BETWEEN REPRESENTATIONS OF TERRITORIES, LAND USES AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS. TWO CASE STUDIES IN YESTERDAY’S AND TODAY’S SAHEL: THE LAKE CHAD BASIN AND THE SENEGAL RIVER

In the Sahel region, water resources management, land use planning and development policies are influenced by actor’s perceptions of water. The representations of territory1 have changed as well as the general context and power relations between the different actors and agencies, since colonial period till nowadays. Traditionally, water was considered as a grant for “reproductive strategies2” characterised by high multistability and resilience. Annual floods of rivers and lakes used to regenerate the local environment, and allowed the complementary use of floodplain for agriculture, cattle-breeding and fishing. This territory can be defined as inclusive, as it used to include several economic activities, reproductive systems and societies (agricultural-sedentary or pastoral-nomadic systems). Those inclusive, flexible territories were reinterpreted with the arrival of big development projects based on irrigation, which lead to a more rigid conception of modern territoriality3. The “project machine” makes a clean sweep of the pre-existing territories; it imposes on the territories the rules of modernity, with its production systems. Our analysis points out the actions performed by irrigation projects on the Lake Chad basin and on the Senegal River. The same goals, similar territories, short term scheduling, similar actors, the same results: complete failure.