Land use and land right dynamics - Determinants for resource management options in Eastern Burkina Faso

The paper first exam in established theories on the population-environmenta l nexus. Farmers' options in responding to declining soil fertility or shor tage of land vary from village to village and even household to household. Responses are conditioned by social relations with neighboring villages and the labor availability of individual households. The example from the Boul gou Province in Burkina Faso shows that some farmers have been able to expa nd their acreage in other villages' territories on a virtually permanent ba sis, thereby compensating for increased population pressure and for land de gradation. Currently labor availability, social relations, and distance to the land seem to be the main constraints on land expansion. However the pat tern of land use changes is expected to be increasingly influenced by; the existence of more formally established rights than at present. In the light of the empirical findings, the relevance of the "Gestion des Terroir Villa gois" concept as a tool for planning for sustainable natural resource manag ement at the village level is discussed. This approach seems imperfectly su ited to address a reality in which social and physical environments are sup erimposed in a spatially complex way.