Overview, Issues

The key issues faced by Mauritanian agricultural and rural economic systems are the following:

• The rural-to-urban migration,
• Pastoralism provides high returns and is the only feasible form of land use in large areas of the country, yet receives low priority compared with rain fed and irrigated agriculture,
• Desertification (including the southward movement of the 400 millimeter isohyet) and deterioration of wet lands, oases, and other marginal areas,
• Traditional communal property rights' systems are in flux,
• There is lack of traditional institutions for mediating conflicts over natural resources within and across ethnic group boundaries, and between traditional institutions and the administration, and
• Legislation is, in general, not adapted to local particularities, with the exception of the «Code Pastoral» and new legislation pertaining to oases.

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