African history and environmental history

‘The Day of Burning’: Eviction and Reinvention in the Margins of Northwest Zimbabwe

“…By late 1993, serious tensions began to emerge concerning the land on which many of the newcomers had been settled. 12 At the same time, it excluded and/or criminalized future use of any natural resources within park boundaries by neighbouring communities, a practice repeated elsewhere in Zimbabwe and across much of the African continent during both colonial and post-colonial eras (Anderson and Grove 1987;Neumann 1998;Beinart 2000). 13 The newcomers, when ethnically classified by Tonga firstcomers, are consistently referred to as 'the Shona', even though, as pointed out later in the article, the latter are constituted by an ethnically and linguistically diverse group.…”

The Role of Metallurgy in Transforming Global Forests.

“…However, it is the colonisers with little understanding of local environments rather than local populations, who are likely to have instigated the most damaging environmental changes. A European forester working in Bengal in the 1920s perceptively declared, we talk glibly about following nature and forget that the nature we are visualising may be a European nature inherited from our training and not an )ndian nature in Sivaramakrishnan In seeking to exploit the land for cash crops using European farming methodologies, and by implementing European forest management strategies to maximise timber extraction, the structure of local landscapes was altered, local knowledge was undermined and the relationship between local communities and their environments was ultimately distorted (Beinart 2000;Tilley 2003). In the early twentieth century, smelters in India and Africa suddenly found themselves in competition with colonial administrations for forest resources (cf.…”

Environmental Movements, Climate Change, and Consumption in South Africa

“…18 A brief list of just some of the best-known examples would include the Chipko Indians, the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, Gandhian movements for voluntary simplicity, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People in the Niger delta, indigenous peoples' movements in Latin America, La Via Campesina, peasant movements against genetic modification, Inuit movements for Arctic protection, many forms of Buddhism and other religious ecologisms, anti-dam movements, and so on. 19 Movements for environmental justice, and in defence of livelihoods and landscapes, occur everywhere in the world.…”