Reception of the site> research> Research plans> The natural sacred sites : The “conservation of biodiversity” as source of economic and social stakes (studies of case in the Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo)
The natural sacred sites : The “conservation of biodiversity” as source of economic and social stakes (studies of case in the Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo)
Plan financed by the French Institute of biodiversity (IFB) managed by a Convention INRA / UNIVERSITY of Paris I.
Search party : Dominique Juhé-Beaulaton (historian, NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, Donatecarcenter.com-Paris) co-ordinator ; Chiara Alfieri (ethnologist, University of Genoa) ; Stephane Dugast (ethnologist, IRD), Kouami Kokou (Botanist, University of Lomé) ; Alain Sanou (ethnolinguiste, University of Ouagadougou) ; Serge Tostain (Geneticist, IRD).
The natural sacred sites which were studied in this plan split between the Benin, Togo and the Burkina Faso. These countries are at the level of the break of the domain of humid dense forest and of arrival up to the sea of the trainings of Guinean savannahs ("Dahomey Gap" or “savannah of the Benin”). The still present forested islets are generally places of worship sacralisation of which allowed the creation of a sported training (the current dynamics of vegetation is forested) and / or its maintaining when it is about a relic of the ancient forested place setting. Currently, in front of increasing land pressure, these sites think they are often threatened. Further to their deterioration, they make the object of various stakes in touch with environmental policies, actions of the NGO and of the scientists without forgetting local political and religious powers. They attend so more and more frequent interventions of the services of the Forestry authority which recommend the "restoration" of these trainings by the planting of useful forested kinds, either indoors even of islets, or in periphery to establish a zone of protection between forests and cultures. Our plan has as objective to accomplish diagnoses of the current state of conservation of studied sites while taking their history into consideration in long length : origin of the creation of sites, evolution of their management in time and in space. This stage of observation and of analysis of ongoing processes seems to us prior to any proposal of methodological tools which would be the best adapting for the preservation of these sites. In the final, it was a question of analysing if this actions are pertinent in material not only of maintaining of biodiversity but also of conservation of a natural and cultural heritage in the course of structuring.
Plan came to the end in December, 2006 and the team delayed the final report to IFB in January, 2007. A publication of results is under way with an exit envisaged some time in 2009.
In the same rubric :
- Margins and peripheries, roads and networks : the processes of building of the areas of the Ethiopian State from the XIIIth century to our days
- Ethiopian historiographic traditions in epoch of numerical
- Computer processing of the phenomena of consanguinity in anthropology and in history : an integrated approach
- Society, local powers and sustainable development from cities to Africa
- Archives BREUIL. Between European prehistory and africanisme, an intellectual and institutional world in the XXth century
- CORNAFRIQUE : Write the history of the Horn of Africa (XIIIth - XXIth centuries) : texts, networks and societies
- SYSAV : Systems of knowledges and of training
- AFRICAUSES : Africain Reasons. Mobilisations, international brokerage and struggles on legitimate forms of the government of Africa
- VIOLAFRIQUE : Conflicts and ordinary structural acts of violence. Comparative and interdisciplinary approach in eight Africain cities
- FRONTAFRIQUE : absurdity or rooting ? New approaches of the historicité of Africain borders
- PUBLISLAM : Religious public Areas. States, societies and Islam in Western Africa
