Environmental Education in the Sacred Woodlands of Korhogo (Ivory Coast) and Adoption of Environmental Behavior By the Insider : A Phenomenological Analysis of the Sustainability of Indigenous Community Ecological Innovations

In African traditional societies, the relationship with the Environment has constituted for a long time, a link of intimacy between the African and his environmental space. This report has its peculiarity in that, the environment is an integral part of the social organization and cultural practices. Now the spiritual question within the African traditional society is strongly related to the elements of nature such as water, pebbles, trees .... As African traditional religion apprehends these elements as the place of habitation of deities and ancestors. This is why the Senoufo people practice in their wooded forests the initiatory rites called "Poro" which situates the social education of the young boy. Thus, in initiatory forests, these young people from 14 to 18 receive an environmental education aimed at health, agriculture and climate change concerns. However, at the exit of these initiatory sites, ecological behavioral differences are observed for some of them into community. This paper will therefore analyze the determinants of environmental education given to insiders; But also, it will observe the aged environmental perceptions’ who are in charge of the training of these young people in the forests. At the end, this production will answer the question "What are the logics underlying the adoption of the environmental behavior by insiders of the sacred woods of Korhogo in the Northern of Côte d'Ivoire ?" The challenge is to grasp the sustainability of adaptive innovations of indigenous communities in the face of drought and the transformation of ecological habits of insiders in contact with the urban city. It therefore analyzes 117 interviews conducted with the chiefs of the sacred woods, the insiders and the village chiefs. The data were analyzed under WeftQda and interpreted according to the sociological approaches of Riley Dunlap.