L’heuristique de la littérature grise sur le développement participatif du Bassin congolais

La littérature grise en sciences sociales, lorsqu’elle est produite dans le contexte des projets, comporte des particularités cognitives spécifiques qui entravent une contribution opératoire aux politiques de coopération au développement. Dans ce cas, ce n’est pas la littérature en anthropologie du développement qui est mobilisée pour la constitution de la boîte à outils de la recherche appliquée. Il s’agit d’un autre cadre cognitif a-historique, sectoriel et non cumulatif dont les particularités heuristiques sont notamment l’incomparabilité et la non prédictibilité. Ceci mène à la récurrence d’un problème dans la pratique appliquée consistant à entretenir une confusion entre recommandations structurelles et conjoncturelles. Cette contribution est illustrée par des exemples tirés d’une étude pluridisciplinaire sur la gestion participative des forêts dans le Bassin congolaisThe grey litterature in social sciences, especially when it is produced in development projects, consists of specific cognitive particularities that prevent an operational contribution to development policies. In this case it is not the anthropology of development literature that is used to construct a toolbox for applied research. Instead it is an a-historical, sectorial and non-accumulative cognitive framework with its heuristic particularities, such as non-comparability and non-predictability. This leads to a recurrent problem in applied practice that sustains a confusion of structural and conjunctural recommendations. This article contributes with examples from a multidisciplinary study of participatory forest management in the Congo Bassin

Forest-Poverty Dynamics: Current State of Knowledge

This chapter reports on evidence about the role of forests and trees in alleviating poverty and supporting wider human well-being. It considers how, whether, where, when and for whom forests and trees are important in forest-poverty dynamics. We organise the evidence according to four possible relationships between forest products and ecosystem services and poverty: 1) helping households move out of poverty; 2) supporting well-being through subsistence, food security and cultural and spiritual values; 3) mitigating risks; and 4) decreasing well-being by generating negative externalities that could significantly contribute to trapping or moving households into poverty. The evidence shows that these relationships are strongly context-dependent, varying with geography and social, economic and political contexts. However, across contexts, we most commonly observe that forest and tree products and services help the poor to secure and stabilise their livelihoods, rather than either helping them exit poverty or driving them into poverty.Peer reviewe

Les concessions d'exploitation forestière menacent-elles les tourbières en République démocratique du Congo ?

peer reviewed[No abstract available

La gestion participative des forêts en Afrique centrale

Participatory management, like any policy, can be considered as a concept, a policy practice and an actors-oriented issue. The poor results found in the Congolese Basin where this approach to rural development is experienced over the past thirty years are discussed in this article. The authors emphasize on the complexity of the mechanisms underlying the difficulties identified and begin their analysis with a triple point of view: that of the aid organization, the socio-political context and the power relations involved. From a historical and ethnographic point of view, they discuss the performance of four « participatory » funding and five participatory mechanisms. Based on a cross-sectoral analysis, they show that this policy is generally a antiparticipative governance. The article ends with the imperative of good knowledge on social contexts of implementation of participative approaches and monitoring empirical practices of participative management and of an effective rural development