Sustainable Development in Northern Africa: The Argan Forest Case

The argan tree is a slow growing tree exclusively endemic in the dry lowlands of Southwest Morocco. The argan forest constitutes a long time ignored specific biotope that has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1998. The argan forest is particularly fragile to climate change. Forecasts show annual precipitation levels and prolonged drought periods that could severely threaten the future of the argan forest. In some places, the argan forest is already damaged, resulting in the retreat of the argan tree and the subsequent desert encroachment. An acceleration of this trend would have devastating consequences. In response, some twenty years ago, an ambitious, unique in Northern-Africa, and government-supported program was initiated in Morocco to rescue the argan tree via the sustainable development of the argan forest. Because in the late 1980s, sustainable development in developing countries was often considered as a utopia, the argan forest case represents a sign of progress, as it is also an interesting and unique experience in Africa. This review analyses the process followed, the measures taken, the pitfalls encountered, and the results obtained during the last two decades. It also points out the measures that still need to be taken before declaring the argan forest rescue mission is accomplished

Sustainable Development in Northern Africa: The Argan Forest Case

The argan tree is a slow growing tree exclusively endemic in the dry lowlands of Southwest Morocco. The argan forest constitutes a long time ignored specific biotope that has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1998. The argan forest is particularly fragile to climate change. Forecasts show annual precipitation levels and prolonged drought periods that could severely threaten the future of the argan forest. In some places, the argan forest is already damaged, resulting in the retreat of the argan tree and the subsequent desert encroachment. An acceleration of this trend would have devastating consequences. In response, some twenty years ago, an ambitious, unique in Northern-Africa, and government-supported program was initiated in Morocco to rescue the argan tree via the sustainable development of the argan forest. Because in the late 1980s, sustainable development in developing countries was often considered as a utopia, the argan forest case represents a sign of progress, as it is also an interesting and unique experience in Africa. This review analyses the process followed, the measures taken, the pitfalls encountered, and the results obtained during the last two decades. It also points out the measures that still need to be taken before declaring the argan forest rescue mission is accomplished

Sustainable Development in Northern Africa: The Argan Forest Case

The argan tree is a slow growing tree exclusively endemic in the dry lowlands of Southwest Morocco. The argan forest constitutes a long time ignored specific biotope that has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1998. The argan forest is particularly fragile to climate change. Forecasts show annual precipitation levels and prolonged drought periods that could severely threaten the future of the argan forest. In some places, the argan forest is already damaged, resulting in the retreat of the argan tree and the subsequent desert encroachment. An acceleration of this trend would have devastating consequences. In response, some twenty years ago, an ambitious, unique in Northern-Africa, and government-supported program was initiated in Morocco to rescue the argan tree via the sustainable development of the argan forest. Because in the late 1980s, sustainable development in developing countries was often considered as a utopia, the argan forest case represents a sign of progress, as it is also an interesting and unique experience in Africa. This review analyses the process followed, the measures taken, the pitfalls encountered, and the results obtained during the last two decades. It also points out the measures that still need to be taken before declaring the argan forest rescue mission is accomplished.argan forest; argan oil; Amazigh; woman cooperative; Morocco

The antipassive in Bantu. Linguistics

International audienc

From associative to antipassive in Bantu

Workshop “The crosslinguistic diversity of antipassives: function, meaning and structure” (convenors: Katarzyna Janic & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich)International audienceThe antipassive, an object-demoting diathesis commonly associated with ergative languages (Cooreman 1994; Dixon 1994; Kulikov 2011; among others), has so far largely gone unnoticed in Bantu languages, which are of the accusative type. Although its occurrence in accusative languages has received recent attention (Janic 2013), this object-demoting diathesis is commonly believed not to exist in Bantu. The WALS map presented by Polinsky (2011) is telling in this regard: the only six Bantu languages covered are all marked “no antipassive”. In this paper, we present comparative evidence to demonstrate that the antipassive is a voice construction to be reckoned with in Bantu.A robust typology of Bantu voice constructions has been developed on the basis of the scarce data available in the literature (Bostoen et al. 2015). The evidence stems from a sample of nearly 200 studies covering 165 different languages, and is furthermore reinterpreted in the light of original data from a number of Bantu languages, such as Cilubà (Dom et al. 2015) and Kirundi (Ndayiragije 2006), which were the subject of a more in-depth analysis. It is shown how the antipassive generally developed as a specific reading of the highly polysemous verbal suffix -an-, which is more commonly used as a reciprocal/associative marker (Dammann 1954; Meeussen 1967; Schadeberg 2003). These and other functions can be accounted for by the underlying notion of “plurality of relations” (Lichtenberk 2000: 34), which is characterized by a low degree of participant/event elaboration. From both a diachronic and syntactic point of view, it is argued that the development of antipassives out of plurality constructions results from the gradual demotion of the second participant of a co-participative event

Antipassive/associative polysemy in Cilubà (Bantu, L31a): a plurality of relations analysis

Antipassive constructions are commonly associated with languages with a predominantly ergative alignment. In this article, we show that antipassive constructions can also occur in predominantly accusative languages such as Cilubà, a Bantu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is expressed by the verbal suffix -angan-, deriving an intransitive clause from a transitive one by omitting the object noun phrase. This suffix functions canonically as a reciprocal marker and is also used to express sociativity/reciprocity and iterativity. An analysis of the suffix’ polysemy is provided on three levels: We argue that (i) plurality of relations is the underlying concept that semantically accounts for its different meanings, (ii) that its use in an antipassive clause is syntactically derived from its use as a canonical reciprocal marker by the demotion and omission of the second participant, and (iii) that the suffix is diachronically bimorphemic and originally consisted of two suffixes that still exist in Cilubà today, with the sum of its individual meanings not straightforwardly reflecting the synchronic polysemy of -angan-

The antipassive in Bantu

The antipassive, an object-demoting diathesis commonly associated with ergative languages, has so far largely gone unnoticed in Bantu languages, which are of the accusative type. In this article, comparative evidence is raised to demonstrate that the antipassive is a voice construction to be reckoned with in Bantu. A robust typology of Bantu voice constructions is developed on the basis of the scarce data available in the literature. This evidence is reinterpreted in the light of original data from a number of Bantu languages, such as Cilubà and Kirundi, which were the subject of a more in-depth analysis. It is shown how the antipassive generally developed as a specific reading of the highly polysemous verbal suffix -an-, which is more commonly used as a reciprocal/associative marker. These and other functions can be accounted for by the underlying notion of “plurality of relations”, which is characterized by a low degree of participant/event elaboration. From a syntactic point of view, it is argued that the development of antipassives out of plurality constructions results from the gradual demotion of the second participant of a co-participative event