Restructuring Collaborative Governance of GIAHS in the Maghreb Region: A Case Study of the Ghout Oasis, Algeria
This study examines the Ghout Oasis system in the Souf region of El Oued, Algeria, as a focal case for reinterpreting Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) in the Maghreb from a collaborative governance perspective. Conventional agricultural development discourses have largely reduced Maghrebi dryland agriculture to issues of water scarcity, productivity constraints, and irrigation deficits. The Ghout case, however, demonstrates that such fragmented approaches fail to capture the sustained dynamics of oasis heritage agriculture. The Ghout system is identified as a social- ecological adaptive system that integrates a non-irrigated hydro-agricultural model based on capillary r ise, agro-biodiversity encompassing a p proximately 8 00 d ate p alm cultivars, a m ulti-layered cropp ing agroecosystem, and c ommunity-based r esource management n orms r epresented b y Touiza, R emmala, and ʿurf. Over the past two decades, four domains of cooperative interventions have targeted the Ghout system: the FAO-GEF GIAHS Dynamic Conservation Project, the Algerian hydrological infrastructure megaproject, the Mediterranean research cooperation network, and community-based autonomous activities including 134 self-financed new Ghouts. Despite their respective legitimacy, these interventions have f ailed to i ntegrate w ith one another and have e xhibited t he t yp ical pattern o f “scale m ismatch” identified in multi-level governance studies. On this basis, the study proposes four constitutive principles for restructuring GIAHS-based collaborative governance in the Maghreb: place-based cooperation, resilience- oriented cooperation, community-based governance support, and the co-production of knowledge.