Abstract
This chapter analyses the deep and complex history of western thinking about deserts and desertification in the centuries before the word desertification was coined in 1927 by a French colonial forester. It shows that a relatively benign view of the drylands dominated in western thinking until the early colonial period when notions of deforestation causing desiccation began to take shape. During the period of 19th century colonialism, particularly British and French colonialism in Africa, deserts, drylands, and their degradation became a particular focus of colonial scientific research as well as practical policy formulation. It was during this period that indigenous peoples, primarily but not only nomads, were blamed most often for what later came to be called desertification. French colonial experiences, first in North Africa, and later in West Africa were especially influential in the formation of much of our contemporary mainstream understandings of desertification, and thus our management of the drylands, today. A great deal of our thinking about drylands, as well as many policies for developing them, derive from the colonial period and were carried into the contemporary mainstream in large part by several UN agencies. The chapter concludes by suggesting that desertification is a (neo)colonial concept that would benefit from careful reconsideration.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Hugh Murray, The Travels of Marco Polo (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1858). For more details and further analysis of the history of western thinking about and action in the drylands, see (Davis forthcoming).
- 2.
See John Woodward, “Some Thoughts and Experiments Concerning Vegetation,” Philosophical Transactions 21, no. 1 (1699): 193–227, for example.
- 3.
About this time, deserts came to be more strongly associated with “evil” just as forests were being strongly associated with “good” (Grove 1997).
- 4.
By Tartars he is referring to the Turkic and Mongol peoples who inhabited central and northern Asia.
- 5.
More recent research indicates, however, that there may have been a severe freezing period in the early 18th century that lasted for 5 months and killed up to 80,000 ha of forest. See Traimond (1986, p. 222).
- 6.
Cadet de Vaux quoted in (Fressoz 2007, p. 338).
- 7.
The increase of irrigation using water from the streams which fed this lake, however, likely had much more to do with the lowering of Lake Valencia that did deforestation in the region. See Davis (2007, p. 217 note 173) for details.
- 8.
Boussingault’s paper was translated and published in English and had a significant impact in India where it was read by influential actors including Edward Balfour (Grove 1995, pp. 328, 379, 443).
- 9.
The Algerian Forest Code formed the basis of the Forest code in Tunisia and in Morocco where it had many similar negative effects on the indigenous populations, especially nomads and other pastoralists. See Davis (2007) for details.
- 10.
As a result, in Algeria the nomadic population, which had comprised over 60 % of the total population in 1830, was reduced to only 5 % of the population by the early 20th century (Boukhobza 1992). In Tunisia basically all the nomads were sedentarized and in Morocco they were reduced to about 16 % of the population by independence. However, the standard prescriptions for “restoring” dryland environments that emerged from the French experience in Algeria (limiting or eliminating grazing and burning, destocking and sedentarization of nomads, pasture improvement and reforestation) had negative impacts on the majority of indigenous Algerians, not only on nomads. Most of these policies were later applied to Tunisia and Morocco as they were occupied with very similar results. By the mid-twentieth century, the vast majority of North Africans had been disenfranchised of their lands, forests and livestock and many were reduced to wage labour and deep poverty (Davis 2007).
- 11.
For details, see Davis (2007, pp. 144–149).
- 12.
Emberger defined all five of his vegetation zones for Morocco by their “dominant” trees and he also later based his bioclimatic map of the Mediterranean basin on Morocco which he considered to be the best and most complete example of Mediterranean climate and vegetation (Davis 2007). His work thus significantly influenced later work on the entire Mediterranean basin.
- 13.
I am grateful to the late Henry Noel Le Houérou for sharing his knowledge of arid lands and desertification with me and for pointing out that it was Lavauden who first used the word desertification. See Le Houérou (2002).
- 14.
Auguste Chevalier was trained as a botanist. He rose to the very influential position of deputy director (1907) and then director (1912) of the Colonial Agriculture Laboratory (Laboratoire d’agronomie coloniale). In 1929 he was made professor at the Museum of Natural History and was later elected to the French Academy of Sciences.
- 15.
The late 19th century and early 20th century debates about whether non-anthropogenic climatic desiccation was occurring were global in scope with evidence marshalled from every continent and included notable figures such as prince Kropotkin and Ellsworth Huntington. For an excellent overview from the time, see Gregory (1914a, b). There were also vigorous debates about whether desiccation was anthropogenic or natural or whether the real question was anthropogenic degradation and not desiccation. Amidst all this, there were also those who dissented with the prevailing views, as there had been in French Algeria, and championed much of the local populations’ knowledge and environmental management skills. For more detailed discussion of the Sahelian context, see Benjaminsen and Berge (2004).
- 16.
Chevalier had been trained in phytosociology and thus he deduced “natural” vegetation from what he considered dominant species, even when these were “relicts.” This approach is very evident in many of his publications and was just as problematic in the AOF as it had been in the French Maghreb. See Chevalier (1920) for a representative example which contains a copy of the botanical, agricultural and forestry map of AOF which he had made in the late 1890s.
- 17.
More than half (16/28 or 57 %) of the sources that Bovill cited, for example, were French while Stebbing also discussed many French authors and colonial officials he had interviewed on his tour (Bovill 1921; Stebbing 1935, 1937). The influence of French thinking about environmental change during the 19th and 20th century on British thinking and action in the colonial environmental realm has not yet been well explored and deserves further academic scrutiny especially given that 84 British foresters sent to India between 1867 and 1885 (4.5 per year) had been trained at the French forestry school at Nancy, France (AIGREF 2001, p. 195).
- 18.
In the more tropical parts of West and Central Africa, the French looked to other examples like those in India, Indochina and Madagascar for models of forest management.
- 19.
The Moroccan Forest Law of 1917 was based closely on the Algerian 1903 Forest Code (Davis 2007).
- 20.
The Madagascar forest law of 1930 was a revision of the 1913 forest law which had been deliberately based on the 1903 Algerian forest Code. In both cases, there were other influences: for the AOF forest law of 1935, inspiration was also derived from the Indochina forest law and for the 1913 Madagascar forest law, metropolitan French forest law was also influential.
- 21.
The Commission did, however, agree that anthropogenic environmental degradation was a serious concern in the regions studied (Niger and Nigeria) (Mortimore 1998, p. 20).
- 22.
Final quote from “UNESCO and the Arid Zone,” 24 January 1958, UNESCO/NS/AZ/334, Paris, p. 1. See also the chapter on “Evolution of Land Use in South-Western Asia” by R. O. Whyte in Stamp (1961, pp. 57–118) for a 50 page treatise on how humans and livestock have desertified the Middle East (Stamp 1961, pp. 57–118).
- 23.
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Davis, D.K. (2016). Deserts and Drylands Before the Age of Desertification. In: Behnke, R., Mortimore, M. (eds) The End of Desertification? . Springer Earth System Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16014-1_8
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