Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1980s, West Africa has been seen as a deforestation 'hot spot'. For instance,
in the year of the first UN Earth Summit, the World Conservation Moni-
toring Centre reported that only 13 per cent of original West African forest
cover remained (Sayer et al ., 1992: 74). Likewise, a slightly earlier research
paper co-published by NASA (the famous US National Aeronautics and
Space Administration) reported up to 96 per cent forest loss during the
twentieth century in Benin, Ghana, Liberia and Ivory Coast (Gornitz and
NASA, 1985).
Consequently, most West African governments have intensified ear-
lier efforts to conserve and regenerate forest since the early 1990s. Like
other governments with deforestation problems, they have received con-
siderable encouragement from the FAO, UNEP, World Bank and a host
of international conservation organisations. This encouragement is often
financial: development aid from wealthy countries often has 'green condi-
tions' attached to it, while other monies hailing from private, charitable or
activist sources have expressly green aims (such as 'carbon offset' funds that
pay for forest protection and expansion projects in the tropics).
What does this attempt to prevent West African deforestation mean
on the ground? It means a raft of government-led or government-backed
policies and schemes, from new forest plantations, restrictions on log-
ging of existing forest, the creation of forest reserves and attempts to
encourage natural reforestation of designated deforested areas. Because West
African countries have large rural populations, these policies and schemes
necessitate working with, or controlling the activities of, many farming com-
munities, including groups of shifting agriculturalists who move locations in
the short, medium or long term. In theory, and very often in practice, rural
people must work within (or around) measures designed by state officials
based in Guinea's cities and interested parties hailing from overseas.
These government-led measures may seem necessary, 'obviously
required', in deforested areas within roughly 400 kilometres of the West
African coastline (the zone of closed canopy evergreen and semi-deciduous
forest). But what about the transition zone to the north where forest gives
way to mixed and ultimately very different (grassland) vegetation cover?
When and where are pro-forest measures required, given that only some of
the zone is (or could be) dense or even open woodland, given the prevail-
ing climate? Unlike political borders and boundaries that divide countries,
those separating ecotones are usually understood to be gradual rather than
abrupt. This absence of clear demarcatory, let alone straight , lines presents
an analytical challenge to environmental scientists, policymakers and policy
implementers. In the transition zone, what does any given patch of forest,
brush or open savannah signify in a wider biogeographical sense? To see
how this question was answered, and what its specific implications for local
land users have been, I want to consider what happened in Kissidougou pre-
fecture in southeast Guinea. The dynamics of forest cover in this area were
the focus of sustained research by the British anthropologists James Fairhead
 
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