Migrations, environnement et conflits fonciers en Afrique de l’Ouest

Internal migrations in Sahelian West Africa are nothing new, but their intensification following repeated periods of drought and territorial changes more or less related to these is leading to what could be called environmental conflicts. In the reserve areas established in colonial times, like W National Park around the fluvial border of Niger, Burkina and Benin observed here, are concentrated the divergent aims of sedentary populations settled at the periphery and moving populations who arrive and get involved in the competition for access to land. The steady degradation of the reserve amplifies the conflict over land rights. With traditional collective management of former sedentary communities or individual registration of new arrivals of originally nomadic people, the status of the land is at the heart of the most ordinary conflicts.