management structures in Kungin thus seem to enable women’s access (at least in the short-term) to vital resources for their everyday lives. Emphasizing that women from the other villages were responsible for the deterioration further removes attention from one of the seemingly core actors in the conflict. In the interviews, it became apparent that people generally fear Mr. Robert as they shied away from speaking about his activities.
Discussion
Central for the argument in this study is that forestry management that is established through customary bodies legitimizes power relations that forms gendered exclusion (see also Cleaver et. al 2021). The results showed that the implementation of the CFM in the Tangin forest was made possible because the state-run institute first approached the customary authorities. As Lund & Boone (2013) shows, land governance in Burkina Faso is often managed in plural politico-legal structures. In the case of Tangin the CFM implementation process brought an institutional entanglement of the plural politico-legal structures as the research institute and customary authorities started to co-operate (de Koning & Cleaver, 2012). This model of project implementation also intrinsically excluded women and the men who are not part of the customary authoritative body from direct decision-making, monitoring, or access to firewood. By excluding women from using the Tangin forest, the research institute and the customary authorities over-write women’s historically and culturally grounded forest access through the CFM implementation. As Seema Arora-Jonsson (2009) argues, such accounts show how forest management is gendered. In the village of Tonogo this gendered governance is manifested in that women are unsubscribed from being active participants in managing the forests. With that women have also been excluded from accessing knowledge on how to apply sustainable cutting practices. Building capacity in women on sustainable cutting techniques would likely be significant in creating more regrowth of branches on trees.
As this study has shown, worldviews structure the social relations and control of forest resources in the two CFM areas. The performance of spiritual ceremonies became a tool to steer social behavior as it makes misconduct visible within the community. The accounts of repercussions in the results showed how management through spiritual practices and the infusion of fear, are essential for explaining why women so firmly restrain themselves from cutting firewood in Tangin. This enabled robust compliance with the stricter conservation rules. De Koning and Cleaver (2012) argue that this kind of institutional change can be made possible by naturalizing regulations that might initially feel out of place. By re-inventing the well-established spiritual relations to land, the customary authorities thus make the CFM in Tangin socially fit. This implicates more than adjusting one’s practices for fear of becoming ill or dying, it is also a matter of avoiding public shame. The socially sanctioned customary practices in this process legitimized the government-funded CFM project and shows how the spiritual has been integral to how customary authorities exercise power in entwinement with the formal institution (De Koning & Cleaver, 2012). Worldviews is thereby not only a belief system but also power relations that re-enforce the legitimacy of certain actors, in this case the customary authorities.
In line with Andrea Nightingale’s (2019) argumentation of commons as a space of inclusion and exclusion, this study has shown that the implementation of CFM through spiritual rituals marginalizes and excludes women from the physical and ceremonial space of the forest. Implementation of CFM through customary authorities was in the specific place of the Tangin forest effective but should also be viewed as relationally producing exclusion, uneven representation (see also Smith, 2017) and externalized firewood extraction. The use of firewood is portrayed in the interviews as to why forest resources are diminishing in other areas than the Tanging forest in Tonogo village. As Kothari et al., (2013) also notes, this makes the question of whether forbidding firewood use in one area can be viewed as an effective forest governance strategy relevant. The need for women to find firewood to cook with did not disappear as the CFM in Tangin forest was established. It was instead made more complicated and externalized to other places which added an extra work burden for women.
The conflict over land in the Kungin forest displays how land titles in Burkina Faso are deeply embedded in identity and historical accounts of belonging (Engels, 2014; Karambiri & Brockhaus, 2019). In the case of Kungin it has also been interconnected with the failure of implementing the CFM. Similarly to Côte’s (2020) findings, the struggle over Kungin is made through historical accounts and claims over autochthony. Through this power struggle, claims about the forest are made (Sikor & Lund, 2009). This example from Kungin demonstrates the power yielded from conservation projects, as well as the complexity and the fluidity of institutional arrangements, as the mere process of changing management structure set social and environmental relations in motion (Arts & de Koning, 2017; de Koning & Benneker, 2012). The destabilized social power relations negatively impacted the environmental quality of the forest (also shown by Cleaver & Whaley, 2018) since the disagreement between the two villages dismantled the forest management in Kungin and set of the logging in the forest and on adjacent areas.
That women were blamed for the deforestation in Kungin can be understood as an environmental resource narrative of female forest villains (see also Robinson, 2021) that customary authorities from both Odui and Bonogo village draws from in the conflict as a self-protective strategy. Given that the villagers of Bonogo and also Odui feared an actor (Mr. Alexander) from the latter village, the blaming of women is an indirect protection mechanism against the security risks that would come with openly accusing this person who has access to weapons for illegal logging. Simultaneously, it also re-affirms the rift between the two villages as both parties blame firewood practices for the deterioration rather than a conflict and dismantled management. The making of gendered subjects where women are portrayed as environmental villains is central to understanding how the struggle over the right to land in Kungin continues long after the research institute abandoned the idea of classifying the area. While the customary authorities from both villages portray women as environmental villains both claim themselves to be what Robinson (2021) calls custodians of the forest. CFM implementation through customary authorities is, in this way, an exercise of power that re-enforces hierarchical structures of exclusion and inclusion (Nightingale, 2019) and inequalities (Garcia et al., 2021).
Conclusions
This study has explored the institutional processes and gendered impacts of the initiation to the withdrawal of state presence in two CFM projects. Power relations, resource struggles and the ecological status of the two forests has developed and continued to unfold over time. Such findings show the power dynamics within the institutional processes that are set in motion by initiating forest management projects. The explanatory strength of a gender and critical institutional reading of CFM was made visible as the analysis showed how the context is significant for how CFM regulations becomes arranged, re-enforced, and contested. The analytical attention on CI and gender dynamics in institutional processes has helped illuminate how exclusion and inclusion and environmental blame takes shape within CFM (Nightingale, 2019). This was useful for explaining the puzzling finding that the implementation of CFM led to gender-differentiated institutional processes (as shown also by Mersha & Van Laerhoven, 2016). The CI and gendered reading of the CFM in Kungin revealed that the dismantled management enabled firewood access in the short-term but has brought forest degradation. The analysis revealed gendered power relations as authorities in both villages blamed each other for not being able to control “their” women’s firewood practices. The complex power relations and dynamics of forest access that the analysis unfolded, shows that it is important to include social, management and environmental dynamics when analyzing forest projects’ success Galvin et al., 2018.
This study has furthered our understanding of how worldviews and meaning-making impact environmental outcomes and gendered impact of CFM implementation. The analysis showed that forestry projects through customary authorities might be effective if tenure relations are stable. Yet it relied on traditional gender exclusions and can further strengthen these with continued marginalization. This raises concerns about the effectiveness as the forest resource extraction is moved elsewhere and adds an extra work burden for women.
As the two CFM projects show, management is not only made through the status of the environment but also measured by the ability to steer the gendered chore of firewood collection. The narrative of ‘other’ women that cannot be steered that came out through the exploration of Kungin, symbolizes the gendered power relations inherent to female exclusion in forest management. This informs us that development and conservation projects should account for underlying historical and gendered power relations and resource needs before presenting CFM projects. In Burkina Faso, such understanding encompasses knowledge of the area’s historic ethnic lineages and autochthony structures, as it forms the foundation for how land tenure rights are structured and claimed. A focus on the gendered uses and needs also sheds light on for whom conservation regulations are formed and the purpose. To facilitate how CFM implementation processes impact environmental, labor burdens, and access outcomes, implementation thus needs to include gender in implementation plans. For this reason, there is a need to learn from cases of CFM implementation where gender inclusion can be facilitated and integrated with the involvement of local power authorities.
Acknowledgements
I would sincerely like to thank Sofie Hellberg, Annica Karlsson and Anja Karlsson Franck for support and feedback on initial drafts. In the later process I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank Leila Werem and Mamounata Belem for their support during the data collection. Finally, I thank the men and women from Boessen and Tonogo who kindly shared their time, thoughts and experiences with me in this study.
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.