Potentialités et limites de la gestion participative des Aires Marines Protégées : Le cas de Joal-Fadiouth, Sénégal

Increasingly, there is a strong international consensus on the fact that the participation of resident communities is one of the conditions for successful MPA (Marine Protected Area) governance. Thus, this thesis aims to contribute to this emerging debate on MPA governance through reflections about the experience of a conservation project implemented by an international NGO (WWF WMPAO) in collaboration with the State and the local populations in Joal-Fadiouth, with a view to identify the catalysts social factors.

The results show that the objectives of the MPA project are not purely local; they are strongly influenced by a global standard as well as regional and national dynamics. Thus, the MPA is much more seen as a conservation tool, whith sanctuarization as philosophical and conceptual basis. This logic of action has led to a real discrepancy between the original objectives and the outcomes in daily practice in the field. The victory of "sanctuarization" on local development, despite discourses based on a constructive approach of the integration paradigm, gave rise to tensions and multiple repulsive reactions and claims in relation to local territorial rights. And in this respect, MPA is a “reserve with reservation”: it refers, on the one hand to a "sanctuarized" space and, on the other, to an increasingly challenged social acceptance in relationship to local territorial dynamics.

This thesis has shown, through three case studies, the real potential of co-management regimes, which main catalyst factors are, but not limited to, the setting in the core of the process of actors with real decision-making powers and responsibilities, of information and awareness raising, of financial incentives to overcome the limitations, of integration of scientific expertise to endogenous knowledge, of support of the State and its decentralized services, and of the strengthening of local capacities ... Those co-management experiences offer real additional strategic options to the MPA tool in a global approach to fisheries governance and territorialized development.

However, the results of the thesis show also the limits of participatory management induced by the projects (obligation of results short time-frame) through the "formatting of local institutions of governance" especially a Management Committee, which is struggling to meet its "excessive" responsibilities in light of its very limited resources. This committee has become a "local brokerage arena" which captures and capitalizes on co-management resources and means; which tends to move the real power towards "intermediary actors" who serve as populations/State interface or even "exploit" the administration officials. This thesis has also highlighted the paradox of the State that justifies and provides legitimacy to local co-management processes through legal institutionalization, but does not mobilize the legal, financial, human and logistical resources required to guarantee and secure the implementation of the agreements reached between the different actors. It has more of a posture of an organizing State than that of a State guarantor of management agreements.