Elaborating a Local Convention for Managing Village Woodlands in Southern Mali

This paper describes the development of a natural resource management convention by six villages, in the context of an action-research programme. After an introduction to Southern Mali, the paper presents a description of customary land tenure and national forest legislation before and after 1995. This is followed by discussion of how a local convention at village level was elaborated, the procedures followed to gain approval by the local administration, and some conclusions.