Résumé
Southern Mediterranean forests and the livelihoods that rely on them are at risk from resource over-extraction. This is true in the symbolical Moroccan middle Atlas cedar forests. These forests are important ecologically and economically but are threatened by increasing pastoral and timber activities. For such environmental problems, research must adapt to local contexts to produce an integrative knowledge to for a more environmentally efficient and socially just management. We applied this in the following political ecology to understand how the cedar forest socio-ecosystem behaves and why it has so far been resistant to conservation efforts. We focused on pastoral and woodcutting activities as an interface between social and ecological dynamics. Studying forest structures, we show that human activities do not threaten cedar forests regionally. However, cedar stock has been reduced and cedar populations may locally be vulnerable due to pastoral activities and to woodcutting in unfavorable environmental conditions. Studying local economies, we show that actors try to lead lower impact activities based on an important knowledge of forests. Activity levels nevertheless increase because almost all family exploitations rely on the cheap forest resources that are allowed by corruption. Finally, studying rules in use, we show the regulation of activities results of an unpredictable institutional bricolage that can locally be effective through customary or formal rules. The resulting rules in use depend mostly on the advantages of powerful actors. Local politics thus appear to be the main driver of socio-ecological dynamics of the cedar forests.