Browsing by Author "Karsenty, Alain"

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Assessing Sustainability of Logging Practices in the Congo Basin's Managed Forests: the Issue of Commercial Species Recovery
(2006) Karsenty, Alain; Gourlet-Fleury, Sylvie
"Traditionally, sustained yield (SY) has been viewed as a pillar of sustainable forest management (SFM), but this has been increasingly questioned. Ensuring SY of some species, i.e., a 'strong sustainability' paradigm, could be an inadequate criterion if consideration of the social and economic components of the SFM concept are desired. SFM was translated into the ATO/ITTO set of principles, criteria, and indicators (PCI) for forest management in the Congo Basin; it resulted in the necessity for a certified logging company to ensure that no significant change in structure and floristic composition would result from logging operations. Besides raising the question of where to place the change threshold, we argue that sustainability must be considered from three indissociable viewpoints: ecological, social, and economic. The issue is how to balance these criteria, knowing that this assessment will involve potential conflicts of representations and beliefs. To discuss these questions, we used the example of two heavily logged timber species in the Congo Basin, sapelli (Entandrophragma cylindricum) and ayous (Triplochiton scleroxylon). Using long-term data collected from permanent sample plots in Mbaiki, Central African Republic, we calibrated a matrix model and performed short- and long-term simulations to examine (1) the potential effect of repeated logging of the species under the current national regulation system and (2) the rules that should be set to reach long-term SY. Ensuring long-term SY would require a 22% and 53% decrease in the felling intensity of E. cylindricum and T. scleroxylon, respectively, at first cut, together with an increase in overall logging intensity targeted toward less-used species. Light-demanding E. cylindricum and T. scleroxylon require open forests to regenerate and grow. This new set of rules is probably economically unsustainable for the current African forest industry, and will not meet the ecological requirements encapsulated in the ATO/ITTO PCI. We thus stress the following points: (1) the importance of most exploited species for the current industry may change as wood processing capacities become more efficient and markets change, potentially providing conditions for harvesting a greater number of species; (2) floristic change is unavoidable in these conditions, but this problem should be addressed at a broad scale, notably by ensuring a network of protected areas; (3) as long as the timber industry remains one of the few sources of employment and revenues in marginalized countries, reducing SFM to SY of the most exploited species on every concession appears questionable."
Contrat et Gestion Patrimoniale
(1992) Karsenty, Alain
"No Abstract Available"
The Invention of the Moroccan 'Terres Collectives,' or the Retardation of a Rural Society
(1995) Karsenty, Alain
"At the beginning of the French Protectorate in Morocco, jurists thought they had discovered farming groups bearing the same archaic features of what they thought to be collective property. They elaborated a new legal creation, a distinct land category endowed with a special legal statute, named 'Collective Land.' "There were three phrases in the creating of that standard legal and sociological ideal: (1) the wording of the organizational 'pattern' of collective lands combining the main archaic features of exotic societies according to social sciences at that time; (2) legal protection effective through land statutes that made lands inalienable; and (3) an attempt to make these communities traditional through a 'sharing regulation' which gave uniform and equal access to the land. "This process of institutional creation illustrates what Bourdieu calls 'juridism,' i.e. an analysis pattern confusing norms and habits. Thus, the bled jmaa farmers had a great variety of farming practices and there were various levels of legitimacy. It is clearly an example of 'anthropological objectivism,' i.e. crediting reality with assumptions which belong to a pattern initially built to describe reality. "The consequences of such a creation were that: community lands were rather well protected, at least against private occupation; the will to maintain 'traditional institutions' within communities previously able to evolve and adapt led them to crystallization and crisis; and today, these farmers are very individualistic and they clearly long for private property. "This example should be reflected in order to avoid locking agents into supposed rules, to be able to offer them an open cooperation and to allow them to keep their full adaptation abilities."
Les 'Terres Collectives' Du Gharb et le Protectorat: Modele et Realites
(1992) Karsenty, Alain
"La question des 'terres collectives' au Maroc est l'objet d'un débat déja ancien qui remonte au début du Protectorat. Le problème réside dans le fait que par l'expression 'terrecs collectives', on entend à la fois plusieurs niveaux de compréhension de la réalité: un modèle explicatif, un statut juridique et un groupe humain organisé autour de son finage. Toute l'ambiguïté réside dans le fait que le débat qui s'est déroulé au début du Protectorat - ct maintenant encore - a confondu en permanence ces trois niveaux dans l'étude du système foncier marocain."