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A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resources and a fair sharing of pollution burdens? Environmental problems are undoubtedly one of the most salient public issues of our time, yet environmental scholarship and action is marked by a fragmentation of ideas and approaches because of the multiple ways in which these environmental problems are “framed.” Diverse framings prioritize different...
This study investigates how and why a group ranch members in Kajiado District, Kenya, supported the subdivision of their collective landholdings into individual, titled units, and what outcomes resulted in this transition to individual rights. Viewed over a longer time scale, the author finds that politics is at the core of institutional change.
How access to and control over marine resources in Madagascar are negotiated, and the inextricable link between equity and sustainability As marine conservation becomes an increasingly urgent issue around the world, there is an equally critical need to understand the ways different conservation interventions attend to or exacerbate social inequality. This book explores the origins of a conservation agenda in Madagascar and the consequences of its neglect of gender. Drawing on interviews, ecological and social surveys, archival research, and several years of living with fishers in Madagascar, Merrill Baker-Médard examines how access to and control over marine resources are negotiated from fishing villages to the conference rooms of international meetings. Her intersectional approach bridges conservation science, gender studies, and human geography to advance the idea that equity and sustainability are inextricably linked and that practices of reciprocity, accountability, and care are foundational to their achievement.
Zawadi was right: a puny woman who was still a political armature, operating from the equally punitive Zanzibar would not have interested a mighty giant like America. There was a deeper reason for their interest in Africa in general, that went far before Zawadi's time. In a futuristic world, an extraordinary woman named Zawadi becomes the first president of a united Africa. She lives in an undated "anything goes" era during which the world is inundated by transgenic madness. Zawadi discovers that America, in cahoots with Argentinean Mafiosi, hired her best friend to try and stop Zawadi from becoming president. But their reasons are economical: vast oil deposits, caused by a shift of the earth's crust, have collected underneath Africa. Coveting this oil wealth, America wants to hasten the formation of a world government. Can Zawadi successfully lead her country through this global challenge? Replete with futuristic technologies, including laser operated pest control, and air crafts that have a capacity to stop in midair, Zawadi takes an intriguing look at a future plagued by our own twenty-first-century problems.
Many countries around the world are engaged in decentralization processes, and most African countries face serious problems with forest governance, from benefits sharing to illegality and sustainable forest management. This book summarizes experiences to date on the extent and nature of decentralization and its outcomes - most of which suggest an underperformance of governance reforms - and explores the viability of different governance instruments in the context of weak governance and expanding commercial pressures over forests. Findings are grouped into two thematic areas: decentralization, livelihoods and sustainable forest management; and international trade, finance and forest sector go...
Land Politics examines the struggle to control land in Africa through the lens of land titling in Zambia and Senegal. Contrary to standard wisdom portraying titling as an inevitable product of economic development, Lauren Honig traces its distinctly political logic and shows how informality is maintained by local actors. The book's analysis focuses on chiefs, customary institutions, and citizens, revealing that the strength of these institutions and an individual's position within them impact the expansion of state authority over land rights. Honig explores common subnational patterns within the two very different countries to highlight the important effects of local institutions, not the state's capacity or priorities alone, on state building outcomes. Drawing on evidence from national land titling records, qualitative case studies, interviews, and surveys, this book contributes new insights into the persistence of institutional legacies and the political determinants of property rights.
This book consciously interrogates the varieties of opinions with regards to the socio-political and religious dynamics of Africans in the African continent as well as in the diaspora in the context of globalization. It highlights the significance and the consequences of globalization on these areas with regards to the African world views. Through the multi and interdisciplinary discourse in this volume, the diversity of opinions necessary for grappling with the complexity and plurality of global dynamics on various African ways of life are captured. These should give credence to the conviction that answers to questions about globalization of Africa in the past, the present, and projected future can only be provided by Africans and Africanists with the interest of Africa as the sole motivation of content and discontent debates. This volume contributes to such efforts in searching for viable answers to the challenges of globalization in Africa.
This book tells the sweeping story of the role that East African savannas played in human evolution, how people, livestock, and wildlife interact in the region today, and how these relationships might shift as the climate warms, the world globalizes, and human populations grow. Our ancient human ancestors were nurtured by African savannas, which today support pastoral peoples and the last remnants of great Pleistocene herds of large mammals. Why has this wildlife thrived best where they live side-by-side with humans? Ecologist Robin S. Reid delves into the evidence to find that herding is often compatible with wildlife, and that pastoral land use sometimes enriches savanna landscapes and encourages biodiversity. Her balanced, scientific, and accessible examination of the current state of the relationships among the region’s wildlife and people holds critical lessons for the future of conservation around the world.
Using the phenomenon of public interest litigation (PIL) as the primary focus of analysis, this book explores the manner in which the judicial branch of government in the three East African states of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda has engaged with questions traditionally off-limits to adjudication and court-based resolution. It is rooted in an incisive investigation of the history of politics and governance in the sub-region, accompanied by an extensive repertoire of judicial decisions. It also provides a critical and informative account of the manner in which courts of law have engaged with State power in a bid to alternatively deliver or subvert justice to the socially marginalized and the pol...
Land is one of the world's most emotionally resonant resources, and control over it is fundamental to almost all human activity. From the local level to the global, we are often in conflict over the ground beneath our feet. But because human relationships to land are so complex, it can be difficult to think them through in a unified way. This path-breaking book aims to change that by combining insights from multiple disciplines to develop a framework for understanding the geopolitics of land today. Struggles over land, argues Derek Hall, relate to three basic principles: its role as territory, its status as property, and the ways in which its use is regulated. This timely introduction explor...