Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The policy implications of presumed tree loss in the transition zone
In light of this reasoning about tree loss in Kissidougou, a number of regula-
tions were introduced and enforced by the national forest service before and
after Guinea achieved independence from France in 1958. These regulations
were intended to conserve natural forest and facilitate new forest growth in
what was taken to be 'derived savannah' around Kissidougou's islands of
trees. Nature, it was presumed, needed protecting from people.
With varying degrees of success in their enforcement, the following mea-
sures became state policy in Kissidougou prefecture and elsewhere. First, the
felling of most trees - young or mature - became illegal, unless a villager had
applied and paid for a licence to log selectively from the local branch of the
Guinea forest service. This policy rested on the idea that most trees did
not belong to any individual, family or village community in Kissidougou
and similar prefectures. Second, fire setting also became illegal, unless it
was undertaken or overseen by state forestry officials. Third, some areas of
derived savannah were closed off and made into government farms, in part
to meet heightened food demand in Guinea post-1950 and in part to ensure
'rational' land management. Fourth, shifting cultivation was deemed in need
of monitoring so that farmers used fewer sites overall. Finally, new tree plan-
tations were created during the 1980s - artificial twins of the Ziama forest
reserve created elsewhere in the transition zone in 1932 (and designated a
UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1981).
Inevitably, indeed intentionally, these various measures impinged upon
the ability of the Kissia and Kuranko to maintain their established prac-
tices of living off the land. When tree felling or fire setting occurred, and
was noticed by local forest officials, fines were imposed and local people
criminalised. Indeed
...
...
agencies
such [actions] as further evidence of local igno-
rance and wanton destructiveness, and hence the need to implement policy
with greater force, without questioning the appropriateness of the policies or
their underlying analysis.
generally t[ook]
(Fairhead and Leach, 1996: 116)
Together, these measures instantiated a division between state officials
and local people, with the latter's agro-ecological knowledge and prac-
tice regarded as something to be managed and disciplined, not a resource
to be studied or utilised. Natural forest islands and afforestation projects
were imagined as 'buffers' protecting continuous forest further south from
conversion to shrub- and grassland.
The occlusion of forest history in Kissidougou
A century after the first French colonialists arrived in Guinea, two English
anthropologists undertook extensive field and archival work in Kissidougou
