<gwalsh@bu.edu>


Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns, eds.  _The Lie of the Land: Challenging
Received Wisdom on the African Environment_  Oxford: James Currey and
Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1996.  xvi + 240 pp.  Biblilography and
index. $80.00 (cloth), $24.00 paper.  ISBN 0-85255-410-9 (James Currey
cloth), 0-855255-409-5 James Currey paper), 0-435-07407-5 (Heinemann cloth),
0-435-07408-3 (Heinemann paper).

Review for H-Africa by Nancy Jacobs, Nancy_Jacobs@Brown.edu, Department of
History and Afro-American Studies Program, Brown University


Rethinking Environmental Degradation in Africa


_The Lie of the Land_ is an excellently titled book.  Its eleven essays
probe science and policy based on unfounded narratives of environmental
degradation--a "lie of the land" in a new sense.  Alarmist accounts of
environmental change are a tendency in some environmental thinking. (1)
In colonial Africa, fears of environmental decline grew up among the
scientists and policy makers who had the authority to act against
"irrational" and "wasteful" African land use.  In independent Africa fears
of crisis and interventionist policies continued, sustained by
governments, scientists and international aid agencies.  This volume,
edited by Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns, shows how such fears could be
poorly grounded.

These essays consider the explication of environmental degradation as
"received wisdom," an "orthodoxy," a "narrative" or the "mainstream."
References to Thomas Kuhn appear in several chapters, and the book intends
to promote an alternative paradigm in African environmental studies.  The
conclusions are convincing (and may be surprising to some) and so this
book is highly recommended reading for those concerned with colonial
science, African environmental history and development policy.

Social and natural scientists have questioned degradationist narratives
before now. (2)  There are two themes in such thinking, that environmental
change is not necessarily degradation, and that African farmers and
herders are not the wastrels of stereotype; rather they  intervene in
environmental processes to benefit their production.

This book brings together case studies which reinforce these points, but
its more original contribution is to problematize the "received wisdom" of
environmental crisis in Africa.  The first chapter, "Environmental Change
and Policy:  Challenging Received Wisdom in Africa," (pp. 1-33) by the
editors, introduces the critique of degradationist narratives as received
wisdom.  Thinking which casts Africans as perpetrators and victims of
environmental change has obscured other views, and the essay explores how
this has been possible.  The result is a consideration of the production
of knowledge and how it relates to power.  Here, the received wisdom was
based on scientific authority, even while it lacked scientific rigor.
Governments and non-governmental organizations were also involved, for
having authority and skills to act upon its conclusions, they also had an
interest in sustaining degradationist thinking.  Finally, the media spread
the alarm.  Left out of the discourse, (as understood by Foucault) were
the people who lived and worked in these environments.

The following chapters develop these ideas in case studies of many aspects
of the environment -- soil, water, vegetation, wildlife, forests. The
essays typically explore how mainstream thinking developed, how anecdotal
evidence took on powerful argumentative force and what factors entrenched
poor science and inappropriate policy.  They then suggest alternative
understandings of the ecological issues, and different priorities for
policy.  Especially recommended are the chapters by Swift, Fairhead and
Leach , Stocking, Tiffen, and Hoben.

Chapters Two through Five explore the situation with regards to
pastoralists, probably the group who have been considered the most
destructive.  Ian Scoones's chapter "Range Management Science and Policy"
(pp. 34-53) looks at the history of scientific range management in
Zimbabwe.  He explores concern about grazing capacity and the growing
support for stock limitation and rotational grazing, policies whose
success  he questions.  He lays out how climax-based grazing science
became so influential and provides an accessible introduction to a range
science of disequilibrium which challenges these ideas. (3)  The next
chapter outlines a different relation between degradationist thinking and
political power, for the degradation is said to have occurred in the South
Africa Karoo, home to white sheep farmers.  In "Soil Erosion, Animals and
Pasture over the Longer Term" (pp. 54-72) William Beinart considers the
case of the Karoo, a semi-arid region, which is popularly held to have
encroached onto grassland because of abusive farming. (4)  Beinart's
contribution is to show that the historical forces which could have
supported Karoo expansion have not always been in place.  He also shows
how accounts of degradation can serve the political left, for activists
against apartheid used alarmist accounts of environmental change.

"Desertification:  Narratives, Winners and Losers" (pp. 73-90), by Jeremy
Swift, offers a treatment of scientific and governmental response to what
is decried as the biggest environmental threat in Africa: desertification.
Swift shows how arguments about desertification rested upon questionable
uses of data and a conflation of separate processes of change.  Politics
also played a role here, for concern about degradation strengthened the
hand of national governments, development agencies and scientists (the
"winners" of his title).  The received wisdom of progressive
desertification has given way to more nuanced views, which Swift hopes
will promote policies friendlier to local farmers and herders (the
"losers" of his title). The last chapter on herding, "Wildlife,
Pastoralists and Science" (pp. 91-104) by Daniel Brockington and Katherine
Homewood, looks at the Mkomazi Game Reserve in Tanzania.  They deftly
refute the stereotype of irrational pastoralists destroying the commons
and give a concise table contrasting the received wisdom and alternative
views about pastoralists and parks.

The next two chapters are about forests and people's impact upon them.
Readers should take note of "Rethinking the Forest-Savanna Mosaic" (pp.
105-121) by James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, which condenses the argument
of their important book _Misreading the African Landscape_. (5)  Their
argument is that the "forest islands" in the savanna of Guinea are not
remnants of a wider forest cover, but that the islands are created and
sustained through human action.  Their work shows that colonial science
was based on assumptions rather than evidence of the earlier wide cover.
Their historical research shows that forests have not diminished and their
fieldwork reveals how people promote tree cover.  Yet they show how
intellectual, social, political and financial structures have sustained
the image of a half-empty savanna.  They close with an interpretation of
the landscape based upon an ecology of disturbances rather than
equilibrium. The chapter by Reginald Cline-Cole "Dryland Forestry:
Manufacturing Forest and Farming Trees in Nigeria" (pp. 122-139) contrasts
"expatriate" and "indigenous" forestry systems.  Expatriate forestry,
first promoted by none other than Frederick Lugard, separates forests from
farmland and pasture and also regulates uses in each context.  In
contrast, the indigenous system involves multiple uses.  The chapter
evaluates the failings of expatriate forestry and considers to what extent
these two systems have come or may yet come together.

The next two chapters consider very basic elements: water and soil.  "Soil
Erosion:  Breaking New Ground" by Michael Stocking (pp. 140-154) is a
lively discussion of six myths of soil erosion.  Stocking presents and
convincingly refutes widely accepted truths about erosion, such as
"gullies are the worst," "vegetation protects" and "soil conservation is
the answer."  This chapter is the volume's best introduction to the
alternative non-degradationist thinking.  W. A. Adams's essay "Irrigation,
Erosion and Famine," (pp. 155-167) sets out to consider indigenous
knowledge as incorporated into received wisdom.  He looks at the Kerio
Valley in Kenya, where colonial officials were impressed with pre-existing
irrigation works, yet all the same intervened into local land use.
Actually, indigenous knowledge doesn't differentiate the received wisdom
here from the other cases.

 The last two chapters in the volume are not about theories of
environmental degradation, but about how the politics and culture of
development work have created received wisdom.  In "Land and Capital:
Blind Spots in the Study of the 'Resource-Poor' Farmer"  (pp. 168-185)
Mary Tiffen, a co- author of _More People Less Erosion_ returns to the
Machakos District of Kenya to consider non-environmental resources, land
ownership and capital, and how development research can be blind to these
needs and how people fill them.  The problem stems from the structure of
development agencies and the fashions of development.  As other writers
have stressed that African farmers have well-adapted farming techniques,
she argues that they have resources unrecognized by experts.  Furthermore,
farmers have the skills to invest wisely.  The closing essay by Allan
Hoben is most disturbing.  "The Cultural Construction of Environmental
Policy: Paradigms and Politics in Ethiopia" (pp. 186-208) considers the
development policy before and after the 1985 Ethiopian famine, a true
catastrophe which stands out from the false alarms in the rest of the
book.  He describes how national and international political forces gave
legitimacy to a Malthusian narrative that soil erosion reduced
agricultural production and caused hunger. (6)  This Malthusian
explanation overlooked indigenous practices to conserve trees and soil,
and also the poverty and repression which created hunger.  Sadly, this
received wisdom motivated a great effort towards soil reclamation after
1985, which Hoben says was wasted or worse, detrimental.

This volume challenges social and natural scientists as well as
development planners to question their assumptions, to check whether their
narratives echo received wisdom.  The volume gives no easy formula for
escaping the trap, (7) but the writers are not cynical.  Throughout the
volume non-equilibrium ecology (which is based on theories that natural
systems are not directed towards a self-regulating climax state),
empirical historical research and indigenous knowledge are offered as
correctives. Furthermore, the writers promote an attitude that
decision-making must become more inclusive.  Barring that, those who have
power to comment upon African farmers and to intervene in their work must,
as Tiffen puts it, "fight their inclination to nanny.  There will always
be the unskilful or the unfortunate, who need special help, but they
should not be conceived as the majority"  (p. 185).  Tiffen is supported
by the empirical evidence that Maasai herders have not threatened the
survival of game, that villagers in Guinea's forest-savanna mosaic have
not ravaged their woods, and that Machakos farmers have conserved their
soil.

Yet, are there no environmental concerns?  Scattered through the volume
are references to issues which some writers consider to be problems.  (See
for example, pp.  86, 142-43, 189). Michael Stocking's treatment of soil
erosion is indicative of the new thinking.  While he disputes the myth
that gullies represent serious erosion, he admits that sheet erosion
removes more soil than is sometimes recognized.  This essay does not
address under what conditions sheet erosion is a problem, or how to slow
it.  In fact, he practically discourages such questions:

"Of course, in many places erosion is bad; crops yields are crashing; land
is being abandoned; people are migrating; and a cycle of degradation is
commencing on marginal lands as population pressure is transferred.
However, to claim that these represent universal links of cause-and-effect
is far too simplistic.  The evidence from Machakos district in Kenya
[citing _More People, Less Erosion_] shows indisputably that erosion may
be a passing phase in a farming landscape, during a transition to
different land uses, higher populations and new technologies.  In these
terms, erosion may be good, if it forces populations to adjust" (p. 154).

"Universal links of cause and effect" _is_ too simplistic, but it is
legitimate to ask at what point environmental change degrades human
livelihoods and threatens biodiversity.  Perhaps it might be advisable to
provide assistance during the adjustment to new land uses. Intensification
can involve more restricted access to resources, and poorer people can
lose their livelihoods.  Erosion may not always be bad, but "adjustment"
is not always neutral.  This volume has given its attention to refuting
the received wisdom of alarm rather than giving positive answers to the
question of how to evaluate environmental change.  In less principled
circles, this could support tendencies toward denial and opportunism.
Continued consideration of environmental change is necessary to reach
positions of realism and responsibility.  If we are fortunate, we will see
collaborative work in this direction by the contributors to this volume.


1 For a discussion of such narrative possibilities, see William Cronon, "A
Place for Stories:  Nature, History, and Narrative" _The Journal of
American History_ 78(1992): 1347-1376.

2 For a review of earlier work in this vein, see Joanne MacGregor,
"Environmental Knowledge under Scrutiny" _Journal of Southern African
Studies_ 20(1994): 318-326.  The most significant book discussed in this
review is Mary Tiffen, Michael Mortimore and Frances Gichuki, _More People
Less Erosion:  Environmental Recovery in Kenya_ (London: John Wiley and
Overseas Development Institute, 1994).

3  For more technical discussions, see chapters in _Range Ecology at
Disequilibrium: New Models of Natural Variability and Pastoral Adaptation
in African Savannas_ (London: Overseas Development Institute, 1993).

4 Beinart puts the findings of biologists M. T. Hoffman and R. M. Cowling
in historical context.  Their work has questioned common assumptions about
the inexorable Karoo expansion and found that change may be cyclical, due
to natural as well as human factors.  M. T. Hoffman and R. M. Cowling,
"Vegetation Change in the Semi-Arid Eastern Karoo over the last 200 years:
An Expanding Karoo -- Fact or Fiction?"  _South African Journal of
Science_ 86(1990) 286-94.

5 _Misreading the African Landscape:  Society and Ecology in a
Forest-Savanna Mosaic_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996).

6 For another refutation of land degradation in Ethiopia see, James
McCann, "The Plow and the Forest: Narratives of Deforestation in Ethiopia,
1840-1992" _Environmental History_ 2(1997): 138-159.

7 There is a section in the introduction"Ways Forward in Research" 28-33.

Copyright 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be
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Gretchen Walsh
African Studies Library
Boston University
771 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
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FAX 617-353-2084
gwalsh@bu.edu

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