June 22, 2001
At the time of the African continental meeting in Tanzania, the issue of soils and lands is one of the continent's major challenge, raising issues of governance, social justice, environment, sustainable development, etc. A specific contribution from the Soils Campaign on this issue gives inputs to think about to the participants of the Dar es Salaam meeting. This is a fruitful example of cooperation between a thematic workshop and a geocultural dynamic of the Alliance..

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For a just and sustainable Soils management in Africa
by Rabah Lahmar

The African continental meeting is currently being held in Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania). It gathers about 60 participants in 3 workshops: governance, economic and social issues, culture and values. The Soils Campaign of the Alliance prepared an ad hoc contribution to this meeting, included in the preparatory document, which is reproduced below.

  1/ Soils: a key issue for Africa

Fertile soil is our common property but it is on the process of dilapidation. The earth is not a merchandise. Its management cannot be left to free trade or to the desire of its owners and occupants. Its future is a public issue and a major challenge for governance.

If the present process continues, this essential heritage of our continent, which contrary to the raw materials that are being exhausted, ensures its long-term prosperity will disappear. Combined with the effects of increasing demographic growth, its scarcity has become one of the major sources of bloodshed in Africa.

The earth of Africa is fragile. In both the north and south, and in the Sahel region, fertile earth lacks water and it is turning into desert. In tropical and equatorial Africa, water abounds, leaching poor soil, which acidifies.

African farmers have succeeded for centuries in using these fragile soils and protecting them to guarantee their own survival. The management of rights to use the earth is one of the strongest traditions of the African governance. Colonization has overturned traditional balances, concentrating ownership of land and dictating new ownership laws that replaced careful management of fertility with mining management.

2/ An African Soils Campaign

We shall be condemning ourselves if we do not become a world of skilful and reasonable gardeners. Ancestral know-how is not enough since the conditions under which it worked have changed. We need an ** African Soils Campaign **, a common project that spurs energies, creativity and human resources and material resources throughout the continent.

Along with water, this will be the first priority of African governance. All solutions to the problems of African soils require renewed cooperation between different levels of governance: local territory where soils are divided among their users, the long-term maintenance of their fertility and the distribution of water resources; regional, national and transnational territories which manage the major catchment areas, the distribution of populations, the codification of land rights and territorial development; and the continent where the policies are defined and where financial resources are found.

The Soils Campaign and its policies combine three requirements: sustainable development; social justice; and the balance between the town and countryside. These requirements are interdependent. If maintaining soil fertility causes the concentration of ownership, it will inevitably lead to injustice and social conflict. If the soils distributed on an egalitarian basis cause their poor upkeep, the social justice of today will prepare the conflict of tomorrow.

Right of ownership and access to the earth are conditions for its upkeep in the long term. However, this right and security are associated with the duty to carry out this upkeep. The right will disappear if the duty is not fulfilled. Thus it is necessary at each local level to combine technical and intellectual resources and the legal framework for cooperation to ensure that these duties are respected. It must also include the means for observing whether or not these duties are complied with and the authority and justice to transfer ownership of the land if they are not.

The maintenance of soils and the development of sustainable agriculture demand huge investments. Any suppression of the right of use or ownership in the name of social justice must give rise to fair compensation. A common code of these guarantees should be drawn up for the entire continent.

Conflicts over soil use will multiply as it becomes scarcer. Between the crop cultivation and cash crops, agriculture and livestock breeding, town and countryside, these conflicts can be managed at local level though in accordance to the policies founded on experience. A constitutive assembly of African farmers will define these policies after hearing all the parties.

The pressure of the towns and their growth over the best lands has become a very serious problem in certain African countries, caused by rights of use. Several principles should be implemented: * the establishment of intensive agricultural green belts around towns to develop economic resistance to urban invasion; * the choice of levels of arbitration on the assignment of soils to avoid local pressures; * the implementation of a compensation principle: any suppression of a hectare of farmland must give rise to compensation of three hectares of fertile land.

The African Soils Campaign for the preservation and rehabilitation of soils will have two common dimensions:
* international action to conserve and rehabilitate soils;
* an inter-African programme of training and education so that the rules for soil conservation are known by everybody.