Misreading the African Landscape

An intriguing 1996 study showing how Africans enrich their land, while scientists believe they damage it.

African forest landscapes are often considered as degraded. However, this fascinating 1996 study reveals how inhabitants have enriched their land when scientists believe they have damaged it. It provides a framework for ecological anthropology, and a challenge to old assumptions about the African landscape.Islands of dense forest in the savanna of 'forest' Guinea have long been regarded both by scientists and policy-makers as the last relics of a once more extensive forest cover, degraded and degrading fast due to its inhabitants' land use. In this 1996 text, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach question these entrenched assumptions. They show, on the contrary, how people have created forest islands around their villages, and how they have turned fallow vegetation more woody, so that population growth has implied more forest, not less. They also consider the origins, persistence, and consequences of a century of erroneous policy. Interweaving historical, social anthropological and ecological data, this fascinating study advances a novel theoretical framework for ecological anthropology, encouraging a radical re-examination of some central tenets in each of these disciplines.