Paper short abstract:

In North East Madagascar, fallow lands, resting after shifting forest cultivation, provide a lens through which to examine emergent novel ecologies of the Anthropocene and the international and interspecies entanglements of taste upon which distinctions between Anthropocene and Holocene pivot.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental History of Madagascar has long highlighted the role of human settlement in forest loss and species extinctions, with responsibility primarily attributed to shifting cultivation. Such arguments reproduce discourses of environmental degradation as being fundamentally entwined with human subsistence needs, and thus frame Madagascar as exemplary of the myriad forms of intensive species death and irreversible landscape modification that are core to many interpretations of the Anthropocene concept.

Ethnographic research on fallow and forest use demonstrates how a contemporary vanilla boom has led to a prevalent overshadowing of the primary subsistence functions of shifting cultivation by desires to produce valuable crops for export. Such intensification leaves diminishing space and time for fallow land to rest and consequently for forest to regrow, ensuring that geographically distant desires for the flavour of vanilla work to reshape local ecologies in fundamental ways.

This paper argues that the view from the fallows can help illustrate how the Anthropocene continues to be produced through incommensurable desires situated in spatially distant regions of the world, that in turn work to reconfigure assemblages of life. Mapping such desires that shape the global circulation of substances through which the Anthropocene comes into being is of fundamental importance for an understanding of the social and market inequalities that produce the Anthropocene, and can contribute to attempts to disaggregate the idea of an monolithic "Anthropos" universally responsible for the destruction of Holocenic assemblages of life.

Paper short abstract:

The participatory mapping coupled with the training of indigenous in the manipulation of electronic devices (Global Position System) to map out the food, ritual and medicinal resources to be preserved. The new technologies has preserved the cultural values ​​of the indigenous.

Paper long abstract:

Congo Brazzaville is a country 60% forested and located in Central Africa. Thus, in these forests live indigenous and Bantu populations.

The indigenous populations of the northern part of Congo are closely dependent on natural resources for both food and other needs (medicinal, construction of huts ...).

The government has allocated logging concessions in these same areas. The logging companies we work with are engaged in FSC certification.

In order to ensure the cultural values ​​of indigenous peoples, loggers have turned to anthropologists to study the practicalities of securing the key resources of communities during logging.

Our approach is based on participatory mapping coupled with the training of indigenous men and women in the manipulation of electronic devices (Global Position System) to map out the food, ritual and medicinal resources to be preserved.

Our article shows how the use of new technologies has preserved the cultural and material values ​​of the indigenous populations of northern Congo.

Paper short abstract:

"Nature" in the Anthropocene is conceived as places interlinked with the human. When conceptualizing this "intermingledness", we often use the term of "hybrid spaces". But isn't this rather an anthropocentric view? What if one conceptualized it rather in terms of disruptions?

Paper long abstract:

Environment, in the Anthropocene, becomes more and more coined by the human footprint. What we call "nature" is now conceived as places closely interlinked with the human and even dependent of the latter. In order to conceptualize such a relationship of dependency and "intermingledness", scholars use the term of "hybrid spaces". These spaces allow, in our common understanding, for example wildlife and men to coexist. But isn't this a rather anthropocentric view? What if one conceived such connectivity of human and animal spaces in terms of disruptions?

We will try to leave for a while the field of humanities and depict the Addax' point of view. Addax nasomaculatus is a highly endangered ungulate species living in the Central Sahara. Now, the last individuals (about 300?), are found in eastern Niger. The species retires deliberately in hostile desert areas if disturbed by men. Commercial routes and mining activities reportedly narrowed over the last decades and years the transhumance areas of the antelope. What we call connected spaces may thus be, under the Addax point of view, seen as disruptions. What new concepts of space could we thus expect if we replaced in our academic discussions the term "hybridity" by disruptiveness?

Paper short abstract:

Throughout the twentieth century the Central African Copperbelt has been an example of an Anthropocene site. Using the approach of environmental history reveals that notions of what the Anthropocene entailed and how it should be 'managed' changed significantly over time.

Paper long abstract:

Looking at the Central African Copperbelt, a heavily industrialised mining region, in the twentieth century from the perspective of environmental history has much to say about what the Anthropocene meant on the ground and how its meaning changed over time. Since the beginning of the twentieth century mining activities have profoundly affected the soils, air and water of the region. Yet until 1990 the environmental impacts of mining remained largely unremarked upon. Environmental harm was naturalised as collateral damage of mining profit, or rendered harmless through a belief in technology to solve problems of production. After 1990 this changed quite rapidly, when pollution was 'discovered' as a problem due to international pressures. However, earlier conceptualisations of environmental change continued to permeate even 'new' Environmental Impact Assessments. A case study of the Central African Copperbelt thus reveals much about how humans thought about environmental change and how or why this changed over time. This presentation argues that on the Central African Copperbelt the Anthropocene took on a specific and local meaning. Even if ideas about mining and environmental management were quite internationalised, their application on the Copperbelt depended on specific power relations on the ground. Such local specificities must be taken into account to fully understand the global phenomenon of the Anthropocene.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focused on the anthropogenic factors inherent in the motives, methods and means for formulating and implementing agricultural policies in tropical Africa

Paper long abstract:

The human factor in the desperate quest to feed the world's burgeoning population, otherwise called anthropogenic, has received less than commensurate scholarly attention in Africa. In formulating and executing agricultural policies, greater attention is devoted to need, strategy, material and technology for increased production rather than the conditioning of the policy frameworks to socially inclusiveness and environmentally sustainability. In this paper, we critically examined the level and practice, or lack, of human restraints in the agricultural policies of Nigeria, which is considered extrapolatable to most tropical African states. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, coupled with FGD for triangulation, is utilised to evaluate the design principles for economic viability, social inclusion and threats of some of the policies to the environment. The paper found evident lack of preventive and proactive measures against crossing the planetary boundaries in the motives, methods and means for driving agricultural policies in Africa. In order to give some empirical content to the complex arguments advanced here we shall illustrate the issues raised mainly with examples from Nigeria.