Woodcutting and territorial claims in Mali Denis Gautier a,⇑ , Baptiste Hautdidier b , Laurent Gazull a a Cirad, TA C-36/D Campus International de Baillarguet, F-34398 Montpellier Cedex, France b Cemagref, UR ADBX, F-33612 Cestas Cedex, France article info Article history: Received 21 February 2008 Received in revised form 20 August 2010 Keywords: Territoriality Decentralization Customary rights Power Woodcutting Mali abstract In Mali, amidst moves toward political decentralization and the transfer of authority to manage natural resources, woodcutting has become an important tool for the assertion of territorial claims by villagers. The decentralization process has itself led to a profound political shake-up between the central state seeking to maintain land ownership and the de facto management of land by customary village author- ities. But it is, however, primarily the devolution of forest resource management to village-led organiza- tions that has prompted the cross-scale legitimization and assertion of various territorial claims from 1995 onwards. Based on two in-depth case studies on the outskirts of Bamako, Mali, the authors illustrate how new practices revolving around woodcutting and charcoal-making have been instrumental in intra- and inter-village disputes. At the village level, this transfer tends to exacerbate tenure claims over land and trees with the reactivation of autochthony-related arguments and thus the risk of excluding the most vulnerable social groups which are typically involved in woodcutting. At the inter-village level, this gives villages the opportunity to claim and demarcate boundaries by cutting, painting signs on some trees, or more radically tree felling being carried out solely to demonstrate appropriation. At the municipal level, this transfer leads to political and social adjustments between customary and decentralized authorities, each struggling to build their legitimacy in natural resource management. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Complex territorialization processes are currently underway in the Sahel region. Branded with labels such as ‘democratic’, ‘partic- ipative’, ‘(neo-)traditional’, or ‘community-based’, new territoriali- zation processes have been promoted concurrently over the past 20 years, resulting in a profusion of institutions and organizations involved in natural resource management, particularly in Mali (Benjamin, 2008). As in other regions, decentralization reforms are being introduced, as a process by which a central government formally cedes powers to actors and institutions at lower levels in a political–administrative and territorial hierarchy (Smith, 1985). Many claim to include decentralization of natural resource man- agement in these reforms (Agrawal, 2001), particularly environ- mentalists, natural resource managers, and development agents, who perceive decentralization as a way of increasing both effi- ciency and equity in natural resource management (Ribot, 2002). Natural resource management decentralization has also been pro- moted as a means to give substance to political rights and a mutual reinforcement between democracy and natural resource manage- ment (Ribot, 2004). The decentralization process, as a territorial practice aimed at the implementation of new regulations on land access and use, has been initiated in most Sahelian countries— including Mali—and has affected both territorial administration and natural resource management. Decentralizations thus have important geographical outcomes, as they modify the day-to-day practices of actors, increasing the legitimacy of some land-use patterns over others and fostering the delimitation and appropriation of spaces previously distin- guished by their indistinct boundaries. In the context of the Sahel, whose landscapes often display a relative paucity of distinct geo- graphical features such as ‘geosymbols’ 1 (Bonnemaison, 1981), the outline of trees is both sufficiently visible and long-lasting to be used to mark out territorial limits and claims (Fortmann and Riddell, 1985; Raintree, 1987; Peluso, 2005). Resulting from selective cut- tings, protections or plantations, the compounds and their immedi- ate surroundings are often scattered with mystical, symbolic or shade-giving trees. The agricultural area is also marked by useful trees which are spared from clearing and ploughing or planted to create park-like landscapes (Pullan, 1974; Raison, 1988). Tree plant- ing and protection in agricultural fields confers land rights to indi- viduals and communities and serve to delimit a village’s terroir 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.08.008 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: denis.gautier@cirad.fr (D. Gautier), baptiste.hautdidier@ bordeaux.cemagref.fr (B. Hautdidier), laurent.gazull@cirad.fr (L. Gazull). 1 ‘‘A geosymbol can be defined as a place, a route, or an area which, for religious, political or cultural reasons takes on a symbolic dimension in the eyes of certain peoples and ethnic groups which affirms their identity” (Bonnemaison, 1981: 256). Geoforum 42 (2011) 28–39 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum