James Fairhead

Paths of Authority: Roads, the State and the Market in Eastern Zaire

Markets for land, labour and goods in rural Zaire are embedded in autocratic and often corrupt local power domains which have been strengthened by economic crisis and concomitant structural adjustment policies. To talk of ‘the market’ in this context is as meaningless as to talk of ‘the state’. The following article focuses on efforts to facilitate market integration through roadbuilding in rural areas, and on the way the advancing market affects the life chances of different local groups.

Desiccation and domination : Science and struggles over environment and development in colonial Guinea

The AA. examine science-policy interactions associated with desiccationism, a gloss for the drying effects of vegetation loss on climate and soils, in Guinea, West Africa. Drawing mainly on case material from the forest region of Guinea between 1900 and the post-Independence period after 1958, they trace the rise to dominance of desiccationism in policy and its effects. Desiccationism, they argue, was a colonial anxiety from the earliest, but until the 1930s the political and social configurations limited anti-desiccation policies. By the 1950s, however, agricultural and forest policy now aligned closely with desiccationism. In the political climate leading up to independence, this colonial science-development apparatus became a target of liberationist struggles, provoking greater heed to local resistance. But this proved to be only a short interlude, and post-Independence policies showed remarkable continuity with those in place earlier. Reflecting on recent theoretical debates, the AA. emphasize that comprehending these shifts requires attention to power-knowledge and state-science relations as well as political economy and to the actual practices, actions and relationships of administrators and populations.

Misreading the African landscape: Glossary of plant names

Botanical names of principal trees, shrubs, bushes, palms and herbaceous plant species found in Kissidougou prefecture, together with usual names in Maninka, Kuranko, Kissi and Lele. Sources : Field identification with the assistance of Jean-Louis Hellie and villagers; Scheepmans et al. 1993.

Misreading the African landscape: Reading forest history backwards: a century of environmental policy

We began this book by examining present perceptions of vegetation change current in scientific and policy circles. Subsequent chapters have shown how far these perceptions diverge from vegetation change as demonstrated by historical evidence and as experienced and perceived by villagers. In this mismatch it has become clear that, at a first approximation, policy-makers have been reading environmental history backwards. It is the case, however, that this backwards reading of forest–savanna dynamics in policy discourse is not new; indeed the basic elements of the derived savanna vision were in place from early in the colonial period. In this chapter, we trace chronologically how it was subsequently elaborated within Kissidougous agricultural and forestry administrations during the colonial and post-independence periods to dovetail with emergent national and Africa-wide concerns. This degradation discourse has had material implications, in the form both of policies and actions planned from it, and of less intentional, but no less instrumental, effects. Within the context of the other economic and political influences examined in the previous chapter, we now address more systematically the interaction between externally conceived environmental policies and changing local land-use practices. Given that the latter have been based on very different – even opposed – views of environmental change, it is not surprising that many aspects of this interaction have been problematic.

Towards a new forest–savanna ecology and history

Not all ecologists, foresters and botanists would interpret West Africas forest–savanna mosaic in terms of past and ongoing forest loss. But over the past century, all those who have actually examined the mosaic in Kissidougou have interpreted it in this way. Close examination of the historical record and of local management practices shows not only the error in this perspective, but also what it has obscured: the creation of forest islands, their dynamics, and the enriching of open savannas with more woody vegetation forms. It is within this dynamic that Kissi- and Kuranko-speaking villagers conceive of their relationship with their landscape; a relationship with deep historical roots. Considering the landscape in terms of degradation has obscured how people live and work with ecological processes on a day to day basis, often improving land productivity and value – improvements recognised in tenurial claims. For Kissia and Kuranko, it is in part through using land and bringing it into productivity that both common and differentiated social identities and relations are realised. And in reflecting on ecology people also reflect on their relations not only with the world around them, but also with each other. While their conceptions of ecological dynamics often contrast strongly with scientific orthodoxy, they do nevertheless postulate relationships which isolated and recent scientific studies would support. It is largely these local land use and enrichment practices, and their articulation with major historical shifts in economy and polity which account for the particular course of vegetation change during this century.

Misreading the African landscape: Accounting for forest gain: local land use, regional political economy and demography

In this chapter we examine more closely how the varied social and ecological conditions already considered have articulated with broader demographic, economic and political changes during the present century in affecting patterns of vegetation change at the prefecture level. As we have seen, people have many ways to influence ecology, but actual practice – and aggregate actual practice with large impacts on landscape – has responded to diverse and changing social and economic conditions. Considerations of Toly and Sandaya have exemplified some of these changes, and their workings at the level of local social relations, but given the prefectures considerable diversity, these issues must be addressed at a larger scale. Thus while the last chapter examined ecological practices within different localities across the forest–savanna transition at the prefecture scale, this chapter sets their application within the different socio-economic and demographic histories of these localities during the present century. Our strategy is to focus on the major influences on land use in several domains of particular importance in deflecting upland vegetation succession: forest island management, farming, the cattle economy and fire control. In this we are able to go some way towards accounting for the patterns of vegetation change demonstrated in chapter 2. Nevertheless, such explanation must inevitably remain tentative, not least because of the complexity of interacting factors in each locality. Furthermore, we leave consideration of a further important set of influences – environmental policy and interventions – to the next chapter.

Misreading the African landscape: Forest gain: historical evidence of vegetation change

Ecological arguments about changes in the pattern of vegetation in the forest–savanna mosaic, as reviewed in the previous chapter, have rarely been based on historical analysis. Instead, they have relied mainly on analyses of vegetation form and short-term process, and on deducing longer-term change from these. Where historical sources have been used – for example in examining past and present air photographs – the timescale of analysis has generally covered only 10–15 years (Morgan and Moss 1965, Gregoire et al . 1988). In Kissidougou, assessments of vegetation change have never drawn on historical data sets in more than a cursory way. Yet these are available: in air photographs covering the past forty years; in the written observations of visitors and administrators at the turn of the century, and in the recollections of the prefectures elderly inhabitants. In this chapter we use these historical sources to detail vegetation change in the prefecture during the past century; the period over which, as we have seen, policy-makers have unanimously agreed that forest cover has been in decline and savannas spreading. The story revealed by the historical record is strikingly different, and supportive of ecological and local management possibilities which, at least in Kissidougous policy circles, have never been considered. Documenting the vegetation history of the forest–savanna mosaic, and distinguishing it from the diverse representations of it, is fraught with methodological difficulties.