The limits to growth debate and future crisis in Africa: A case‐study from Swaziland

Abstract

Although projections of future human and environmental crisis in subSaharan Africa caused by population growth beyond resource limits are common, they are often criticized due to their weak empirical or theoretical basis. This paper attempts to predict whether in 2000 AD there will be adequate cropland, grazing land and fuelwood reserves for a study area located in rural Swaziland. The objective was to establish the likelihood of future crisis, as well as to provide empirical evidence pertinent to the underlying theoretical debate about the relative significance of physical limits to growth. Data used for the study include past and recent aerial photography and census information, plus a field environmental assessment and household survey. Based on this information, projected year 2000 resource constraints for the study area range from minimal (in the case of fuelwood reserves) to extreme (in the case of livestock grazing areas). Other factors, however, such as unequal cropland allocation, household shortages of labour, and privatization of fuelwood supplies, have been found either to exacerbate these constraints or hinder rural resource utilization in the absence of significant physical constraints. A comparison of this study with the United Nations' Potential PopulationSupporting Capacities of Lands in the Developing World (see Higgins, et al., 1983) suggests that the U N projections, based on highly optimistic assumptions and little empirical evidence, are essentially meaningless. Although the results lend some support to the application of the limits to growth scenario to rural Swaziland, the classic 'overshoot and collapse' trend associated with that scenario is called into question. The results ultimately suggest that neither the Malthusian emphasis on physical constraints nor the Marxian emphasis on social and political constraints can be dismissed outright in research and policy related to future crisis in subSaharan Africa.

The Tropics: Environments and Human Impacts Understood and Reinterpreted

“…The future of geographical studies in tropical rural areas will involve applying all the available techniques from remote sensing to process observations and detailed ecological investigations to understanding of the nature of tropical land resources while, at the same time, investigating the land use systems and social, political, and demographic situations. All geographers wanting to make progress in this area will have to engage in the regional political ecology advocated by Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) and Proctor (1990) and as applied by Bell and Roberts (1991) to the dumho cultivation problem in Zimbabwe.…”

Environmental science theory. Concepts and methods in a one-world, problem-oriented paradigm

“…'Living off the land' here is specified as the activity the human carrying capacity is about. This complies with current usage (e.g., Mahar, 1985;Proctor, 1990;Daly, 1990); for an approach that includes also industrial activity, energy and so on, the Annex of Chapter 4 may be refered to. Primitive as the agricultural focus may seem, it emphasizes what, alongside with biodiversity, is probably the world's most fundamental environmental problem: the loss and degradation of productive ecosystems and soils.…”