Legal pluralism in water management in the Sahara of southwestern Algeria; Socioeconomic Transformations & Food Security

Research Division: Cities and Territories  

seminar

 Legal pluralism in water management in the Sahara in southwestern Algeria; Socioeconomic Transformations & Food Security

 Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 9:30 a.m. at CRASC headquarters

Research project:  Legal pluralism in water management in the Sahara in southwestern Algeria; Socioeconomic Transformations & Food Security

Summary

The governance of natural resources in the Sahara is shared between several centres of power: customary power (the oldest), religious (established in the Sahara with the advent of Islam in the Middle Ages) and more recently institutional (established after independence in 1962). The dynamic of the interactions between these three legitimacies is the basis for the emergence of a new territoriality which sometimes leads to situations of complementarity, but in other cases, the interference between the three modes of management is synonymous with blockage, even of conflict. Our main objective for this project is to measure the level of integration of the three cited legitimacies in relation to the principles of good polycentric governance, in particular: interaction, flexibility, adaptability and efficiency (McGinnis, 2011) (De Sousa, 1996). In this context, the following questions arise: How does the customary norm interact with the principles of Sharia and the legal texts of the State on water and vice versa? Who are the protagonists of these exchanges, their strategies and what is the impact on the organization of space and society?