Introduction to the Special Issue on Africa and the Environment

Natural environments significantly affect human behavior. Nowhere is the importance of the natural environment more apparent than in Africa. Certain soils allow particular farming practices and proscribe others. Minerals augment or limit industrial development. Wild flora and fauna present both opportunity and danger to human harvesters. Seasonal rains can affect everything from road building to nation-building (e.g., transporting ballot boxes). Religion, economics, politics, engineering, law, medicine--the environment profoundly shapes nearly every facet of human life in Africa. The continent hosts not only extremes of environments--from tropical rainforest to desert--but also great diversity in human responses to the different environments they confront. Scholars of Africa have a rich tradition of examining these human responses. For these reasons, the Editors of Africa Today present this special issue on Africa and the Environment. Of course, the complexity of the subject matter precludes its complete coverage in one journal issue. But attention was given to include current research that employs a variety of disciplinary lenses to examine the relationships between Africans and their environment. Lisa Cliggett probes the usefulness of the concept of carrying capacity by examining human-environment linkages in the Gwembe Valley of Zambia. Hsain Ilahiane explores the linkages between ethnicity, power, and agricultural practices in his account of the disintegration of Ksar settlements in southern Morocco. D. D. Tewari argues that the profound changes experienced in the commercial forestry sector in South Africa since apartheid--and the increasing tension among the sector's stakeholders--demand a new policy more reflective of society's needs. Liz Alden Wily examines how the change of some national laws may help the rural poor in Africa retain legal rights to commonly held lands. Abdoulaye Ndiaye offers us the view of a conservation policy practitioner as he relates his experiences trying to structure a community-inclusive management plan for the Djoudj National Park in Senegal. Bradford Strickland links a rural settlement's ecological history to state policies that villagers blame for poor wildlife harvests, the rise of HIV and AIDS, and the underprovision of education and health services. And Stuart Marks investigates the numerous and highly complex causes and consequences of the new, "community-based," natural resource policies so popular to western conservation organizations. Each of these authors provide a fascinating account of the different connections that exist between Africans and their natural environment. I invite you to read these works and explore these important new contributions to the study of Africa

Agriculture · Archaeology · Development economics · Economics · Environmental ethics · Geography · Human settlement · Natural (archaeology) · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Land Rights and Reforms · Law