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Why Deforestation Persists in Africa: Actors, Interests, and Interest Alignment

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The Politics of Deforestation in Africa

Abstract

This study examines the workings of three African political systems, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda, with special focus on how decision-making power is negotiated and exercised at two principal levels: the local, where communities make decisions regarding forests on a daily basis, and the national, where environmental policies are negotiated and enacted. Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda are good cases to examine the political economy of forest conservation because these three countries’ forest policy efforts have benefitted from foreign donors’ support largely due to their exceptional biodiversity. Additionally, despite strong support for forest conservation, all three countries have had variable success with forest despite foreign assistance. The book’s central claim is that deforestation persists in Africa because conservation policies and projects consistently ignore the fact that conservation is possible only under limited, specific conditions. These conditions relate to the concurrent alignment of key actors’ interests at two critical levels of decision-making: local and national. The book further argues that conservation policies are predicated upon unexamined assumptions relating to (1) the power of rules over resources users’ behavior, (2) the impact of forest assistance on conservation policies and practices, and (3) the symbiotic relationship that binds actors from the national and local levels of decision-making.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, USA

    Nadia Rabesahala Horning

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Horning, N.R. (2018). Why Deforestation Persists in Africa: Actors, Interests, and Interest Alignment. In: The Politics of Deforestation in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76828-1_1

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