Contenu du sommaire : Ressources hydrauliques et crise des sociétés rurales dans les PVD

The transition from dry agriculture to irrigation is often presented as a solution to the problems of demographic growth in developing countries. However, statistical analysis shows that the increase in irrigated areas is less rapid in poor than in rich countries. Food and demographic crises provoke change but this is often thwarted by the lack of suitable agricultural vectors and by the ossification of traditional social structures whose development has been blocked by the State.

Although water is relatively abundant in the Maghreb, climatic and spatial factors make this a scarce resource. Despite major investment, shortage of water supplies has grown as a result of the combined forces of urbanisation, industrialisation and the increased demand from agriculture (also clearly linked to strong demographic growth). Recognition of this fact gives rise to a wider reflection on the way in which the problem of scarcity is managed : it seems that there is gradual shift away from a situation where the needs of irrigation determined the use of water, a system which became widrespread under colonial management. Currently North African countries are attempting to regulate consumption by legal means (water code) and by economic measures (tariff policies) but the results will never match the scale of the problem aslongasthe "social actors" affected by such measures are not involved in theprocess. Water remains the ally of the powerful.

Marginal areas of the arid belt represent an ideal terrain for the development of major, state-backed irrigation and agricultural schemes. In such projects States see the possibility of increasing the control which they exercise over regions previously poorly integrated into national space. In this context the economic results are less important than the question of control and the creation of new regional spaces.

The development of irrigation in the Senegal valley now depends on the major dams of Dagana and Manantali. However neighbouring countries are still seeking a suitable development model. Currently this is seen in the simultaneous development of different types of village périmètre : those which are too small to be viable, those which are too large and exclude the participation of local populations and those of a medium-size, but for which there is no evidence, except in a limited number of specific cases, that they offer a realistic model of development. Such uncertainties are linked to a lack of tradition in the use of irrigation and to the inadequacy of coordinating structures between the different partners, administrative services, non-governmental organisations and peasant farmers.

Hydro-agricultural developments in the Senegal valley, despite an apparent rationality, conceal a number of paradoxical patterns of behaviour, typical of a society in transition : the economic objectives of the State to improve agriculture conflict with the food-producing goals of farmers themselves. Similarly, the theoretical nationalisation of land is in opposition to the maintenance of former hierarchies of land ownership both within villages and in terms of relations between villages. Such issues need to be interpreted in a wide historical perspective of change.