Regional Sciences & Development: Countering Transhumance Conflicts through Graduates’ Employability Enhancing Mechanisms in Benin

Abstract

The settlement of transhumant pastoralists in their regions of origin, announced as a public intervention measure to mitigate transhumance conflicts in host communities, would not be economically rewarding. The issue at stake here stems from the search for solutions to community integration challenges through the isolation of the social groups concerned in the first place. In the early 2000s, the practice was to isolate the two groups on the same territory by respecting passageways. Later, in the 2020s, the State decided to separate them physically and territorially. However, literature on living laboratories has revitalised the original solution while stigmatising the flaws in physical isolation. Based on the principles from “Regional Sciences”, existing economic opportunities rather than land use planning play a critical role in development. The study analyses how transhumant pastoralism shapes local economies and social tensions in the Agonlin region of Benin. A 2004-2005 budget-consumption survey was converted into a village‐level Social Accounting Matrix to compute GDP shares, inter-sector linkages and income multipliers for farming, pastoral and other households. Results indicate weak crop-livestock linkages but a high income multiplier for pastoral households, suggesting untapped economic potential in case of physical isolation. In light of the literature (2021-2022) on “Living Laboratories (Liv.-Lab.)” as socio-territorial and economic innovations, the original solution was reframed as a “Living Laboratory” pilot (2005-2006) that organised community squads to guide herds, reportedly eliminating conflicts for one season but facing financial and governance shortfalls. This reframing allows us to highlight the shortcomings of applying the living laboratory to this social friction, rather than the physical isolation that comes with the sedentarisation of transhumant pastoralists. By expanding this experiment, it would be possible to mobilise several academic disciplines, students from all three levels of higher education (bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate), teacher-researchers from several disciplines, financial partners and policy makers in order to effectively address conflicts related to transhumance. The benefits would be manifold in general, but visibility and employability, particularly for university education providers and graduates, would be respective gains.