FOUR years ago, two young British anthropologists travelled to Guinea in West
Africa to find out how local people deal with the problem of deforestation.
Melissa Leach and James Fairhead spent 18 months in the prefecture of
Kissidougou, near the Sierra Leone border. There, according to the scientific
literature, farming and runaway population growth have left the landscape
鈥渁lmost 100 per cent degraded鈥濃�攁 vast savanna scrubland with only tiny
remnants of forest where once the trees dominated the landscape. But what Leach
and Fairhead found turned this idea on its head.
鈥淧eople have been reading the landscape backwards,鈥� insists Leach, who is
from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.
鈥淎ssumptions are made about previous vegetation cover from the present cover,鈥�
adds Fairhead, now at the University of London鈥檚 School of Oriental and African
Studies. 鈥淲herever there are some trees, a presumption is made that there was,
and indeed there ought to be, continuous forest cover.鈥� This is far from the
truth, says Fairhead. Many patches of forest are there only because of human
activity, created by local farmers who knew precisely what they were doing.
Before they travelled to Guinea, the two anthropologists trawled the archives
for a detailed vegetation history of the area. They found aerial photos from the
1950s, which they compared with photos and satellite images from 1990 and 1992.
They could hardly believe what they saw. Again and again the recent photos
showed more forest cover than there had been forty years ago鈥攕ometimes
twice as much. 鈥淚t was quite a shock to us,鈥� Leach admits. But after talking to
local people about their farming practices, Leach and Fairhead realised that
their findings were correct.
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A wide band of land stretching right across West Africa is covered by the
type of mosaic of forest and savanna that the two scientists are interested in
(see Map). They have now looked at a number of countries crossed by this band
and found enough similarities with Guinea to convince them that much of what we
鈥渒now鈥� about deforestation in that area is wrong. The orthodox view is that the
whole area has suffered massive forest loss. According to the World Wide Fund
for Nature, for example: 鈥淲est Africa鈥檚 forests are being lost at a faster rate
than those of any other region.鈥� Friends of the Earth asserts that over the past
four decades forest cover in C么te D鈥橧voire has decreased from 12 to 1.5
million hectares. And in Benin pressures from farming mean that there is no
natural forest left, says the International Institute for Environment and
Development (IIED). Confronted with such pessimistic assessments is it any
wonder that national and international development and conservation
organisations are putting a lot of money and effort into 鈥渢ackling
诲别蹿辞谤别蝉迟补迟颈辞苍鈥�?
Leach and Fairhead agree that there are problems, not least from large-scale
logging operations, commercial farms and plantations. What concerns them,
though, is that the extent of forest loss has been exaggerated, and local
farmers are often cast as the villains. In the past outsiders have tried to
impose solutions but, say Leach and Fairhead, the best way to tackle the problem
is by working with local people. They know better than anyone how to increase
forest cover. In the transition zone between high forest and savanna, where
neither type of vegetation is entirely stable, farmers deflect the landscape
from one to the other by their land management practices.
In Guinea, Leach and Fairhead discovered that local people cultivate forest
鈥渋slands鈥� around their villages. They plant trees that will protect the village
from hot, dry winds and fire, give shade to people and their coffee and kola
trees, and provide fruits, nuts, medicines or other useful products. Some trees,
including the giant silk-cotton so characteristic of forest islands, grow from
boughs originally driven into the ground as fences or stockades which have
subsequently taken root.
Meanwhile, the soil behind the houses and around the village becomes richer
and moister as it is manured and gardened intensively by hand for crops such as
yams, peanuts, cassava and vegetables. Between the rows of vegetables more trees
spring up, some grown from seeds dropped by animals, others planted by people.
The seedlings thrive, whereas in the open savanna they would wither and burn
under the scorching Sun. Gardens are used in rotation鈥攑erhaps ten years of
cultivation followed by ten years of fallow, during which trees and shrubs can
grow quite big.
鈥淧eople could easily point out to us abandoned villages or garden sites in
the savanna, because their woody vegetation made them instantly recognisable,鈥�
says Fairhead. And an increasing amount of land is becoming forested in this way
as a result of changes in Guinea鈥檚 economy and society. Traditionally, women do
the gardening while men tend rice fields. But over the past fifty years money
has become more important so men have sold more of their rice crop and gardening
for food and for cash has increased. As the areas of garden and garden fallow
have expanded, so has the forest.
Once Leach and Fairhead had made sense of the forest expansion in
Kissidougou, they began to look at descriptions of vegetation elsewhere in West
Africa. They found evidence that Guinea is not the only place where forest
islands have sprung up as a result of human activity, rather than being the
relics of past continuous forest cover. In the Nigerian savanna area鈥攚hich
covers about a third of the country between the Sahel in the north and the
tropical moist forest in the south鈥攆orest has grown up over the soil of
abandoned towns. And forest islands with similar flora are found around
inhabited or abandoned villages in Sierra Leone, Benin, Togo and C么te
D鈥橧voire. When the anthropologists went back to the archives they found, once
again, that these islands of vegetation often contradicted the contemporary view
of deforestation.
The rainforest expert, Norman Myers, for example, wrote in his 1980 report
for the US National Academy of Sciences that Sierra Leone had as much as 5
million hectares of 鈥渓ittle disturbed forest鈥� as recently as 1945. Yet British
foresters visiting early this century reported only 150 000 hectares of forest.
And, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, C么te D鈥橧voire
had 14.5 million hectares of forest in 1900 compared with only 3 million in
1981. Most of this destruction is supposed to have happened since 1960. But
early this century, visiting foresters judged that only 6 to 8 million hectares
were under high forest, the rest being savanna or long-established or overgrown
agricultural land.
Leach and Fairhead concluded that in several regions either the scale of the
destruction, or its speed, or how recently it occurred, or all of these, have
been greatly exaggerated. They believe that concerned outsiders have allowed
their prejudices to distort their reading of the landscape鈥攖hey have made
assumptions about the 鈥減roper鈥� vegetation for the African landscape and the
destructiveness of human activity. And if inaccurate or uncertain figures for
forest destruction are bandied about for long enough, people begin to believe
them.
The figures go round and round. And the more notable the institution
publishing them, the 鈥渢ruer鈥� they become. Reginald Cline Cole of the Centre for
West African Studies at the University of Birmingham recalls how officials from
the Nigerian forest department have quoted figures about Nigerian forests 鈥渁s
gospel鈥�, because they are in a UN report鈥攚hen in fact the UN gets all its
figures from national forestry departments. 鈥淭hen, when I have done research on
the ground, counting trees, and found these figures to be wrong, Nigerian
academics say `you鈥檝e got to be joking鈥�, because the UN says otherwise.鈥�
The underlying belief that forests only ever disappear is so strong that
recorded increases in woody biomass have on occasion been dismissed by
researchers as 鈥渁rtefacts鈥� or 鈥渄iscrepancies鈥� and deliberately left out of their
analyses. Yet ecologists know that the boundary between forest and savanna is
balanced on a knife edge and can suddenly go one way or the other depending on
even slight shifts in conditions. 鈥淚t is not a simple linear relationship,鈥� says
Will Hawthorne of the Oxford Forestry Institute. The balance is not stable, he
explains. 鈥淚t is more like a catastrophe pattern.鈥�
This, however, is news to policy makers and many of the environmentalists who
influence them, including authors and staff in some of the big conservation
organisations. One spokesman said he would be 鈥渆xtremely surprised鈥� if savanna
was turning into forest in Guinea. Another, Clive Wickes from the WWF, said he
believed such an assertion was 鈥渢otally incorrect鈥�. And when Tim Rice of Friends
of the Earth was told that a Guinean forest reserve includes former farmland, he
said 鈥渢hat鈥檚 news to me鈥�.
Leach and Fairhead believe that current ideas about deforestation in West
Africa result partly from an assumption that the presence of humans, almost by
definition, degrades or defiles a landscape. And this view is reinforced by
fears about population growth. Environmentalists choose words that reflect a
perception that forests are unable to stand up to people. Wickes of the WWF, for
example, describes people 鈥渇looding鈥� down roads into forests. And Myers wrote in
his 1980 report: 鈥淚t is not difficult to visualise the impact that these huge
throngs of agriculture-supported people are likely to have on remaining tracts
of tropical moist forest unless their disruptive forms of farming can be
尘辞诲颈蹿颈别诲.鈥�
The implication is that 鈥渨e鈥� must stop 鈥渢hem鈥� destroying the forests. These
鈥渢hrongs鈥� and 鈥渇loods鈥� of people, however, still only populate their countries
at one-fifth to one-eighth of the densities found in Western Europe. In many
areas, populations have yet to recover to the levels of the 18th and 19th
centuries, before slavery and warfare removed and killed so many people.
And there is another factor that helps to promote this apocalyptic outlook.
An escalating environmental crisis is a proven way for development academics and
conservation organisations to win funding. Governments, too, know that to
qualify for international loans or grants it helps to have an environmental
crisis. 鈥淚t鈥檚 got a lot worse in the past ten years with the contraction of
external resources for research,鈥� says Cline Cole. 鈥淪o people, increasingly
desperate for funding, peddle more and more desperate figures designed to grab
补迟迟别苍迟颈辞苍.鈥�
Most researchers are motivated by a genuine urge to 鈥渟ave the planet鈥�. But
distorting the figures on deforestation is of more than just academic concern.
When an area is deemed to have been deforested, sanctions are often imposed that
interfere with the rights of local people. Outsiders often impose regulations
governing the felling of trees and establish 鈥減rotected areas鈥� where farming is
forbidden. 鈥淓verywhere there is the assumption that local people are incapable
of managing forest and so their rights to manage trees as they would wish are
removed,鈥� says Fairhead. The irony, he points out, is that people are being
banned from touching trees they themselves may have grown. Fairhead is enraged
at the way forest loss has been exaggerated. 鈥淎t the stroke of the pen, millions
of people are demonised,鈥� he says.
In Guinea, for example, Leach and Fairhead found primary school children who
were being taught that traditional farming, as practised by their own parents,
is environmentally destructive and backward. Prejudice and intolerance are
fuelled, say the two scientists, by government officials and aid workers who
make spurious distinctions between ethnic groups based on how much of a threat
they are perceived to pose to the forest. Rotational farming is particularly
frowned upon. Most observers still believe that shifting cultivation degrades
soils so that virgin forest is invariably destroyed during each cycle. 鈥淭hey
don鈥檛 go back to the same place, because you can鈥檛 put fertility back into the
soil,鈥� says Wicks. Such beliefs fuel the view that as population levels grow,
shifting cultivation increasingly destroys forest.
All rotational farming is seen as destructive, so policy makers fail to
distinguish between total clearance followed by mechanised cultivation, and the
gardening style of farming also practised in many parts of West Africa. 鈥淎s soon
as you put a spade to the soil you harm soil structure,鈥� admits Stephanie Harris
of the Henry Doubleday Research Association in Coventry. 鈥淏ut if you know what
you are doing you can put back more with your cultivation than you take out. And
many small-scale farmers round the world do know what they are doing, and have
highly productive systems.鈥�
But the attitude that outside 鈥渆xperts鈥� know best drives agricultural policy
and advice in West Africa. And there is a widespread assumption that only
鈥渕odern鈥� farming practices can save the environment. In Kissidougou, for
example, aid workers from the German government鈥檚 development agency are
encouraging people to leave their traditional savanna and forest fallow and
cultivate the swamps more intensively for rice鈥攍eading to the permanent
felling of what is probably the most 鈥渘atural鈥� and 鈥減rimary鈥� forest in the
area.
Leach and Fairhead are convinced that their findings could lead to a better
policy for forest vegetation management, benefiting both the environment and
local people. But the issue is not only technical. It is, crucially, political.
鈥淚 am convinced that it is possible,鈥� agrees anthropologist Marcus Colchester,
who writes about rainforests and their indigenous people. He points to several
areas, including parts of the Philippines, northeast India, Amazonia and Kenya,
where research has confirmed that intensive land use can increase forest cover.
But there are political preconditions. 鈥淭he common thread,鈥� says Colchester, 鈥渋s
that local people have control and security, so they make a long-term investment
rather than farming on the run.鈥�
Whether this can happen in West Africa depends in large part upon the
willingness of conservationists and development experts to change their views.
Some, like Don Gilmour from the World Conservation Union, are open-minded. 鈥淚t
is always worth challenging received wisdom,鈥� he says. And James Meyer of IIED
describes Leach and Fairhead鈥檚 findings as 鈥渧ery exciting stuff鈥 hope it
will lead to a critical assessment of the situation in West Africa and indeed
elsewhere too.鈥�
Others are more cautious. 鈥淚 suspect Leach and Fairhead would be the first to
admit they have to polarise the case to get the debate aired,鈥� says Hawthorne.
鈥淚t is not so simple鈥攂ut their input is certainly needed to maintain the
equilibrium.鈥� Cline Cole is also concerned that the challenge to the orthodoxy
should not be overstated.
Leach and Fairhead insist that they do not want to see a 鈥渘ew orthodoxy鈥� that
says forests are on the increase everywhere and African farmers can do no harm.
They just want people to look at the evidence before coming to their
conclusions. 鈥淲e are in absolutely no doubt that forests are disappearing,鈥� says
Leach. 鈥淚ndustrial and non-fallow farming, logging, plantations, urban sprawl,
mining and industry, all destroy forests.鈥�
At the moment no one is happy. Farmers are angry because their activities are
restricted and they are excluded from 鈥渞eserves鈥� that they see as legitimate
farmland, while conservationists want more forest protected more effectively.
Recognising that West African farmers can increase forest cover may lead to a
policy that satisfies both groups.
But, as Meyer suggests, some conservationists will never be happy to leave
the fate of Africa鈥檚 forest to Africans. They are working to another agenda
entirely. Put crudely, he says, they are asking: 鈥淚s there enough forest for the
climate and for our sense of wellbeing in the North?鈥� These people would like to
see West Africa totally covered in trees with no people and no farming.
