CALDERON, KIM DYAN A.

1 October 2011
MA SDS SDS 298 Anthropology of Development (SAT 9:00-12:00)


SECOND NATURE: A Review


The lessons that the villages of Sandaya and Toly,
featured in Second Nature, teach us are far from
the conventionally accepted thesis of
environmentalism. The notion that
environmental degradation can be traced from
anthropogenic causes has come to be the most
widely acknowledged understanding of ecological
destructions since the Industrial Revolution.
Descending upon the roots of this paradigm, to
which most of todays international development
agencies and government agencies adhere to,
would lead one to the year 1968, when Garret
Hardins Tragedy of the Commons rose into
popularity. This article assumes human rationality
in dealing with what common resources are
available to him. Using the herdsman in a
pastureland scenario to illustrate the simplistic
calculus governing utility, Hardin explains that the
only rational decision for a herdsman to make is
to increase his herd, since the positive utility he
derives by doing so is greater than its negative
utility. That negative utility pertains to
overgrazing, the effects of which are shared by all
herdsmen in the pasture. Such scenario leads him
to the following conclusion:
Adding together the component partial utilities, the
rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible
course for him to pursue is to add another animal to
his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion
reached by each and every rational herdsman
sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each
man is locked into a system that compels him to
increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is
limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men
rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society
that believes in the freedom of the commons.
Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all (Hardin
1968).
While this knowledge holds truth to it, the danger
lies in applying this truism to come up with
narrativessomething that (social) research has
been concerned about for some time. The
commonsthe pastures in this particular
scenario, has been adapted to pertain to forests,
oceans, the atmosphere, even the space; and
humans, armed with their rationality, exist and
continue to grow exponentially to exploit natural
resources in an unsustainable manner. This
narrative has guided policy in the developing
world, with proposed solutions packaged in the
form of privatization, resource taxes, and
regulation.

In Africa, development works are funded by
international institutions inclined to subscribe to
this preconception, undermining local dynamics
and indigenous knowledge on the ground.
International development agencies as well as
scientific organizations operating in the domestic
level are quick to give the same conclusion about
the relationship between the local communities
of people and their natural environment (forests
and grasslands). The dominant understanding
within these development institutions is that local
communities are turning the forests into
savannahs, through massive deforestation
practices potentially extending the arid areas of
Sahel.

In the early 1990s, Melissa Leach and James
Fairhead went to Kissidougou Prefecture in the
Republic of Guinea in West Africa to find answers
to certain questions concerning deforestation.
Kissidougou was of strategic importance during
that time as it was situated in the middle of two
regions: drier areas of savannah to the north and
dense forests to the south. According to Leach
herself, Kissidougou portrayed a striking contrast
between the zones of grasslands and the pockets
of forests, making it interesting to explore the
way the environment was changing. In the
villages of Toly and Sandaya, they were out to
investigate and look for evidences to support the
assertion that farming, population, and
urbanization were putting an unbearable strain to
the forests. The village of Toly was located in the
forest zone, while Sandaya was in the savannahs.

As social anthropologists, they employed in depth
analysis to fully understand the interface between
the peoples and the forests. Through participant
observation, they lived in the villages long enough
for them to grasp the dynamics of the community
and the environment they lived in. In the film,
many interviews with key informants, who were
mostly village elders, were shown. They provided
vital information, which, little by little, shed light
into the problems and issues the anthropologists
went out to investigate.

However, initial findings by the researchers
showed exact contrary to the hypothesis of their
study. Instead of establishing facts that show how
the village community (Sandaya) contributed to
the degradation of the forests, the people even
claimed that they and their ancestors, who
settled in what was once an area of arid
grasslands, planted the trees which eventually
became forests. The researches then decided to
gather as many evidence to substantiate their
initial findings. They worked with local
researchers to conduct a study (COLA) on the
forests. Evidences started to show that indeed the
forests were manmade. Tree species not
indigenous to the area indicated that these were
perhaps introduced into the village by the people
themselves. The research was extended to cover
not only the forest per se but also the local
market and trading patterns of the people.
Information from elders in 30-40 villages
corroborated the same finding: the ancestors of
the present-day villagers created the forests
surrounding the communities. Documents from
archives were collected and scrutinized as well,
only to confirm what was already apparent.

Oral accounts for these researchers were still not
enough so they resorted to studying aerial and
satellite photographs of the area for the last 40-
year period. Latest photos also served to update
their findings. As regards the interpretations
made from the research findings, the researchers
participated in the daily work and activities of the
villagers, during the conduct of which they were
asked indirectly about their perceptions of their
forest environment and their farming practices.
Descriptions of how their farming and fishing
practices or other resource use have changed
served as indicators of environmental conditions.
Fairhead showed this clearly as he related how his
own experience of working with the village men
as they toiled the land provided a venue for
understanding the interaction between the
community and the landscape. He said that it was
during these occasions (and everything else in
between) that people came to talk openly and
freely about their opinion, which could serve as
vital inputs into their research interpretations.

On the other hand, scientists and policymakers
were more inclined to overlook the accounts of
local knowledge found on the ground. They would
rather listen to the landscape than to the
inhabitants. The anthropological research came
up with completely different findings. It was
established that the remaining forests found in
the savannah areas were not a product of
deforestation. The forests were not even there in
the first place. Aerial photographs showed the
changes in the areas of vegetation: forest cover
had increased in areas surrounding the peoples
places of settlements, while savannah eventually
encroached areas that were abandoned by the
villagers. This yielded to the conclusion that the
growth and wellbeing of the forest are very
closely linked to the people close by. This,
according to Fairhead, meant that in the
savannahs, more people doesnt necessarily
mean more degration undermining the
conventional assumption that people are natures
degraders. The more control and management
that communities have over the landscape
resulted to richer landscapes.

The quality of forests also reflected indigenous
knowledge and valuation of the forests that they
created and the lands that they managed. Human
intervention in the savannahs gave way to richer
land conditions supportive of forest biodiversity.
The forests served to protect the settlements
from bushfires which happened very often in the
grasslands. The forests also supported their ways
of farming. Farmers simply form mounds on the
land and bury compostable materials to fertilize
the soil. Crop rotation was performed to further
enrich the soil: rice during the first year, cassava
in the following year, and ground nuts after that.
This process enriched and softened the soil at the
same time. The land was being left uncultivated
for a period of ten years to allow the first trees to
grow and provide the foundation for younger
seedlings to germinate and develop until a new
forest is given birth to.

Villagers also intentionally burned areas earlier to
create barriers for greater bushfires and protect
plant species that served as their sources of food
and shade. Distinct plant characteristics were
familiar to the villagers and they used each
species for different purposes that support both
their community life as well as the surrounding
forests. White grasses were used for thatching
their roofs while long grasses were left as they
could later on convert into forests. Tree cuttings
used as fences would eventually grow to become
trees surviving several generations.

A different situation was taking place in the
village of Toly during that time. Forest areas,
which were likewise man-made, had expanded
into the savannahs thereby causing the grass
species used for thatching to decline. Peoples
farming techniques had to adapt to the changes
in the agricultural landscape. In the past, when
they were farming in the savannahs, preparing
the soil entailed uprooting the grass and burning
it. Recently, as the forests have already expanded
into the farming areas, soil preparation involved
cutting the undergrowth and felling trees and
burning the cleared area. The farmers claimed of
a certain way of burning the fields. When this
process was carried out correctly, the burning
process would enrich the soil.

Without prior knowledge of the history of these
forests, one would be quick to judge that the
practice of burning is an indiscriminate act of
destroying the forests. This practice of managing
lands have been easily misinterpreted and
misrepresented.

A report from the French colonists largely
misrepresented the practice of burning as
overexploitation of forests leading further into
savannization, with very few pockets of forests
left in the area. Scientists made the same
generalizations hence. Leach explained that
scientific experts have been convinced by what
they saw in the landscape without delving into
historical underpinnings of the phenomenon. As
scholars of natural sciences, they were not
inclined to look into historical data since they
perceived history as a distant discipline
insignificant in the study of forestry. The aerial
photographs were also left out. This
misrepresentation then became so deeply
entrenched that even schools portrayed the
practice as senseless destruction of the natural
vegetation.

The findings of the COLA study came as a shock to
development workers who continued to operate
under the conventional assumptions. As local
research collaborator Dominique Millimouno
explained, policy makers and development staff
were skeptic of their findings. Despite that,
people started paying attention and attitudes
began to change as well. Development workers
went out to validate their research discoveries
and they were able to come up with the same
conclusions: that the forests have indeed been
improving. The Forestry Department staff working
on the ground confirmed that the communities
and their interventions made possible the
existence and improvement of these forest
islands found in what were once wide savannahs.
However, higher level policy makers source of
knowledge remained under the monopoly of
international scientific and policy circles.

The ethnographic approach made significant
contributions in policy reforms especially in
development projects that concern people and
their environments. Researches such as those
conducted by Leach and Fairhead and other local
researchers made it possible for the phrase local
or indigenous knowledge systems to reach
development policy reports and discussions that
used to be the sole domain of strictly scientific
disciplines. Ethnography has proven particularly
useful in changing the outlook of development
staff who have been in constant interaction with
the people and their environment. The COLA
study had influenced this sector of the whole
development bureaucracy to make its own
investigation. Findings from the different
development projects opened the minds of
development workers of opposite situations in
the targeted areas, which render top-down
project implementation inapplicable, and
together with it the simplistic assumptions that
characterize their project beneficiaries. Although
higher level management continued to hold on to
these assumptions, apparent shifts in attitude
from their end was perhaps only a matter of time.

Anthropology, with its unique ability to bring to
the fore several questions that natural scientists
consider unimportant, plays a pivotal role in
shifting paradigms that guide development work.
The study in Kissidougou, teaches us that even
universal theories can be put into question, that
environmental narratives dont always end in
tragedy.

Leach revealed that parallel findings were
recently confirmed in different settings across
Africa. The study opens the possibility of giving
new meaning to natureone that allows people
their history. Most importantly, the
anthropological approach, when employed in
development research, can help prevent potential
tragedies from taking place in local settings
those which may be impacted by misguided
development projects that continue to disregard
local knowledge.




References

Hardin, G 1968, The tragedy of the commons, Science, 162,
pp. 1243-1248.
Cyrus Productions 1996, Second nature (documentary film),
with contributions by Leach, M, Fairhead, J & Millimouno, D.