THE AFRICAN SAHEL 25 YEARS AFTER THE GREAT DROUGHT
Special issue, Global Environmental Change, 11(1) 2001
eds.
Simon PJ Batterbury (DESTIN, LSE/ Geography, University of Arizona)
[log in to unmask]
and Prof. Andrew Warren (UCL/Lund). [log in to unmask]
-------------
Based in part on a conference held at the Royal Geographical Society in May
1998, this set of papers offers regional overviews of research priorities,
social change, climate, and urban and market growth in a region of dryland
West Africa still marginal to globalisation trends. Optimistic and
pessimistic visions of agricultural change follow in papers by
Mortimore/Adams and Breman et.al. Papers dealing with pastoral conflicts,
and the link between land degradation and economic change at the local
scale, complete the volume. Please see the websites below, or contact
individual authors for copies.
Batterbury SPJ and Warren A.The African Sahel 25 years after the great
drought: assessing progress and moving towards new agendas and approaches.
pp1-8 [log in to unmask]
This paper introduces a special issue of Global Environmental Change: Human
dimensions on the Sahel of West Africa. It reviews the seminar to which the
papers were presented, and brings together some conclusions. Despite the
quarter century of research into the West African Sahel that followed the
great droughts of the 1970s, there are still strong disagreements about how
to achieve more prosperous, yet sustainable livelihood systems in the
region. There are conflicts between those who believe in indigenous
capacities to maintain rural livelihoods, those who believe that various
forms of external support are necessary, and those wedded to a vision of a
Sahel directed by regional urban growth. Under economic and cultural
globalisation, the future of this region is, at best, unclear. The papers
in this collection do agree that Sahelian environments are diverse, and that
Sahelian people cultivate and exploit diversity and flexibility. They also
suggest that there are no quick-fix development solutions, except to build
upon this historical diversity with renewed purpose.
Claude Raynaut. Societies and nature in the Sahel: ecological diversity and
social dynamics. pp9 -- 18. [log in to unmask]
Mike Hulme. Climatic perspectives on Sahelian desiccation: 1973-1998. pp19
-- 29. [log in to unmask]
Jean Marie Cour. The Sahel in West Africa: countries in transition to a full
market economy. pp31 -- 47 [log in to unmask]
Michael J. Mortimore, William M. Adams. Farmer adaptation, change and
`crisis' in the Sahel. pp49 -- 57. [log in to unmask]
Henk Breman, J.J.Rob Groot, Herman van Keulen. Resource limitations in
Sahelian agriculture. pp59 -- 68
Brigitte Thébaud, Simon Batterbury. Sahel pastoralists: opportunism,
struggle, conflict and negotiation. A case study from eastern Niger. pp69 --
78 [log in to unmask]
Andrew Warren, Simon Batterbury, Henny Osbahr. Soil erosion in the West
African Sahel: a review and an application of a "local political ecology"
approach in South West Niger. pp79 -- 95
-------------
Conference at which most of these papers were originally presented:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/destin/simon/homepage/sahel.html
Global Environmental Caange journal
http://www.elsevier.nl/inca/publications/store/3/0/4/2/5/
|