BURKINA FASO REPORT E 0012 Public Disclosure Authorized NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION PLAN Public Disclosure Authorized Summary Public Disclosure Authorized August 1993 Public Disclosure Authorized This report is property of Burkina Faso BUTRKIAFASO NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTALACTION PLAN EXECUTVE SUMMARY BACKGROUND 1. The Burkina Faso National promulgatedin 1985a Land ReformAct (RAF). EnvironmentalAction Plan (NEAP)is designed It undertook in 1987 the three "struggles" to provide a strategic framework to enable the (Iuaes): against brush fires, randomtree cutting authoritiesto guide and coordinate and monitor and overgrazing. actions that seek to improve environmental management so as to meet the needs of the 4. These activities had a predominantly current population while sustaining renewable rural natural resource managementfocus and led resources in order to meet the needs of future to the 'Village Land Management'premise that generationsof Burkinabe. the key to successfulresource managementwas the voluntary participationof the villager. This 2. The Buridnabehave been managingtheir would require security of tenure and a environment fbr centries, mostly through contractual arrangement ensuring technical and cultivation practices that recognized the infrastructuresupport from nationalgovernment productive limits of the land being farmed by services in exchange for environmental allowing the land to reconstitute itself. In management activities carried out by the modem times these practices have been villagers. overwhelmed by population growth. A burgeoningpopulation means that there is simply 5. Regrettably, although there were many not enough land to leave fallow, with serious activities underway, there was still a lack of consequencesin terms of overutilizationof the significant results. The RAF did not in practice land. provide practical security of tenure. Government technical support was limited to a 3. Recognizing this fact relatively early, handful of pilot projects. Infrastructuresupport Burkina Faso acquired a reputation in West was largely limited to the initiativesof external Africa as a leader in actions aimed at improving donors. Only a handful of contracts were envirornental management. It was one of the entered into and enviromnental management first countriesto establish, wiffithe assistanceof activitiesoccurred mosty in responseto NGO or CILSS, a NationalPlan for the Struggle against donor initiatives. The coordinatingcommittee Desertification (PNLCD; 1986) with a for the PNLCD (the CNLCD) lacked an coordinatingcommittee (CNLCD; 1986). It operating structure that would permit it to I~~~~ ~ _______________ Burkina Fa: .Naroan Evnxuuatal Acnio Plan 2 coordinate effectively and the strong political through the "Village Land Management* support for enviromnentalmanagement that was approach. However, the workshopidentified the evidentat the launchingof the programswas not need to both deepen and broaden the range of consistentlymaintained. activitiesthat had been undertaken. 6. In the meantime, population growth 10. A key necessity identified was to continued unabated at about 3% per annum provide more encouragement, instruction and nation wide and about 8% per annum in the two motivationto land users to empower, enableand major cities. Migration from north to south encourage them to undertake village land continuedand migrationto Cote d'Ivoire became management- This should be achieved through less attractive,resulting in additionalpressure on strengtheningthe 'Village Land Management' the southernlands. approach to improve tie availabilityof technical services, to modify and strengthen the RAF to 7. Conscious of the need to do more,.the ensure security of tenure, and to accelerate the Burkinabe authorities called a National provision of social and economic infrastructure Workshop on the Environment in Bobo- to villages. Dioulasso in October 1989. Sixty participants i debatedthe environmentalproblems facing the 11. A second important recommendation country, using as a base three documents was to extend the concept of environmental produced by Burkinabt consultants on the managementbeyond the confines of the village physical, social and institutionalenvironment, first to include macro-managementof national natural resources and second to undertake 8. The NationalEnvironmental Action Plan measuresto improve environmentalconditions- gives an operational form to the principal notably water supply and treatment, sewerage, conclusions and recommendations of the and household, industrial and toxic waste workshop. Based on the recent experience of disposal-in urban and peri-urban areas. This .numerous programs and projects and the should complementthe measures required for- supplementary studies recommended by the and should in no way divert attention or workshop, the goal is to provide a simple but resources from-village land management. comprehensiveframework which will enablethe better organization, management and 12. A third recommendation was to coordinationof existing and future operations. improve national, regional and departmental The NEAP is thus an additional part of the environmentalplanning and coordination. This continuingeffbrts to improvethe managementof should include monitoring and evaluating the Burkina enviromnent. environmental targets, ensuring that new programs and projects are consistent with environmentaland economic planning objectives, CONCLUSIONS OF THE NATIONAL initiating a program of environmental ENVIRONMENTAL WORKSHOP assessments and improving the quality and availabilityof environmentalinformation. 9. The workshopreiterated the objectiveof environmentalmanagement as the search for a 13. A fourth recommendation was to socio-ecologicalbalance, i.e., a balance between improve the level of both formal and informal man and nature. The workshop strongly environmentaleducation with the twin objectives endorsedseveral key elementsof the programs of increasingthe population's awarenessof the that had been previouslyattempted, notably the need for environmental management and attempt to achieve socio-ecological balance improving the technical capability of both the Burk= Fw: Nauion nronmealAcn Po n 3 authoritiesand the private sector. This need was obstaclesto progress identifiedby the workshop. judged to be an important prerequisite for achieving the workshop's other 17. The reason for regroupingexisting and recommendations. future environmentalmanagement actions in-o the ProgrammaticAgendas is threefold: first, it 14. A fifth recommendationnoted the need provides a useful organizing framework that for the Burkinabepolitical authoritiesto provide simplifiesthe understandingof the structure of substantiallyincreased support to enviromnental the NEAP; second, it facilitatesthe articulation management. This meant that the authorities of strategic guidelines to be followed in the should not limit themselves to launching execution of the programs and projects that programns,but should also interestthemselves in make up each ProgrammaticAgenda; and, third, following program executionin order to satisfy it providesa practicaland readilyunderstandable themselves and report to the people on the schema for monitoring and evaluating amount of progress being made. The objective environmentalmanagement actions. of effective high-level political support is to convince the Burkinabe people that the 18. There are four ProgrammaticAgendas: environment is the business of every citizen, from peasant to urban dweller, from forester to * The Programmatic Agenda for garbage collector, from infant to elder. National Resource Management 15. Finally, the workshop noted the e The Programmatic Agenda for Village importance of the intolerably high level of Land Management population growth which risked rendering all environmental management programs * The Programmatic Agenda for ineffective. The Workshopurged the authorities Improving living Standards to give it their most urgent attention, and although resolving this problem is beyond the The Programmatic Agenda for scope of a NationalEnvironment Action Plan, it DevelopingEnvironrmental Capabilities has been addressedin so far as is possible. 19. The Programmatic Agendas are complementedby two support programs: ELEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION PLAN * Managing Information on the Environment 16. The main objective of the National Environmental Action Plan is to provide a 0 Coordinating and Monitoring the coherent,action-oriented framework for carrying NEAP out a program of environmentalmanagement that will lead to a socio-ecologicalbalance. This 20. The interactions between the four means grouping the multitude of programs, ProgranmnaticAgendas are shownschematically projects and actions that have a bearing on the in Figure 1, which illustratesthe duality of the enviromnentinto a manageableframework. In required interventions-citizenand state-in the order to achieve this, the NEAP has been contextof changesthat need to be brought about constructedaround a series of 'Programmatic both in the managementof naturalresources and Agendas' (ProgrammnesCadres), each of which in the behavior of the citizenry. addresses a key dimension of envirornmental interventionand respondsto one or more of the 21. On the physical side, there is a division BaFm5:FasvAoomf EinwromnarlAcuo PIa 4 Figur I Conceptual Sructre of the NEAP i| NEAP OBJECTIVE SOCIO-ECOLOGICALBALANCE | Rr ~~SOCIAL X BIO-PHYSICAL j1 I. ENVIRONMET ENVIRONMENT) eId(wwfzlacqfocsogs )p>( opulation ( cbym}es of anonalrsourcs