Overview, Introduction
This Initiative - Technology Fosters Tradition (TFT) - concerns an attempt to document the totality of natural resource use-rights in a given locality in eastern Mauritania (to be identified), through the beneficiaries themselves. The Initiative would empower them to live by these rules as the law governing their area, and observe over about three years whether they actually abide by them. The locality would cover both sedentary and migratory land use.
It is assumed that consensus among the target population will lead to a confirmation of all existing rights, and that this represents the best option of land use through striking a balance between short-term economic return and long-term environmental sustainability. The Initiative would explore the existing situation in depth, providing an example of the first phase of the World Bank promoted community-driven approach.
The Initiative would not provide investments. As the population expects tangible returns for its participation, such investments would be provided through a partnership with projects implemented by the World Bank and the German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) in the target area. Furthermore, the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) and, through it, the US National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) is also participating (cf. page Partners and sponsors).
The Initiative is called «Technology Fosters Tradition» because modern technological tools, such as computerized maps, GIS, combination of geographic data and text, and dissemination of data via the Internet would help to: (1) Elicit the specific traditional knowledge applicable to the chosen locality, and (2) Observe the tradition, that is the use-rights as laid down by the local beneficiaries. Availability of the data to everybody at all times is assumed to facilitate these developments. Changes in the environment, if any, would be detected by remote sensing and made public.
The TFT is conceived as an 'initiative' and not a project for the following reasons: (1) it is open to all stakeholders, including local people living in different biomes and ecosystems, government agencies and donors (in fact, its success depends on the overall collaboration of all relevant stakeholders), (2) it would like to distance itself from the regular project concept and cycle with its various built-in problem (projects will, at the same time, be participants in, and supporters of, TFT), and (3) it represent a concept and an approach, and not a blue print. TFT is, accordingly, a network of all relevant stakeholders that are active in Mauritania.
The solution lies in identifying and addressing the needs of the local people. To influence their behavior towards sustainable environmental practices, the TFT starts with an assessment of local practices, tracing and fixing them on maps, and screening for environmental beneficial or harmful effects. Required changes in use patterns will be negotiated with the local people until a consensus agreeable to all parties is reached.
These negotiated behavioral rules will be consolidated in regulations that are: (i) formulated by local people, (ii) in their dialect, (iii) clear, short and succinct, stating purpose and policy, (iv) simultaneously drafted in the official languages of the country, revised and edited in an itinerant process with expert's input, and (v) conform to the objectives of international environmental conventions. The texts will be archived in the Official Gazette and on the Internet (GLIN) and also affixed on a GIS-centered geographic map. The process constitutes a legal reform that gives priority to customary law over transplanted law, thus establishing the basis for a convergence between the actual behavior of the population and the laws and regulations intended to govern such behavior. Attempting to harmonize the resulting regulations with constitutional priorities and human rights values will be the challenge to be met by this approach.
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