Producing Nature and Poverty in Africa

INTERNATIONAL DONORS HAVE supported innumerable environmental projects and programmes in Africa over the last 25 years. This book is a collection of essays which draw on case study material from eight countries and demonstrate that environmental initiatives often have direct and far-reaching consequences for the distribution of wealth and poverty on the continent.
The essays are drawn from a larger collection of papers presented at a 1997 conference on “Poverty and Prosperity in Africa: Local and Global Perspectives” held at the Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden. Participants were charged with the task of analyzing the effects of environmental policy changes on wealth distribution. To address this, the essays examine a range of issues, including: types of environmental interventions that have been employed over the last decade; similarities and differences between past and contemporary policies and practice; patterns of wealth accumulation; social, cultural and political impacts of and responses to environmental interventions; the juxtaposition between globalization and localization; and impacts on local knowledge and value systems.
The intention of the book is to bring African voices and perspectives to bear on western attitudes. The opening paper presents a series of quotes about Africa from different periods in history over the last 300 years, from different cultures and all from outside Africa. Other papers look widely at different historical eras, themes and encounters. Some deal with colonial and post-colonial conflicts of resource extraction, displacement and warfare, others look at the effects of contemporary interventions in the name of sustainable development. Some papers examine new forms of tourism in “partnership” with local communities and others are more theoretical or deal with national political issues. All the papers, however, cover the issue of the reproduction of a globalizing view of African nature and poverty, scaling these up from specific local circumstances to a vague and generalized condition. This can lead to a situation where the global perspective is used to develop local solutions which are then completely out of touch with reality.
Chapters cover issues such as the impact of colonialism on tribes and places; conservation and its effect on people; indigenous knowledge; land use, politics and ownership; the expansion of tourism; erosion; donor policy; gendered property rights; migration; and deforestation. Collectively, the essays present two critical messages. The first is that policy analysts and critics cannot afford to work in an historical vacuum – many contemporary approaches to environmental issues have been tried in the past with little success. The second message is that environmental politics in Africa is far from over-determined. New alliances continue to be struck from local to global levels, representing both obstacles and opportunities to those who seek to reduce levels of poverty.