4/52 it has not ALL been just a history of unilinear destruction of nature by humans.

So I will post different examples of this here every day this coming week.

1. Today, it's forest islands in West Africa. These were long thought of as last remnants of forest, surrounded by 'derived savanna', but James Fairhead and Melissa Leach showed that they were growing and created by people through villages, habitation and farming. Watch their film 'Second Nature' here:

youtube.com/watch?v=TgsRnGmI3U…

7/52 Secondly, West African ideas and practices of soil creation, as described here by James Fairhead (my PhD supervisor btw) and Ian Scoones. Soils are thought of as actively created and improved by humans, and people do make better, 'oily' soils that contribute to forest growth in many different ways.

researchgate.net/publication/2…

8/52 It's #Day3 of #COP15 and of my #HistoricalEcology mini-series. Today it's the Amazon, really the heartland of historical ecology research. Just wanted to share this great Horizon documentary on how many areas now covered in rainforest were agricultural, thriving towns and cities, until 1492 and epidemic decimation in its wake; and how the Secret of Eldorado was Terra Preta - highly fertile soils created by people. Enjoy!

youtube.com/watch?v=0Os-ujelkg…

The Secret Of Eldorado - TERRA PRETA

In this documentary a legendary civilization thought to be too good to be true on the basis of the stories told by the Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana...

^YouTube

9/52 And here a collection of essays by William Balee, on the role of humans in shaping Amazon forests. As he puts it: "we can no longer think about species and landscape diversity in any tropical forest without taking into account the intricacies of human history and the impact of all forms of knowledge and technology"

muse.jhu.edu/book/26080

10/52 On #Day4 of our #COP15 #HistoricalEcology series, we travel to East Africa. Landscapes like the Serengeti are, for many, quintessential African wilderness, but as Jan Shetler showed in 'Imagining Serengeti', these landscapes were in fact created by Serengeti peoples, whose maintenance of water holes and seasonal, strategic burning created the conditions for wilderbeest and other wildlife to thrive

ohioswallow.com/book/Imagining…

11/52 There is no doubt that today's rapidly increasing global meat consumption is unsustainable, and that cattle is a major contributor to carbon emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss. I am 100% for synthetic meat, plant-based diets, etc. But this does not mean that ALL pastoralism, everywhere, is bad. As Ian Scoones shows here, pastoralism can help biodiversity thrive in areas unfit for treeplanting or crops.

theconversation.com/how-pastor…

How pastoral farming can help to avoid a biodiversity crisis

Pastoral communities should be included in conservation initiatives – but the ecology of pastoral lands has long been misunderstood.

^{The Conversation}

12/52 This is all the more important to stress now that #COP15 seems to be seriously considering the 30x30 plan. This plan is part of a long history of colonial land appropriation in the name of conservation, such as in Serengeti, and as it stands, could affect the lands and livelihoods of 300 million people, the ones least responsible for environmental destruction.

africanarguments.org/2022/12/w…

Why 30x30 would be the worst possible outcome of COP15 | African Arguments

The plan at COP15 to turn 30% of the earth into Protected Areas is based on an deeply unscientific and racist logic.

^{Fiore Longo (African Arguments)}

13/52 As Scoones says, pastoralists can play an important role in conservation as land stewards, but so much conservation is about exclusion rather than inclusion, from the colonial period right to the 30x30 plan.

Right now, 150,000 Maasai are battling eviction from their land in Tanzania and Kenya.

Biodiversity conservation is vital, more so today than ever, but it needs to be ecologically right and just. So important not to blame and harm the wrong people

theguardian.com/global-develop…

Tanzania’s Maasai appeal to west to stop eviction for conservation plans

Thousands of Indigenous people sign letter to UK, US and EU protesting at appropriation of land for tourist safaris and hunting

^{Katie McQue (The Guardian)}

15/52 to widespread increase in tree cover throughout the South Pare Mountains. You can read more about this in two of my own papers (for which i combined repeat photography, archival and ethnographic research): this one on tree symbolism discusses in more depth the different dynamics and ways people relate to sacred groves, colonial exotic trees and tree planting scheme, and indigenous and fruit trees in farms and around homesteads

jstor.org/stable/26393259#meta…

16/52 This second paper is on repeat photography as a method in environmental anthropology, but also grapples very much with the kind of narratives we construct around environmental change, Perhaps not strictly about human/biodiversity relations, but an attempt to think through and discuss the complexities as well as the politics involved in all this, so maybe of interest too.

researchgate.net/publication/3…

19/52 and ecological resilience achieved. Another example is swidden horticulture in Papua New Guinea. The ever-changing patchwork of farm, forest and fallow described by @tutam in his chapter on Mengen landscapes here captures the dynamics and people-nature relations of shifting cultivation here and in so many other places really well

library.oapen.org/bitstream/ha…

20/52 There are many different kinds of challenges to shifting cultivation today; in most places in the world, there is huge competition for land, for many different reasons. But this makes it all the more important to protect the rights of those with the least destructive practices,. This is expressed so well in this animated film made with the Coalition against Land Grabbing (CALG) - Philippines and to the the Batak Federation (Bayaan it Batak kat Palawan – BBKP)

youtube.com/watch?v=vQa3ZLO9A_…

A Story of Shifting Cultivation

An animation created by Alexandra Huchet www.alexandrahuchet.com and the voice of Alejandro De Mesa www.alejandrodemesa.com to raise awareness on the endang...

^YouTube

22/52 Satoyama fosters a symbiotic relationship between small local forests, managed & coppiced by villagers, & farming, in particular rice paddies. It creates high biodiversity, in particular through its many ponds. It declined due to rural depopulation in the mid 20th century, but since the 1980s the Satoyama Iniative has been doing great work reviving the system. Here is a v nice National Geographic film Satoyama (with David Attenborough voiceover - bit out of sync!)

youtube.com/watch?v=iy6qRjgTyT…

Satoyama - Wonderful Watergarden (Nat Geo Wild)

Satoyama (里山) is a Japanese term applied to the border zone or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land. Literally sato (里) means arable and liva...

^YouTube