Tenure, Management, Degradation of Farmlands, Pasturelands and Household /Livestock Water Resources in the Vina-Division Adamawa-Cameroon

Abstract

The essential natural resources such as arable soils, the household and pastoral water and the vegetation of the Vina Division are rapidly deteriorating these last recent years. The lowering fertility level of farm lands, the degradation of vegetation on pasture lands, and the insufiancy of household water and for animals are the observed indicators. Inded it was for this work to determine wether the actual ownership modalities or management practices are causes of the degradation or natural parameters could be associated to them?. Four localities included; Dibi, Mbang-Mboum, Mbe and Tourningal hav been choosen as study sites for investigation. From the study of the Adamawa Regional and Vina Divisional pedologic maps, from the observation and data collected from the field work, the soils of the four villages can be put into two major groups; ferruginous for Mbang-Mboum and Mbe, ferralitic for Dibi and Tourningal. Naturally these soils are poor in nutrient and were compacted by the permanent movements of animals. From the entertainment, observation and from land survey results, the access modalities or appropriation for resources are by donation, inheritage, man labour and rarely by renting. Sale of lands is strictly forbidden by local authorities particularly in Mbang-Mboum and in Mbé. Till to date, the working tools and management systems are at the traditional state.They do not know how to proceed for obtaining certificate of occupancy. Tey are not informed about the 1974 domanial laws. Any one can easily abandon either his or her farm or pasture land to another when the potential productivity of the land is decreasing. The access or appropriation modalities are based on social relationships then can be easily negociated. From exhaustive survey of all water resources ( such as local wells, bore holes, rivers, natural and artificial lakes) of the four localities, we found that in Mbé, the water resources dry rapidly as soon as the raining season is ending by November. In Mbang-Mboum, the three bore holes of the village can not more provide and satisfy the high demand of potable water for the increasing number of the population. The statistical analysis by chi-square (X²) with 0.05 probability and the result from HO, H1 test shows that the actual access modalities are the major causes of the rapidly degradation of the resources beside natural parameters such as the geographical location of the Vina Division, the chemical structure of soils, the irregular volume of raining water and climatic change effects. All this encourage poor and traditional management with no conscious on long term resource conservation. The agriculturer or pastoralist can freely leave his or her agricultural or grazing land for another when the productive potential is poor. In fact donation, in heritage and man labour, though with positive aspects lead to extensive exploitation and a short term use of resources. That why most of the peasants have to apply chemical fertilizer, composts, to improve the fertility of soils. While animal breeders must buy cotton cakes, ground nut cakes and dried grasses to feed their animals or go for transhumance in dry season.