Description
Book SynopsisDescriptions of the late 1800s landscape in the Ovambo floodplain in north-central Namibia closely match the area’s late 1900s appearance, suggesting that little change occurred between the pre-colonial baseline and the postcolonial outcome. Yet, paradoxically, colonial conquest, population pressure, biological invasions, new technology, and economic globalization caused both dramatic deforestation and reforestation in less than a century. The paradox stems from the fact that the prevailing global environmental models obscure and homogenize the process of environmental change: different and contradictory interpretations are dismissed as alternative readings or misreadings of the same process. Deforestation and Reforestation, however, argues that the paradox highlights the need to reframe environmental change as plural processes occurring along multiple trajectories that may be dissynchronized and asymmetrical.
Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xiii Maps xv Photos xvii 1. Approaches to environmental change Models of environmental change The modernization paradigm The declinist paradigm The inclinist paradigm Paradoxes of environmental change 2. Tree castles and population bombs Tree castles and insecurity on the eve of colonial conquest Portuguese violence and population fight into Ovamboland Internal migration in South Africa’s Ovamboland Tree castles and deforestation in the 1920s to 1940s Colonial concerns about overpopulation and deforestation in the 1950s Population growth in Ovamboland Woody vegetation resources by the close of the twentieth century 3. Conquest of Nature: Imperial political ecologies The political ecology of insecurity Indirect environmental rule The colonial conquest of Nature: Direct environmental rule 4. Fierce species: Biological imperialism Invading microbes and virgin soil epizootics Invading microbes and virgin soil epidemics A plague of donkeys: Fierce invading equines Fierce indigenous creatures on the rampage 5. Guns, hoes and steel: Techno-environmental determinism Guns Steel tools Steel plows Guns and steel in north-central Namibia 6.Naturalizing cattle culture: Colonialism as a deglobalizing and decommodifying force The cattle complex and environmental degradation Ovambo cattle as global commodities Cattle, culture and nature Overstocking and biological time bombs Colonial barriers: Conservation and fences Grazing pressure and desertification Livestock and deforestation Commodification, deglobalization and deforestation 7. The Palenque paradox: Beyond Nature-to-Culture Bush cities and the bush ‘Bushmen’ and the bush 8. The Ovambo paradox and environmental pluralism Deforestation in Ovamboland Reforestation in Ovamboland Environmental pluralism: Multiprocessual asynchronous environmental change Bibliography Index
