Paper short abstract:

Farming and pastoral systems in highly variable environments specialise in turning variability into a resource for food production. Development represents variability as an obstacle. With examples from the African drylands, this papers presents the case for understanding variability as an asset.

Paper long abstract:

Small-scale farming and pastoral systems which evolved in highly variable environments, developed ways of turning variability into a resource for food production. A basic strategy observed amongst drylands producers consists in interfacing input variability with variability embedded in their processes of production. This often means avoiding unfamiliar risk within a risk-taking strategy rather than avoiding risk in absolute terms.

Dryland development policies and programmes continue to represent all variability as a disturbance to the environment and an obstacle to agriculture. Small-scale farming and pastoral systems, with their specialist processes embedding variability, are seen as barely hanging in against a hostile nature, or even part of the problem and therefore targets of corrective interventions aimed at introducing uniformity and stability. Important lessons, in view of the widespread increasing of variability as a consequence of climate change, are being missed out or lost, as drylands specialist livelihood systems are pushed into new forms of social inequality and increasingly unsustainable practices.

Operationalising an alternative approach on variability requires a systematic review of the methodological infrastructure of drylands development, especially its assumptions about the normality of stability and uniformity. The need to update this legacy is a challenge for policy makers concerned with modernisation and resilience. When failing to do so, even increasing the rigour and intensity of data collection will not deliver a realistic representation of drylands producers. This contribution presents the case for understanding variability as an asset, with examples from farming and pastoral systems in the African drylands.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses why even well-meaning and well-informed rural development experts tend to portray rural producers as conservative, despite ample evidence of peasant-initiated innovation. It argues that claims about 'peasant conservatism' persist because they have political uses.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on the inhabitants of Lindi Region Tanzania, the paper shows that agricultural innovation here was routine. Over the last century, cultivators have replaced sorghum with maize, expanded cultivation of cassava, and introduced cashew nut as a cash crop. While technical innovations remained too limited to significantly raise productivity, cultivators also tried innovative tools such tractors and 'modern' hoes.

That official language nevertheless tends to characterize them as hidebound by tradition is in keeping with much recent work on the importance of the 'tradition/modernity' dichotomy to the politics of decolonization and development. It is nevertheless ironic that, despite frequent announcements of new and improved paradigms, rural development intervention itself drew on a narrow and repetitive set of stratagems. Moreover, explanations that focus on the large-scale dynamics of the 'development machine' can come uncomfortably close to caricaturing experts as apparatchik and cultivators, again, as passive.

I argue that a form of institutional amnesia is built into development work due to the poverty of the rural state, the narrow practical limits on officials' options, and the political impossibility of acknowledging these limits. Unless officials talk up the potential of both the region targeted and the method used, they will be denied funding; they therefore obscure predictable problems. When explaining failure in hindsight, awkward questions about lack of preparation are avoided by focusing on 'unexpected' problems, which are more safely located in human behavior than in relatively constant environmental constraints. Rural 'traditionalism' then helps protect experts' and officials' reputations.

Paper short abstract:

Government officials in Botswana promote the commodification of San material culture as a means of rural economic development. However, efforts to integrate heritage and economic development are confounded by national conservation policies.

Paper long abstract:

Among Botswana's San people living in rural areas, ostrich eggshell beads are used to make jewellery and decorative embellishments on bags and aprons. This represents an opportunity for a potentially lucrative, culturally specialised, and relatively small-scale industry to flourish in rural areas. Government officials have long promoted the commodification of San material culture in the tourist craft market as a means of economic development, especially for poor women. San women recognise their unique ability to market commercially-appealing artefacts of their material culture, and express a preference to meet the development goals laid out by state actors. However, they are stymied by a set of conservation restrictions that limit their access to the necessary raw materials. The gathering of eggshells, which are easily found in and around rural communities in western Botswana, is prohibited. Under current conservation law, citizens need to purchase a trophy dealer's license in order to possess ostrich eggshells. The end impact is that poor, rural women—who often live in closest contact with the natural resources—are the least-equipped to take advantage of the environment around them, regardless of state rhetoric emphasising rural transformation, economic development and resource beneficiation. This and other barriers to entry keep the poor out of the commercial craft market, and alienate San women from sale of commodities that are representative of their culture heritage and skills. This paper, which draws on twelve months of empirical fieldwork, highlights the disconnect between an emphasis on heritage-based economic development and the policies of biodiversity conservation.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ethiopia, this paper explores how local faith communities cooperate with international development actors, utilizing theology and technology, to shape and preserve what is known as the Ethiopian Afromontane 'church forests'.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ethiopia, this paper explores how local faith communities, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), and international development organizations cooperate to define knowledge and practices of forest conservation. By following a church forest conservation-project in northern Ethiopia, in which both international faith-based organizations, and the EOC are central stakeholders, this paper explores the intersections of local and international articulations of technology, knowledge, and sustainable development.

The church forests of Ethiopia represent some of the last representatives of Highland and Afromontane forests types in the country, making them an important source of biodiversity in the region. While increasing land cultivation and human settlement has gradually reduced the scope of the forests, the EOC and its monastic communities have long been part of preserving the remaining green areas. As larger international environmental and forest conservation initiatives - such as the UN-REDD - emerge on a global level, local knowledges of conservation are now faced with the practices of professionalized development organizations.

The forest conservation initiative aims to integrate both Orthodox theological reflections, modern technologies such as GIS mapping and the creation of seed banks, as well as economically oriented livelihoods-projects. What happens when historically and theologically rooted practices of forest conservation meet the agendas of NGOs driven by innovation and sustainable development? And how are perceptions of 'knowledge' articulated and negotiated in this process, and how does this shape the stakeholders' notions of 'development' and 'partnership'?

Paper short abstract:

Dams on the Omo river in Ethiopia have ended a seasonal flood on which downstream communities previously depended for flood-retreat agriculture. Using ethnography, household survey, and remote sensing (satellite) data we estimate this hidden economic cost.

Paper long abstract:

In Ethiopia's lower Omo valley, official narratives of development are dominated by large infrastructure projects - a cascade of large dams (including the Gibe III dam, completed in 2015) and irrigated plantations, which are supposed to raise local living standards at the same time as they deliver electricity to the national grid and foreign currency revenues to the state. Missing from these narratives is consideration of the impact of the dams on indigenous systems of production that depended on the natural seasonal flooding of the river, a flood that ceased with the completion of the Gibe III dam. In this paper, we highlight the large - and hitherto unquantified - socio-economic costs of the end of flood retreat farming, which was previously fundamental to local livelihoods. Our data come from a retrospective household survey of domestic production comparing farming yields before and after the dam, ethnographic research in communities along the Omo river, and satellite image analysis to determine changes in the extent of flooding over a thirty-year period. Together, these data allow us to estimate productivity per unit area and total area under cultivation along the river before and after the end of the flood. Our findings provide clear evidence of the impact of dam-led development on local production. We compare our results with ethnographic reports on flood retreat agriculture in the Omo valley, and with other extended case studies of development and socio-environmental change in sub-Saharan Africa.

Paper short abstract:

This article focuses on the(dis)continuity of sacred forests' conservation in Tanzania, and explores the reasons behind the big generational divide within this context.

Paper long abstract:

This article focuses on the(dis)continuity of sacred forests' conservation in the North Pare Mountains, Tanzania, and explores the reasons behind the big generational divide within this context. Studies show that sacred forests in North Pare, in spite of not being gazetted by the State, have a wider variety of unique flora and fauna and are better preserved than national forest reserves. Although they are small in size, sacred forests are thus important globally. Scholars suggest that the reason for such high biodiversity is the local traditions and conservation methods, based on the management systems of precolonial society, which are decelerating the process of diminishing of these small forest patches. Thus, because local caretakers enable well organized conservation with low economic expenditures, sacred forests' management has been recently considered a new type of modern conservation model. However, these intact groves are in danger of disappearing in the near future. While it is commonly accepted that the main causes of destruction are farming, firewood and timber etc., the results of my ethnographic fieldwork emphasize that the biggest concern regarding sacred forests' conservation is the young generations' lack of interest and limited information on the practices and logic related to sacred forests. If these dynamics are misunderstood or ignored, environmental policies aimed at forest conservation are likely to fail. The article concludes that new ways of linking the communities and the forests can complement recent conservation efforts, which typically neglect environmental values and moral meanings that are at stake in environmental practices.

Paper short abstract:

This article investigates the quality as well as quantity of water that the water sources within the Great Zimbabwe catchment area are capable of producing. The paper argues that water was central in the day to day lives of the people who lived at Great Zimbabwe (11th- 15th centuries).

Paper long abstract:

Water is one of the most critical resources in the sustenance of modern day cities. Consequently, it is one of the key considerations when planners choose sites for cities. However, since it has few archaeological signatures, there are not many archaeological studies that have focused on water and its archaeological implications. This article investigates the quality as well as quantity of water that the water sources within the Great Zimbabwe catchment area are capable of producing. The paper argues that water was central in the day to day lives of the people who lived at Great Zimbabwe (11th- 15th centuries). As a key resource, the water had to be sufficient and be of good quality to sustain lives. Water has a great deal in revealing the quality of life that the people at the ancient city could have lived. The article, therefore, proceeded from the hypothesis that availability of sufficient and good quality water was a key consideration in the location of Great Zimbabwe. Ethnographic research was used to identify water sources and also to quantity the amount of water. Hydrological analysis was also used to analyse the quality of water as well as its quantity. The study explores how contemporary water sources around Great Zimbabwe and water management systems may help archaeologists to reconstruct water management systems during the time when this ancient city was occupied. The study argues that the sustenance of the ancient city of Great Zimbabwe owed much to the availability of reliable sources of water.