A GIFT FROM GOD CONFLICTS OVER WATER AND AUTHORITY IN MALI SIGNE MARIE COLD-RAVNKILDE PHD THESIS ·UNIVERSITY OF ROSKILDE · 2012 ii Women fetching water in Douentza TO MY BELOVED AUGUST AND ANDREAS iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VIII INTRODUCTION 1 Framing the Study 2 Arguments 3 Structure 5 PART I. STUDYING WATER CONFLICTS 8 CHAPTER 1. ANALYZING WATER CONFLICTS 9 Introduction 9 Engaging the Literature on Water Conflicts 9 An Alternative Approach to Water Conflicts 12 Engaging the Literature on Institutions 14 An Alternative Approach to Institutions 18 Authority as Legitimate Power 23 Claims to Authority and Registers of Legitimacy 25 Summary 27 CHAPTER 2. APPROACHING WATER CONFLICTS 29 Studying Water Conflicts in Douentza 29 Case Studies of Water Conflicts 33 ‘Following the Conflicts’ 36 Accessing the Field 39 Collecting and Producing the Data 43 Summary 45 PART II. CONTEXTUALIZING WATER CONFLICTS AND AUTHORITY 46 CHAPTER 3. DECENTRALIZATION AND HISTORICAL TRAJECTORIES 47 Introduction 47 Decentralization Reform in Mali 48 Historical Trajectories of Authority 58 Historical Trajectories of Social Stratification 64 Historical Trajectories of Natural Resource Management 71 Summary 76 CHAPTER 4. CONTEXTUALIZING WATER CONFLICTS IN DOUENTZA 78 Introduction 78 Water Conflicts and Cooperation in Douentza 79 Institutions in Water Conflict and Cooperation 88 Summary 96 v PART III. STRUGGLING FOR WATER AND AUTHORITY IN KOYRA 98 CHAPTER 5. CHANGING STRUCTURES OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND AUTHORITY IN KOYRA 99 Introduction 99 In the Village of Koyra 100 Social Stratification in Rural Water Supply 102 Aristocrats, Nobles and Newcomers in Koyra 105 Legitimizing Authority 108 Summary 114 CHAPTER 6. CONFLICTS OVER WATER MANAGEMENT IN KOYRA 116 Introduction 116 Conflicts over Koyra’s Water Supply 117 Actors and Claims in the Conflict 125 Registers of Legitimacy and Access to Authority in Koyra 133 Conclusion 138 PART IV. WATER - GOD’S GIFT? 140 CHAPTER 7. THE BECOMING OF AMAN: A PLACE IN THE MAKING 141 Introduction 141 The Becoming of Aman 142 Alliances and Settlement in Aman 145 The Warrior, the Nurse, and the Emancipated: Claims to Chieftaincy in Aman 150 Summary 159 CHAPTER 8. WHO OWNS AMAN? 160 Introduction 160 Contested Territorial Boundaries 161 Contested Access Claims to Water 170 Establishing Authority in Aman 176 Conclusion 178 CONCLUSIONS 180 Studying Water Conflicts 181 Water Conflicts 183 Institutions of Authority: Actors and Arenas in Conflict 184 Actors and Claims to Authority 185 Registers of Legitimacy 187 LITERATURE 193 APPENDIX. FIELD WORK OVERVIEW 207 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Political Institutions in Mali 51 Table 2. Distribution of Events across Communities 83 Table 3. Number of Direct Parties 89 Table 4. Number of Direct Institutional Parties 91 Table 5. Number of Third Parties Involved 92 Table 6. Management Committee Members 1996-1999 119 Table 7. Management Committee Members 2001-2005 121 Table 8. Management Committee Members 2005-2007 123 Table 9. Population in Aman 147 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Seasonal Distribution of Events 84 Figure 2. Inter-annual Distribution of Events 85 Figure 3. Water Sources Involved in Conflictive and Cooperative Events 86 Figure 4. Water Uses Associated with Events 87 Figure 5. Parties Directly Involved in Water Events 90 Figure 6. Types of Third Parties Called On 91 Figure 7. Types of Action Taken 94 Figure 8. Surface Increase of Aman from 1966 till 2006 144 LIST OF MAPS Map 1. Map of Mali x Map 2. Map of Douentza District 82 Map 3. Village Map of Aman 148 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was funded through the Danida Research Council FFU as part of the Competing for Water Programme. I am grateful for this funding and to the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala for providing me with a travel grant. I am deeply indebted to all the people who contributed to my fieldwork in Mali. I owe my sincerest gratitude to the people in Mali who helped me produce the core material of his work. I would like to thank the people in Koyra, Akal and Aman for allowing me into their lives and sharing valuable insights and information with me. I am deeply grateful to the local authorities in Douentza, Koyra and Akal for their support and interest. I express my sincerest gratitude to my research assistants Adama Onguiba, Mohammed Yeyha, and my driver Mohammed Arby. Without their assistance, knowledge, social understanding and persistent effort this thesis would not have been written. Their inspiring and joyful company made fieldwork a pleasant and valuable learning experience. I am very grateful to the staff at the Near East Foundation in Douentza, in particular Ali Bocoum and Yamadou Diallo, for assisting me in many ways and for being good partners in discussions. Special thanks go to my colleagues at the GERSDA department of the University of Bamako, in particular Moussa Djire, Abdoulaye Cissé, Amadou Keita and Anna Traoré for assistance, good discussions, inspiration and friendship. I hope our collaboration will continue in the future. I am grateful to Claude, Karen and Anna Mauret for hospitality, assistance and good laughs, and to Nathalie Maulet for keeping me with good company in Bamako. I also owe appreciation to the helpful staff at the Danish Embassy in Bamako and the National Hydraulics Department in Bamako. In Denmark, several people have supported this project and process in various ways. This is especially true of my supervisors: Christian Lund for encouraging me to take on this project, for structure, inspiration and reassurance; Helle Munk Ravnborg for guidance in the Competing for Water Programme, inspiration, critical comments and enjoyable bread-baking. Eric Hanonou supervised this project for one year, and I am deeply grateful for the valuable insights added to this project. I would like to thank all the partners in the Competing for Water Programme for inspiring discussions and development of thoughts. A special thanks to Mikkel Funder for inspiration, enthusiasm and traveling with me to Mali. My friends and colleagues at the Danish Institute for International Studies have been invaluable in providing daily engagement in academic inspirations encouragement and good laughs. I am especially thankful to Birgitte Lind Pedersen, Rachel Spichiger, Luke Patey, and France Bourgoin. A special thanks to Jon Lausten Villesen for numbers and graphs, Ellen-Marie Bendtsen and Jesper Linell for layouts, and to Ida Peters for helping with biographies. I would not have managed the last months without the knowledgeable guidance of Marie Juul Pedersen, who has read the entire thesis and directed me towards the end, for that I am utterly grateful. I would like to thank my fellow PhD students at the Graduate School of International Development Studies for all the comments and intellectual support. In particular I would like to thank Paul Stacey, Andreas Waaben Thulstrup, Rasmus Hundsbæk, Kasper Hoffman and Tomas Martin for inspiration, lively discussions and good laughs. I am also deeply grateful to Henrik Secher Marcussen for reading an early draft of this work and whose thorough comments enabled me to finish and sharpen my focus and to Inge Jensen for valuable support and interest. I owe a special thanks to Karen Lauterbach for inspiration, academic support and friendship. Friends have encouraged me and reminded me that there is a life outside the office. Thanks especially to Julie Bang, Lea Holst-Jensen, Liselotte Jauffred, Gry Nielsen and to Maj Forum for struggling with biographies late at night; Thanks to my family Christoffer Cold-Ravnkilde and my mother Maja Cold-Ravnkilde whose support and assistance has made this project feasible. Most importantly, this thesis is dedicated to my beloved: my son August and to my husband Andreas Harbsmeier for traveling with me all the way to Tombouctou and for loving and marrying me in the process of writing this thesis. ix Map 1. Map of Mali1 1 Source: www.nationsonline.org/maps/mali_map.jpg. x INTRODUCTION In 1999, the water supply system broke down in Koyra,2 a desert town in the north of Mali. The newly elected mayor had personally ensured the financing of the water supply through his contacts in the German Development Cooperation (GTZ). He had been president of the water committee for three years, but now the money from the water sale had all gone, the pump was broken, and there were rumors that he had used the money for other purposes. The newcomers in town challenged his authority to run the water supply. In 2000, shortly afterwards, the mayor of Koyra wrote to his neighboring colleague, the mayor of Akal, to claim that a lake situated on the border between them belonged to his municipality. Addressing the district authorities in Douentza, the mayor of Akal rejected the claim. The letter started off a dispute over the lake between the neighboring municipalities, which to this day has still not been settled. These two examples illustrate how institutions of authority are deeply involved in water conflicts not only in providing solutions, but also as actors attempting to position themselves through the control of water resources. At other times, they are called on in virtue of their authority to mediate between parties in conflict. Much literature has portrayed natural resource conflicts as conflicts between groups competing to use resources for different purposes (Baechler, 1999; Barrière and Barrière, 2002). Water conflicts have served as prominent examples of scarcity-induced conflicts, that is, examples of how conflicts arise from increased competition for a declining pool of resources (Gleick, 1993). Conventional views of conflicts regard them as a result of droughts, increased pressure on water and land, and diverging interests in resource use. Another body of literature has attributed the low success rate in solving conflicts to the collapse or failure of the institutions involved in natural resource management (Barrière and Barrière, 2002; Moorehead, 1998; Vedeld, 1997).