Dans la région de Diffa au Niger, à une situation alimentaire structurellement déficitaire en raison d'une croissance démographique forte en zone aride, se surimpose une crise sécuritaire liée au groupe djihadiste Boko Haram, qui a entrainé un déplacement massif de population et une crise humanitaire majeure à l'échelle régionale. Au travers d'études successives depuis 2017, complétées par une enquête auprès de personnes hôtes, déplacées et réfugiées, nous analysons les recompositions à l'œuvre dans l'alimentation locale et la commensalité. Malgré l'éclatement des familles, leur redistribution dans le territoire et les ruptures brutales des mobilités qui assuraient les systèmes de subsistances, nous montrons que les habitants persistent à faire encore trois repas par jour, à rassembler la famille, à organiser les repas de fêtes et même à adopter des innovations alimentaires urbaines. Les changements dans l'alimentation ne sont pas tous liés à la crise sécuritaire, ils révèlent aussi l'adoption de pratiques et de produits nouveaux, « faute de mieux » ou par goût de la nouveauté, qui témoignent de dynamiques sur un temps plus long et d'échanges sur de longues distances.

Herdsmen use different techniques, as per varying geographies and cultures, to keep the cohesion within herds and avoid animals getting lost or predated. However, there is no study on the social behaviour of yaks and herdsmen management practices. Therefore, this ethology study was initiated by ethnographic inquiries. In Manang, the success of the shepherd is dictated by his personal attribute of 'Khula man' or open-heartedness. This attribute refers to good intentions and emotions such as empathy, which allow the shepherd to focus more on others than on himself. This cultural way of assessing the skills required to become a successful and knowledgeable shepherd guided us to study the effect of cultural values on the herd's social behaviour. We collected data from two herds living at the same settlement (Yak kharka, 4100 m altitude, Nepal) by equipping them with loggers. One of the herdsmen used the tether rope while the other one did not. Moreover, the Thaku herd had a more proactive shepherd than the Phurba one. In each herd, 17 animals were equipped with one Actigraph wgt3x-BT to measure activity using an accelerometer and spatial associations using a proximity recorder. One of the herds was equipped with GPS (N = 11) as well. Using GPS locations and activity, we showed that the two herds were cohesive and synchronised their activities but the Thaku herd (tether rope herd) was more cohesive than the Phurba herd based on the Actigraph signals. The shepherds also have personal knowledge of the social relationships of individual animals in their herds and use these relationships to keep the group cohesive and to manage cattle well.

The term “Anthropocene” often refers to the relationships between humans and “wild” species or ecosystems, in order to highlight the need to reconnect human lifestyles and activities with nature. By focusing on agrobiodiversity, it is through an ancient human/natural history, that of the “partnership” between humans and domesticated species dependent on each other for their co-evolution, that we treat the Anthropocene. The tropical zone presents a situation all the more original as the diversity is also maintained by the presence of wild relatives for a large part of the domesticated cultivated species. The links vary during the different phases identified during the Anthropocene according to the relationships of domination between humans and nature, but also between humans according to the dominant/dominated relationships. In West Africa, populations are now paying a high price for Anthropocene-related transformations, whether ecological, evolutionary, demographic, economic and political.

The double colonization of the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, coming from the Southern Amazon but mainly from the Coast and Sierra, has multiplied perceptions, rights, and management methods in this territory. This article explores these differences and reconstructs the history of this colonization and the rights of access to land, which are private for the colonos (settlers) and mostly communal for the indígenas (indigenous people). These legally differentiated groups are similar in their perception of the territory and their socioeconomic and environmental limitations: most agricultural products are not profitable. Between thegrowing metropolises and the remaining forest, the countryside is slowly shrinking. Communities are appearing that combine indigenous people and settlers and that copy the indigenous communities’ rights and practices. However, this communal right is acquired for the Amazonian groups but not for others, indígenas or colonos, defining de facto a jus aplidia, along with jus soli and jus sanguinis.

In the Upper Benoue area in Northern Cameroon, narratives about weather events and climate change are different according to one’s economic and cultural profile. Formal education level, economic strategy, and autochthony versus migration are promising explanatory variables to account for the heterogeneity of discourses about climate change. Weather conditions, especially the timing of rainfall, are highly variable from one year to another in the sahelo soudanian part of Africa. Rationales developed by local stakeholders to account for these variations are based on various sources of knowledge depending on their primary socialization within a local territory and their direct experience of it, their formal schooling and linguistic competence, their faith to monotheist religion, and their commitment to conservation and development programs. Looking across various residents of the same region, this chapter presents differing voices on local changes: global climate change is not necessarily the primary explanation.

Despite recent international research on the topic, we still have a fuzzy view of local seed networks structure and organization. This is partly due to the high variability of ways of categorising, multiplying and exchanging propagules of crops in the diversity of peasant societies, and also to the heterogeneity of scientific approaches and methodology used for studying seed networks. Beyond the fact that there exist several ways of defining what 'landraces' are, there are multiple types of practices, communities (or social units) and ways of transacting seeds that have been analysed through a great diversity of interests and methodologies. Based on various field examples drawn from MIRES partners' experiences, we will question units and scales relevant for a constructive way of analysing seed systems without harming the diversity of options farmers use for getting the genetic resources they need and/or wish.

Cereals (pearl, millet and sorghum) are central to the material and the symbolic reproduction of agrarian societies of the Sudano-Sahelian area. However, the centrality of cereals should not hide the diversity of the ecological engineering of a great number of species in various ecosystems. Three cases of plant-human relationships are discussed. Trees of the farmed parkland may be close and familiar to humans or far away in the bush, depending on the cycle of swidden cultivation. A second case deals with leafy vegetables which are prized food. The management of these plants is different from place to place, and the same species can be planted, protected or grow spontaneously in farmed plots or in the bush. The last case is about domesticated species of which wild ancestors are known and which sometimes grow in sympatry (yams, pearl millet, sorghum, bambara groundnut). In most cases, no explicit local theory makes sense of their evolutionary history through domestication. Two models appear: 1) for domesticates, a type of plant is viewed as spontaneous/wild or cultivated/domesticated but the transition from one state to another is not explicitly conceptualized; 2) depending on human behaviors, leafy greens and parkland trees may be spontaneous, protected or planted without being conceptualized as belonging to different categories. It seems that, in local views, humans have little control over the essence of plants – rather they modify their behavior toward them, not the reverse.

When people talk about their environment and how it has changed recently, they often refer to some sets of species seen as indicators of changes. What kind of species is used for this purpose? What are their commonalities in different environmental contexts? How this knowledge can help understanding socio-ecological systems dynamics? To tackle these questions, the ANR PIAF project compared free-lists collected from informants (experts and non-experts) sampled along a gradient of anthropisation including protected -rural and urban areas in four countries (Cameroon, France, USA, and Zimbabwe). Free-lists of birds, i.e. lists of birds spontaneously cited by informants, were analysed based on the life-history traits of the mentioned species. The analyses reveal common patterns across the different countries as to the type of birds cited, though they also relate to the social attributes of the informants. These patterns provide us with useful information about which groups of bird species should be used to monitor environmental changes as perceived by local people. The combination of free-listing with ecological life-traits database is a very promising method, both to link scientific and indigenous, and sociological and ecological understanding of ecosystem transformations. Through this project we aim to better understand local ecological knowledge and use this to generate a way to engage people in ecological transitions.

When people talk about their environment and how it has changed recently, they often refer to some sets of species seen as indicators of changes. What kind of species is used for this purpose? What are their commonalities in different environmental contexts? How this knowledge can help understanding socio-ecological systems dynamics? To tackle these questions, the ANR PIAF project compared free-lists collected from informants (experts and non-experts) sampled along a gradient of anthropisation including protected -rural and urban areas in four countries (Cameroon, France, USA, and Zimbabwe). Free-lists of birds, i.e. lists of birds spontaneously cited by informants, were analysed based on the life-history traits of the mentioned species. The analyses reveal common patterns across the different countries as to the type of birds cited, though they also relate to the social attributes of the informants. These patterns provide us with useful information about which groups of bird species should be used to monitor environmental changes as perceived by local people. The combination of free-listing with ecological life-traits database is a very promising method, both to link scientific and indigenous, and sociological and ecological understanding of ecosystem transformations. Through this project we aim to better understand local ecological knowledge and use this to generate a way to engage people in ecological transitions.

After ten years of implementation of the development plan of the Parc de la Bénoué and the continued immigration of new farmers and herders, what were the evolutions of the territories and the power relations between, on the one hand, indigenous and non-natural users of natural resources, and, on the other hand, biodiversity conservation agents? The land issues revealed by the zoning of the national park in the context of exponential population growth lead to new alliances, notably with the previously marginalized traditional authorities, which reaffirm their territorial rights in the process of nature patrimonialization. We show how the local strategies at work are in keeping with the old cultural model of each of these communities, centered on the territory and not on the biodiversity it contains. Discussions on the recognition of local practices and knowledge, as well as on the complementarity between emblematic and ordinary biodiversity, do not find any echoes in this area overwhelmed by uncontrolled immigration directly linked to the context of regional insecurity.

After ten years of implementation of the development plan of the Parc de la Bénoué and the continued immigration of new farmers and herders, what were the evolutions of the territories and the power relations between, on the one hand, indigenous and non-natural users of natural resources, and, on the other hand, biodiversity conservation agents? The land issues revealed by the zoning of the national park in the context of exponential population growth lead to new alliances, notably with the previously marginalized traditional authorities, which reaffirm their territorial rights in the process of nature patrimonialization. We show how the local strategies at work are in keeping with the old cultural model of each of these communities, centered on the territory and not on the biodiversity it contains. Discussions on the recognition of local practices and knowledge, as well as on the complementarity between emblematic and ordinary biodiversity, do not find any echoes in this area overwhelmed by uncontrolled immigration directly linked to the context of regional insecurity.

Despite of a growing interest in considering the role of sociological factors in seed exchanges and their consequences on the evolutionary dynamics of agro-biodiversity, very few studies assessed the link between ethno-linguistic diversity and genetic diversity patterns in small-holder farming systems. This is key for optimal improvement and conservation of crop genetic resources. Here, we investigated genetic diversity at 17 SSR markers of pearl millet landraces (varieties named by farmers) in the Lake Chad Basin. 69 pearl millet populations, representing 27 landraces collected in eight ethno-linguistic farmer groups, were analyzed. We found that the farmers' local taxonomy was not a good proxy for population's genetic differentiation as previously shown at smaller scales. Our results show the existence of a genetic structure of pearl millet mainly associated with ethno-linguistic diversity in the western side of the lake Chad. It suggests there is a limit to gene flow between landraces grown by different ethno-linguistic groups. This result was rather unexpected, because of the highly outcrossing mating system of pearl millet, the high density of pearl millet fields all along the green belt of this Sahelian area and the fact that seed exchanges among ethno-linguistic groups are known to occur. In the eastern side of the Lake, the pattern of genetic diversity suggests a larger efficient circulation of pearl millet genes between ethno-linguistic groups that are less numerous, spatially intermixed and, for some of them, more prone to exogamy. Finally, other historical and environmental factors which may contribute to the observed diversity patterns are discussed.

We present a detailed ethnographic case study of sorghum seed acquisitions in a smallholder farming society in northern Cameroon. The effects of variability in household demographics and socioeconomic status on observed patterns of seed provisioning are explored alongside other variables such as age and gender. Our data set comprised 223 seed acquisition events. Independence tests (Pearson's chi-square and Fisher's exact tests) were carried out to test for significant dependencies between individual- or household-level characteristics and properties of seed acquisition events (categories of seed source, social relationship of exchange, and type of landrace). Results indicate that wealth is a structuring factor of the local seed circulation network in as much as it is highly correlated with household composition and size. Members from wealthy households benefit from a more diverse set of seed sources. Their greater number of coresidents and the importance of intrahousehold dynamics of seed transactions also play a role in making wealthy farmers more seed secure than others. The methodological implications of our findings indicate that when documenting seed exchange networks, the collection of data through a single informant or the undertaking of social network analyses at the household level may induce important biases.