Frances Harris

The nature of learning at forest school: practitioners' perspectives

This paper investigates forest school practitioners perceptions of learning at forest school to identify the topics covered, the learning styles, and the philosophies underpinning its delivery, based on interviews with experienced forest school practitioners. Practitioners identified the focus of learning at forest school as social development: teamwork, relationships with others, self-knowledge, and learning to take risks. Children also engaged with nature and developed an attachment to the woods where forest school took place. Learning styles were kinaesthetic, sensory, and experiential. Forest school leaders saw themselves as facilitators of learning rather than teachers.

Evolution of dry-season irrigated vegetable production between 1982 and 2000 on the Jos Plateau, Nigeria

This paper reports on the changes observed in dry-season irrigated vegetable production over the course of nearly 20 years along the Delimi River on the Jos Plateau. Data from three questionnaires (carried out in 1982, 1990 and 2000) were compared and integrated with interview information from 2000. The data indicate that although entrepreneurial farmers benefit from this activity, which is becoming increasingly commercialized (supplying markets within and beyond Nigeria), the majority continue to struggle to achieve profits. Should dry-season farming continue to expand, this struggle will be further exacerbated.

Sustainable development in drylands: geographical contributions to a better understanding of people–environment relationships

In August 2002, at Upington, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, South Africa, 70 scientists, many geographers, participated in an international conference entitled ‘Dryland Change 2001’. The delegates came from 15 countries, and all were either participants of International Geological Correlation Programme project 413, ‘Understanding future dryland change from past dynamics’, or the International Geographical Union Land Degradation Commission. The meeting, in which archaeologists, botanists, ecologists, human and physical geographers, geologists, palynologists and zoologists all participated, therefore provided an interface between those who investigate long-term environmental changes in drylands and those, including practitioners, whose primary focus is on human-related modern changes. Four months later, the Developing Areas Research Group (DARG) of the RGS-IBG organized a session on ‘Landscapes of change: socio-environmental interactions in developing areas’, at the 2002 Annual Conference in Belfast. Many of the papers that were presented had an African dimension to them, as was the case at the Dryland Change 2001 conference. Four of the five papers in this issue of the Geographical Journal, all based on research in Africa, were originally presented at one of these meetings. Further papers from the ‘Dryland Change 2001’ conference will appear in the March 2003 issue of the journal, while the September 2003 issue will contain further papers from the ‘DARG landscapes of change’ session. The publication of the four Africa papers in this issue is timely, since in August 2003 the United Nation’s World Summit on Sustainable Development is being held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Drylands cover over 40% of the Earth’s land surface and support almost 20% of the human population, a figure that rises to 50% in Africa. Dryland environments face especial challenges when sustainable development is concerned, since they have seen an unprecedented expansion of human activities in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly linked in Africa to development processes in the post-colonial era. Yet dryland development often has been challenged and compromised: by replacing well-suited and adapted indigenous agricultural practices with inappropriate practices and technologies borrowed from wetter environments; by the desire of developing country governments to engage more fully in the global economy; and by the ever-present threat of drought, which introduces uncertainty and risk to dryland agricultural activities. ‘Dryland Change 2001’ provided an excellent opportunity for researchers interested in long-term environmental change in drylands to interface with those concerned with the causes and nature of contemporary land degradation. Throughout the proceedings, two particular themes emerged with a strong resonance for understanding dryland dynamics in the twenty-first century. First was the complexity of past dryland environmental responses to global climatic changes, an understanding of which is highly significant for predicting how drylands will respond to future changes, including the effects of global warming. Second was the need to replace many ‘conventional wisdoms’ of human agencies of environmental change with an appropriately researched empirical understanding of human–dryland relationships. The landscapes of change session at the Belfast conference drew together a collection of papers around the broad theme of socio-environmental interactions in developing areas. Within this breadth of research