African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on September 20, 2005
African Affairs 2006 105(418):97-116; doi:10.1093/afraf/adi071
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The politics and ethnography of environmentalisms in Tanzania
Dan Brockington (dan.brockington{at}geog.ox.ac.uk) is with the School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, UK.
This article explores the forms of environmentalism flourishing in Tanzanian villages and district and central government. It argues that their apparent unity should be explained by several factors. In central government, there is support for environmentalist policies because they generate revenue. In local government, environmentalism diverts attention away from bureaucratic failure, while simultaneously being the subject of intense politicking among the legislature. In villages, environmentalism reflects realities of environmental change, different ecologies of agricultural activity, competition and jealousy and the manipulation of official discourse. This article highlights the diversity of sources of environmentalist prominence in different sites of political activity.
1. The word used for ‘waste’ is translated from the Swahili: ‘jangwa’. It is also translated as ‘desert’ but can be used in a wide variety of contexts and scales. I have heard it used to describe small patches of land, and it is also the name for the Sahara. It can be used in both arid lowlands and humid mountains [cf. C. Conte, ‘The forest becomes a desert: forest use and environmental change in Tanzania’s West Usambara mountains’, Land Degradation and Development 10 (1999), pp. 291–309]. I prefer the term ‘waste’ because its central notion is lack of productivity, rather than aridity.
2. <http://www.ippmedia.com> Accessed on 18 October 2002.
3. Cf. O. B. Rekdal, ‘When hypothesis becomes myth: the Iraqi origin of the Iraqw’, Ethnology 37, 1 (1998), pp. 17–38.
4. R. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995); J. Fairhead and M. Leach, Misreading the African Landscape (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996); R. Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over livelihood and nature preservation in Africa (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1998); D. Brockington, Fortress Conservation: The preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania (James Currey, Oxford, 2002).
5. J. P. Brosius, ‘Analyses and interventions: Anthropological engagements with environmentalism’, Current Anthropology 40, 3 (1999), pp 277–309.
6. J.-F. Bayart, The State in Africa: The politics of the belly (Longman, London, 1993); J.-F. Bayart, S. Ellis, and B. Hibou, The Criminalisation of the State in Africa (James Currey, Oxford, 1999); P. Chabal and J.-P. Daloz, Africa Works (James Currey, Oxford, 1999).
7. J. M. Klopp, ‘Pilfering the public: the problem of land grabbing in contemporary Kenya’, Africa Today 47 (2000), pp. 7–28.
8. The constituency building reached the British press. Cf. ‘Kenya’s rulers clear way for drought and disaster by felling forest for votes’, The Independent (London), 16 January 2002, p. 14.
9. J. M. Klopp, ‘ "Ethnic clashes" and winning elections: the case of Kenya’s electoral despotism’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 35 (2001), pp. 473–517.
10. P. Richards, Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology and food production in West Africa (Allen and Unwin, Hemel Hempstead, UK, 1985); M. Leach and R. Mearns, The Lie of the Land: Challenging received wisdom on the African environment (James Currey, Oxford, 1996).
11. M. Leach and J. Fairhead, ‘Fashioned forest pasts, occluded histories? International environmental analysis in West African locales’, Development and Change 31 (2000), pp. 35–59.
12. J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, depoliticisation and bureaucratic state power in Lesotho (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990).
13. Cf. R. A. Schroeder, ‘Community, forestry and conditionality in the Gambia’, Africa 69, 1 (1999), pp. 1–22.
14. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.
15. Klopp, ‘Pilfering the public’.
16. E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The origin of the Black Act (Pantheon Books, New York, NY, 1975); J. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1985); B. Berman and J. Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey, London, 1992).
17. J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979).
18. R. Willis, A State in the Making. Myth: history and social transformation in pre-colonial Ufipa (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1981).
19. See S. Charnley, ‘Communal resource use and migration into the Usangu plains, Tanzania’ (PhD thesis, Stanford University, California, 1994); P. B. Coppolillo, ‘The landscape ecology of pastoral herding: spatial analysis of land use and livestock production in East Africa’, Human Ecology 28, 4 (2000), pp. 527–60; F. Cleaver, ‘Reinventing institutions: bricolage and the social embeddedness of natural resource management’, European Journal of Development Research 14, 2 (2002).
20. J. Ford, The Role of Trypanosomiases in African Ecology: A study of the tsetse fly problem (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971); J. Igoe and D. Brockington, ‘Pastoral land tenure and community conservation: a case study from north-east Tanzania’, Pastoral Land Tenure Series 11 (IIED, London, 1999); J. G. Galaty ‘Pastoral and agro-pastoral migration in Tanzania: factors of economy, ecology and demography in cultural perspective’, in J. W. Bennett and J. R. Bowen (eds), Production and Autonomy: Anthropological studies and critiques of development (University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1988), pp. 163–83.
21. E. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The short twentieth century 1914–1991 (Abacus, London, 1994), p. 236. In 1961, US military expenditure was 9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); and although it was to decline (just over 5 percent in the 1970s), it remained a powerful trope for explaining US economy, society and politics. Indeed the military-industrial complex is still important now with the Cold War won and US military expenditure down to less than 4 percent of GDP.
22. Tanzania Wildlife Sector Review Task Force, A Review of the Wildlife Sector in Tanzania. Volume 1: Assessment of the current situation (Ministry of Tourism, Natural Resources and the Environment, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1995).
23. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, United Republic of Tanzania, Tourism Master Plan. Strategy & Actions, April 2002 <http://www.tzonline.org/pdf/tourismmasterplan.pdf> Accessed on 9 November 2004.
24. Brockington, Fortress Conservation.
25. K. Hart, The Political Economy of West African Agriculture (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982).
26. DANIDA, Overview of Donor Supported Environmental Activities in Tanzania (Royal Danish Embassy, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1999). Spent in 1 year, this would be equivalent to just over 4 percent of the country’s GDP.
27. Leach and Fairhead, ‘Fashioned forest pasts’, pp. 47–9.
28. W. A. Rodgers, T. T. Struhsaker, and C. C. West, ‘Observations on the red colobus (Colobus badius tephrosceles) of Mbisi forest, Southwest Tanzania’, African Journal of Ecology 22 (1984), pp. 187-94.
29. J. Igoe, ‘Ethnicity, civil society, and the Tanzanian pastoral NGO movement: the continuities and discontinuities of liberalized development’ (PhD thesis, Boston University, Boston, MA, 2000).
30. Mr. Mbegu’s stance on the forest, and emphasis of the importance of the red colobus monkey, encouraged villagers to name him Mr. Colobus. His name was unfortunately similar to the Swahili for the black and white colobus.
31. D. Brockington, ‘Communal property and degradation narratives: debating the Sukuma immigration into Rukwa Region, Tanzania’, Cahiers d’Afrique 20 (2001), pp. 1–22.
33. Presidential Commission of Inquiry Against Corruption, Report on the Commission of Corruption (Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania, Tanzania, 1996).
34. Brockington, ‘Communal property’; D. Brockington, ‘Local government, taxation and natural resource management: corruption, accountability and democratic performance in Tanzania’, Development and Change, forthcoming.
35. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine.
36. I was unable to discuss the purpose of the visit and its cause with the representatives. However, the circumstances and language do suggest that villagers were exploiting government rhetoric. This explanation was favoured by people in the valley with whom I discussed the case. The result of their complaints was a large public meeting which unearthed many of the problems of governance underlying the grievances. See Brockington, ‘Communal property’.
37. With good reason — the concentrating of dung in kraals is sometimes referred to as ‘nutrient stripping’ and forms an important part of the patch dynamics of semi-arid rangelands.
38. One of the most lively contests in the village while I was there was between two herders who had broken that agreement.
39. This is a Sukuma innovation. Weeding parties I observed contained mixtures of residents and immigrants.
40. Nicknamed Chuma (steel) because it was so tough.
41. The importance of herd boy skill was underlined by the lament of a (Fipa) herd owner whose herd boy was going to leave his employment and who had remarkably managed to guard his cattle for 3 years without causing any case of crop damage.
42. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP, Oxford, 1937), p. 82, 540; C. Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (Basic Books, New York, NY, 1983), p. 75.
43. ‘Local knowledges’ here could cover a vast array of understandings and beliefs in all parts of the world. It has proven particularly productive to consider the incoherence, incompleteness and lack of co-ordination of Western knowledges and certain areas of supposed expertise (R. Grove-White, ‘New wine, old bottles? Personal reflections on the new Biotechnology Commissions’, Political Quarterly 72 (2001), pp. 466–72).
44. J. Fairhead and M. Leach, Science, Society and Power: Environmental knowledge and policy in West Africa and the Caribbean (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003).
45. Leach and Fairhead ‘Fashioned forest pasts’, p. 35.
46. K. Milton, Loving Nature: Towards an ecology of emotion (Routledge, London, 2002).
47. I am grateful to Dr. John Lonsdale for this point.
48. It is indicative of the importance of environmental concerns in Tanzania that its value can be equated with that of development. I have heard a funeral peroration for a village chairman which concluded with the praise that he had tried hard to bring development and conserve the environment.
49. As the manager of the Mkomazi Game Reserve of northern Tanzania told me in 1994, when justifying the eviction of herders from the reserve — we cannot have these people living out there like animals, they must develop.
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