The Environmental Crunch in Africa

Growth Narratives vs. Local Realities

Jon Abbink

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319771304
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319771311
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Biological Sciences

Provides a critical overview of the challenges & problems of environmental–ecological conditions in Africa

Discusses how to address the environmental problems a growing African economy is causing

Examines the effects current political-economic policies have on local communities in Africa

© The Author(s) 2018

Jon Abbink (ed.)The Environmental Crunch in Africahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77131-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Promise and Peril in Africa—Growth Narratives vs. Local Environmental Problems

Jon Abbink¹

(1)

African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

Jon Abbink

Email: [email protected]

We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats.

W. Ripple et al. (2017)

End Abstract

Environmental Crisis Narratives and Crisis Phenomena

The above citation from William Ripple and colleagues encapsulates contemporary feelings of malaise and ambivalence about economic growth versus global environment concerns. On the one hand—especially for Africa—there are great stories of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, expansion and production increase in agriculture, large-scale land acquisitions, and investments for export production, and Africa as a huge ‘emerging market .’ Cities are growing, more people than ever catch up on education and technology, ICT innovation is proceeding, and relatively less people stay below the poverty line. On the other hand, there are the persisting stories on the African—and global—natural environment that continues to deteriorate and impoverish, especially for local economies and environments. This book is about that tension and offers some reflections and case studies on the observed dilemmas. It is not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, which is dealt with in a now substantial literature, but contributes to the debate. There is not only incontrovertible climate change and global warming, ¹ but also ongoing resource squeeze, decline of forests and biodiversity , predation and soil degradation, all ticking on steadily. Many developing countries claim the right to grow and pollute first, and only address environmental problems later—like, as they often say, China did. And if investments are to be made in green economies and sustainability , then it stands to reason the developed world should pay more. This sounds reasonable, and agreements pertaining to this have been made in the framework of the COP conferences to counter global warming, notably the 2015 COP 21 in Paris. But environmental decline—next to global warming—marches on, fueled by strong population growth in Africa and insensitive or out-of-context plans to ‘modernize’ agriculture and eliminate smallholder economies, pastoral economies, etc.—phenomena for which African governments should also develop policy.

This ‘message’ of looming problems is not necessarily a return to stories like Robert Kaplan’s on ‘the coming anarchy’ (Kaplan 1994); a close reader of that controversial essay might note how much more nuanced reality is 25 years later. His argument was about politics rather than environmental decline as such, but he linked the two. The casual model was flawed, and he did not foresee the surge in food production (e.g., via genetically modified crops and expansion of cultivation areas), the rise of Internet as a driver of the economy and a space of critique (start-ups, spread of market information, and social media), and green technology. But Kaplan was right about the fact that many areas became harder and harder to govern, and that ‘civil society’ in the developing world remained very precarious and weak—and this included organizations and powers in the domain of environmental governance. And even with those new technological means and human inventions, land surfaces today keep filling up, ² freshwater reserves keep declining, oceans are more polluted, species are disappearing, and resource struggle continues. There are areas that recover or retain vegetation (see Tiffen et al.’s classic study 1994; Brandt et al. 2017), but there is no infinity of resources. Biophysical ecologies are gradually declining: in relative terms, but most probably also in absolute terms.

With an annual population growth in Africa of more than 31 million (and rising), ³ it is not difficult to see that the cliché of African environments ‘facing major challenges,’ and in many places outright destruction, is true. The environmental and social-scientific literature on it is accumulating. ⁴ While deterministic and overly alarmist accounts have been nuanced by many studies of situated recovery and resilience of both environmental systems and affected people (cf. Fairhead and Leach 1996; Burger and Zaal 2009; Abbink 2017, and many others), problems of environmental sustainability (i.e., long-term reproducibility of living conditions) and management have not gone away; indeed they are now omnipresent as a future threat (see also Jalbert et al. 2017 for telling cases in North America and other non-African settings). It seems also that the Malthusian argument is making a come-back—too many people on too small and shallow resource bases, leading to unsustainable depletion—because the technological advances or the needed large-scale application thereof is not keeping pace with problems of global warming, climate change , high population growth , and decline of local knowledge management and capacity. So, cliché or not, the challenges to the African—and the global—environment are still there and are very real. Sheer numbers are having their impact. As Milman reports on recent research (2015): ‘Humans are “eating away at our own life support systems” at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment.’ While the evidence is not supporting an overall decline in vegetation everywhere in Africa, its nature and quality, as well as the biodiversity and ecosystems services, do suffer (cf. Brandt et al. 2017). ⁵ Some countries are also more hit by ecological decline and population pressure than others. ⁶ In almost all cases, however, societal, political, and economic factors mediate between environment and people; i.e., it is rarely appropriate to simply ‘blame’ local small-scale producers, indigenous/ethnic minorities, etc. for processes for the decline of their environments. Resulting processes of environmental degradation also have major, but under-estimated, security implications (cf. Meier et al. 2007; Burgess 2008; AIPC 2017).

This book is a multi-disciplinary, radically ‘problem-oriented’ collection, considering some of the direct challenges of environmental phenomena and problems in specific African contexts. It takes a strong interest in the interactions between people, environment/ecology, politics, and (cultural and social) values in light of the debates on the ‘global crisis.’ There is perhaps no autonomous ‘environmental’ dynamics but only a human-made one: a socioeconomically, politically, and culturally embedded dynamics, leading to the ecological threats mentioned. The book rehearses a number of familiar themes in the study of the environment as known from political ecology , environmental studies and anthropology, one of them being the problem of small-scale land users being connected to global networks and markets in contexts of unequal power and state exploitation whereby local knowledge that had served societies for ages (cf. Hendry 2014) gets subverted and adaptations get destroyed. Often, as Walker noted (2005: 74), it then followed that a ‘situational rationality’ was created that might force people to degrade their environments and lose grip on their productive conditions. In this respect, the situation—also in Africa—has not much improved. As most case studies in this book show, such processes continue and increase the ecological–environmental problems.

A major challenge is ‘how to talk about environmental problems so people, notably policy-makers and power-holders, will listen,’ and this includes scholars (cf. Mann 2015), because cognizance of ‘the facts’ does not gear people or even governments into action by itself. How do we contribute to a new perspective on the enduring problems of African environments that both recognizes its global connections and negative interactions with wider exogenous processes—imposed changes, economic exploitation—and the potential in African societies and cultural traditions for recovery or sustainability ? What is the nature of environmental change in Africa in the present era, and what is ‘special to the continent’? How do local communities perceive and face the threats and visible changes in their environmental conditions? ‘Doom and gloom won’t save the world’ (Knowlton 2017), but confronting the challenges is needed.

Myths of ‘Community’?

Making the continuing problems visible and show connections is one thing. It is not only in Africa that the environmental crisis is brewing; it is intertwined with the global trends, as the studies of the IPPC and other major research institutes time and again emphasize. An important warning came out in November 2017, authored by a large group of concerned scientists (Ripple et al. 2017). But especially after the Paris COP21 conference in 2016 governments in Africa have also to take more responsibility in recognizing and managing the creeping crisis and, we assert, reconstitute the political playing fields and the ‘stakeholder ’ lineups. It is not only a question of developing so-called effective government policies, and green energy plans to replace the fossil fuel-burning economies and massive clearance of lands, but also to involve local communities in co-managing their environment and agroecologies and proceed on what works locally, in functioning communities. Indeed, agroecological systems that have evolved over many ages and having achieved some balance between environment and people as well as having retained important levels of biodiversity are to be rediscovered and invested in much more. There are ‘success stories’ showing that local people find solutions if challenged and adapt to problems when allowed agency and when state authorities and international donors back off (cf. the remarkable studies in Zaal and Burger 2009, and the classic discussion in Leach and Mearns 1996). In part...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Promise and Peril in Africa—Growth Narratives vs. Local Environmental Problems
• 2. Cash for Cashews: Does It Add Up?
• 3. Trade-Offs Between Crop Production and Other Benefits Derived from Wetland Areas: Short-Term Gain Versus Long-Term Livelihood Options in Ombeyi Watershed, Kenya
• 4. Agriculture, Ecology and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Trajectories of Labour-Saving Technologies in Rural Benin
• 5. Is Growing Urban-Based Ecotourism Good News for the Rural Poor and Biodiversity Conservation? A Case Study of Mikumi, Tanzania
• 6. Losing the Plot: Environmental Problems and Livelihood Strife in Developing Rural Ethiopia—Suri Agropastoralism Vs. State Resource Use
• 7. Cameroon’s Western Region: Environmental Disaster in the Making?
• 8. The Impasse of Contemporary Agro-pastoralism in Central Tanzania: Environmental Pressures in the Face of Land Scarcity and Commercial Agricultural Investment
• 9. Down by the Riverside: Cyclone-Driven Floods and the Expansion of Swidden Agriculture in South-western Madagascar
• 10. Challenging Impediments to Climate Change Initiatives in Greg Mbajiorgu’s Wake Up Everyone
• 11. Future in Culture: Globalizing Environments in the Lowlands of Southern Ethiopia
• Back Matter