White Horse Press Journals
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Pre-history of Southern African Forestry: From Vegetable Garden to Tree Plantation
No full textDesiccationist discourses and concerns dominated official concern in 19th and early 20th century southern Africa grassland ecosytsems. When scientific forestry arrived in Cape Town, government bureaucracies changed and Africa’s first forestry department was created. Yet there were few trees in southern African grassland ecosystems requiring a forest service. Tree planting was advocated. The introduction of alien trees and their spread from coast to interior preceded that of the concept of forestry. The earliest source of tree planting materials was Cape Town’s Dutch East India Company’s garden, established in 1652. Gardens as the primary source of trees and planting information was formalized in the 19th century with the rise of botanic gardens. Missionaries and settlers planted fruit and fuel trees for subsistence, and ornamentals for aesthetics while defining new frontiers. Despite officially sponsored tree planting competitions, it was private plantations of eucalyptus and acacia trees to supply the needs of mines, industry and the wattle bark export market, and not afforestation campaigns, that led to significant tree cover. Tree introductions did change southern African hydrologies, but not in the way imagined by anti-desiccationist campaigners: streams dried up and water tables dropped. Tree planting was regulated as a threat to South African water supplies in the late 20th century, and plans were made to ‘deforest’ the landscape to enhance water storage.  
Modernization with Local Characteristics: Development Efforts and the Environment on the Zoige Grass and Wetlands, 1949-2005
No full textThe Zoige grasslands (Ruo’er gai, chi.) on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau are a wetland and grassland region composed of marshes, bogs, wet meadows, and shallow lakes interspersed with low hills and sub-alpine meadows. These grass and wetlands are recognized as an important grazing zone for western China, a globally significant biodiversity hotspot and major bird flyway. Since the late 1980s, research on the region has highlighted increasing regional environmental degradation. This study is an overview of the state-led development projects and local efforts to “improve” local conditions on the grass and wetlands since 1949 and their impact on the regional ecological and social environment. It focuses mainly on historical state-led development projects to study and alter the wetlands, as well as more recent efforts to raise environmental awareness of the importance of Chinese wetlands. Development efforts by the Chinese state have led to both positive and negative outcomes for local Tibetan residents who had little or no say in modernization efforts until the late 1980s, but who have received most of the blame for regional environmental problems. Despite recognized problems with water use and wetland degradation, as well as administrative emphasis on fencing, settlement, and official land use management in nature reserves, the Chinese state continues to dominate discourse and management of the Zoige wetlands. However, local Tibetans have played an increasing role in regional wetland management. A historical assessment, in contrast to media portrayals and official discourses of the origins of grass and wetland degradation, explains more about the processes of degradation, and with increased local participation, points a new way forward to help in the formulation of more effective policies and mitigation measures
“REORDERING AND COUNTERORDERING:” FORESTRY PRESERVATION, BUSH CLEARING AND THE SOCIOPHYSICAL MAPPING OF CHEPALUNGU, KERICHO DISTRICT, KENYA, 1930-1963
No full textRecent research on Africa has emphasised conservation and trypanosomiasis control as the major factors, which first motivated colonial officials and scientists to embark on forestry preservation and bush clearing policies in colonial Africa. This paper, drawing on recent emphasis on the high modernist nature of colonial policies in general, contends that in Chepalungu, Kenya, forestry preservation and bush clearing were implemented with the objective to create a racially and “tribally” segregated landscape—not merely to conserve the landscape and control trypanosomiasis. Also, whereas colonial policies have commonly been generalized into imposed instruments of power which local people merely submitted to or resisted this paper argues that bush clearing and forestry preservation in Chepalungu unfolded in ways that exceeded imposition and resistance. For the colonial officials and Kipsigis inhabitants of Chepalungu were not only in conflict with each other; they were also in negotiation over the use of the environment. In the process, the policies were, in certain cases, adapted to local Kipsigis practices, just as Kipsigis interests were insinuated into the policies. Thus, just as conflicts were central in the policy making, tangled processes also played a significant role.  
