Gender, Pastoralism, and Intensification: Changing Environmental Resource Use in Morocco

INTRODUCTION Nomadic pastoralism was once a dominant feature on the North African landscape. Since the end of World War II, however, extensive nomadic herding has steadily shifted toward more intensive agro-pastoral production on marginal grazing lands (Bencherifa and Johnson 1990). This trend raises concerns about the social consequences of cumulative land-cover change, particularly land-use intensification, land degradation and declining species diversity, and challenges researchers and policy makers to address the complexities of local scale land-use systems (Turner et al. 1990). Studies that explore the interaction between cultural change, economic development and environmental sustainability have generally recognized the importance of understanding the socio-political contexts within which land-users make resource decisions (Blaikie 1985). Yet, questions about how gender relations affect intra-household environmental management remain unclear, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. Identifying the constraints and opportunities that shape gendered land-use behavior assures a more accurate assessment of environmental change at the scale where decisions are made. Understanding the human dynamics of environmental change is important in semi-arid rangelands of North Africa, which cover approximately 385,000 square kilometers and represent 25% of the region’s productive food raising area (Abbab 1994). More than 15 million people, or one quarter of the region’s population, derive their livelihoods directly from land-based activities of mixed farming and herding (Abbab 1994; Le Houerou 1993). Such an understanding is particularly important to Morocco, where 64% of the land area is classified as rangeland, pasture, woodland or forest and where almost half of the working population derives its livelihood from agriculture or livestock raising (UNEP 1993). 1 Despite the prolific literature on gender, resources and sustainable development, in Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, geographical literature on women and the environment still ignores these naturesociety questions in the Middle East and North Africa (e.g., Momsen and Townsend 1987; Momsen and Kinnaird 1993; Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter and Wangari, eds. 1996). Through a study of the sedentarization of the Beni Guil pastoral nomads of eastern Morocco, this paper examines how gender interacts with environmental and socio-economic change. Based on extensive fieldwork with the Beni Guil, this paper demonstrates how gendered resource exploitation–in particular, the collection of mushrooms, medicinal plants, and fuelwood–is recast through sedentarization, urbanization, and commercialization. The case of the Beni Guil suggests that certain accepted theories of the consequences of settlement for nomad women and their local environments should be re-examined in order to understand better the past and present, and to plan for the future.