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The Environmental Crunch in Africa

Growth Narratives vs. Local Realities

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Editors:
  1. Jon Abbink

    1. African Studies Centre, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

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  • Provides a critical overview of the challenges & problems of environmental–ecological conditions in Africa
  • Discusses how to address the environmental problems a growing African economy is causing
  • Examines the effects current political-economic policies have on local communities in Africa

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
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  2. Introduction: Promise and Peril in Africa—Growth Narratives vs. Local Environmental Problems

    • Jon Abbink
    Pages 1-28

  3. Cash for Cashews: Does It Add Up?

    • Margaret L. Buckner
    Pages 29-50

  4. Trade-Offs Between Crop Production and Other Benefits Derived from Wetland Areas: Short-Term Gain Versus Long-Term Livelihood Options in Ombeyi Watershed, Kenya

    • Serena A. A. Nasongo, Charlotte de Fraiture, J. B. Okeyo-Owuor
    Pages 51-83

  5. Agriculture, Ecology and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Trajectories of Labour-Saving Technologies in Rural Benin

    • Georges Djohy, Honorat Edja, Ann Waters-Bayer
    Pages 85-112

  6. Is Growing Urban-Based Ecotourism Good News for the Rural Poor and Biodiversity Conservation? A Case Study of Mikumi, Tanzania

    • Stig Jensen
    Pages 113-135

  7. Losing the Plot: Environmental Problems and Livelihood Strife in Developing Rural Ethiopia—Suri Agropastoralism Vs. State Resource Use

    • Jon Abbink
    Pages 137-178

  8. Cameroon’s Western Region: Environmental Disaster in the Making?

    • Moses K. Tesi
    Pages 179-205

  9. The Impasse of Contemporary Agro-pastoralism in Central Tanzania: Environmental Pressures in the Face of Land Scarcity and Commercial Agricultural Investment

    • Tadasu Tsuruta
    Pages 207-240

  10. Down by the Riverside: Cyclone-Driven Floods and the Expansion of Swidden Agriculture in South-western Madagascar

    • Jorge C. Llopis
    Pages 241-268

  11. Challenging Impediments to Climate Change Initiatives in Greg Mbajiorgu’s Wake Up Everyone

    • Norbert Oyibo Eze
    Pages 269-286

  12. Future in Culture: Globalizing Environments in the Lowlands of Southern Ethiopia

    • Echi Christina Gabbert
    Pages 287-317

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 319-324
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Keywords

About this book

This book discusses the problems and challenges of environmental–ecological conditions in Africa, amidst the current craze of economic growth and ‘development’. Africa’s significant economic dynamics and growth trajectories are marked by neglect of the environment, reinforcing ecological crises. Unless environmental–ecological and population growth problems are addressed as an integral part of developmental strategies and growth models, the crises will accelerate and lead to huge costs in later years. 


Chapters examine multiple emerging tension points all across the continent, including the potential benefits and harm of growing urban-based ecotourism, the trajectory of labour-saving technologies and the problems facing agro-pastoralism. Although environmental management and sustainability features of African rural societies should not be idealized, functional 'traditional' economies, interests and management practices are often bypassed, seen by state elites as inefficient and inhibiting 'growth'. In many regions the seeds are now sown for lasting environmental crises that will affect local societies that have rarely been given opportunity to claim accountability from the state regimes and donors driving these changes. 

Editors and Affiliations

  • African Studies Centre, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Jon Abbink

About the editor

Jon Abbink is senior researcher at the African Studies Centre Leiden and professor of Politics and Governance in Africa at Leiden University, The Netherlands. His main interests are political anthropology, developmentalism in Africa, the ethnology and cultural history of (Southwest) Ethiopia, and religious culture and the public sphere in the Horn of Africa. Recent books are the co-edited Anthropology of Elites, the co-authored Suri Orature, and A Decade of Ethiopia: Politics, Economy and Society 2004-2016.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Environmental Crunch in Africa

  • Book Subtitle: Growth Narratives vs. Local Realities

  • Editors: Jon Abbink

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77131-1

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-77130-4Published: 15 June 2018

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-08377-9Published: 05 January 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-77131-1Published: 31 May 2018

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVIII, 324

  • Number of Illustrations: 18 b/w illustrations, 3 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Environmental Sociology, Environmental Geography, Environmental Management, Environmental Policy, Environmental Politics

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