I came across your post about the Sahel drought and it was really enlightening. Thank you for sharing! I would really like to know more about the colonial history behind it, do you know of any good books on the topic? I'll do my own research into the topic but I'm not really familiar with the region, so I'd really appreciate any recommendations you may have. I'll also look into articles but as those are less of a time sink, I figure I don't need to ask around about them. Thanks! :)
Thank you for your graciousness, the question, and the support. Though, I’m not a good person to ask. (Assuming we’re talking about this post where I claim that local-scale environmental degradation can have dramatic effects on global environmental trends in a short period of time, as in the case of colonial monoculture, deforestation, ungulate herd death, and precipitation in the Sahel, and its wider effects on Caribbean hurricanes, the mid-Atlantic, and global climate?) There is a whole genre of scholarly work about how NGOs, the W0rld B@nk, and I/M/F manipulate contemporary “peripheral places”, especially in Africa (following independence of the 1960s), and how these institutions carry out the work of dispossession, colonization, empire, extraction, etc. But I’m not too familiar with specific authors, scholars, books, etc. And a big disclaimer: I don’t like talking about more-technical environmental history outside of North American environments (or some parts of South America or Pacific Ocean littoral), because I don’t know much, so I don’t want to step too far out of my lane, and I’m only recommending some stuff because (1) of my interest in Holocene animal/plant distribution and extinction (including savanna/woodland/forest dieback and large mammals), and because (2) I’ve had mentors/acquaintances whomst worked with forests/horticulture in West Africa and the Sahel, and they’ve corroborated what the articles (listed below) suggest. In the past decade or two, since the advent of disk horse about “decolonization” and “multispecies justice,” it seems to me that academia is relatively more willing to explicitly identify extractivism/empire as a/the leading force in ecological degradation in a case like the Sahel. But still, to me, it also seems difficult to find scholarly/academic work about colonial and “post-independence” (read: neocolonial) environments in the Sahelian environment specifically because even when an author/academic is “liberal” or vaguely socialist-y or whatever, they still hesitate to fairly identify the colonial/imperial institutions which implemented the catastrophic environmental changes, and they also still frame events and narratives using terms like “underdevelopment” and “carbon sequestration” and “how can West Africans best exploit their environment for success/growth” (in other words, the writers are still focused on supporting extraction/development and “integrating” or “advancing” Africa by Euro-American standards, and are still engaging in a chauvinist or white-savior idea that the outsider/Euro-American “guidance” and “assistance” will “instruct” local communities how to “recover” from the era of more-overt colonization).
Just my opinion, though, from limited exposure. I am horrible with political theory. Anyway, here are some things that might be interesting?
Colonial/imperial/Euro-American role in drought, devegetation, soil death, and ungulate herd loss in the Sahel.
-- The Politics of Natural Disasters: The Case of the Sahel Drought. Edited by M.H. Glantz. 1976.
-- Melissa Leach and James Fairhead. Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (1996) and Reframing Deforestation: Global Analysis and Local Realities: Studies in West Africa (1998).
-- The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment. Edited by Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns. 1996.
-- Tor Benjaminsen and Pierre Hiernaux. “From Dessication to Global Climate Change: A History of the Desertification Narrative in the West African Sahel, 1900-2018.” Global Envionment Vol. 12 No. 4. 2019.
-- Kent Glenzer. “La Secheresse: The Social and Institutional Construction of a Development Problem in the Malian (Soudanese) Sahel, 1900-82.” Canadian Journal of African Studies. October 2013.
-- Hannah Holleman. Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism. 2018.
-- David Anderson. “Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography, and Drought: The Colonial State and Soil Conservation in East Africa during the 1930s.” African Affairs. 1984.
Feedback loops of forest/woodland loss; and self-reinforcing forest dieback in the Sahel:
-- Patrick Gonzalez, Compton Tucker, and Hamady Sy. “A Climate Change Threshold for Forest Dieback in the African Sahel.” November 2006.
-- Fred Pearce. “Rivers in the Sky: How Deforestation is Affecting Global Water Cycles.” July 2018.
-- Peter Bunyard. “How the Biotic Pump Links the Hydrological Cycle and the Rainforest to Climate: Is it Real? How Can We Prove It?” Universidad Sergio Arboleda - Instituto de Estudios y Servicios Ambientales.
Sahel environment/climate affecting mid-Atlantic hurricanes and the Caribbean:
-- Mengqiu Wang et al. “The great Atlantic Sargassum belt.” Science. July 2019.
-- P.J. Lamb. “Large-scale tropical Atlantic surface circulation patterns associated with Subsaharan weather anomalies.” Tellus. 1978.
-- J.M. Prospero and P.J. Lamb. “African droughts and dust transport to the Caribbean: Climate change implications.” Science. 2003.
-- E.A. Shinn et al. “African dust and the demise of Caribbean coral reefs.” Geophysical Research Letters. 2000.
General cultural ecology and environmental history of the Sahel:
-- National Research Council. 1983. Environmental Change in the West African Sahel. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
-- National Research Council. 1983. Agroforestry in the West African Sahel. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
-- Jeffrey A. Gritzner. The West African Sahel - Human Agency and Environmental Change. 1989.
Another source that kinda incorporates many of these allegedly “disparate” aspects (colonization, climate, neocolonial lending institutions, devegetation, ungulate herd ecology, etc.):
A.R.E. Sinclair and J.M. Fryxell. “The Sahel of Africa: ecology of a disaster.” Canadian Journal of Zoology. May 1985.
Abstract: The Sahel is a fragile semiarid region extending through 10 countries south of the Sahara. Wild ungulate populations migrate to make use of nutritious but very seasonal food supplies. In doing this, they maintain a higher population size than they could as sedentary populations. Similarly, migratory pastoralists have traditionally lived with their cattle in balance with the vegetation. This balance was disrupted in the 1950's and 1960's by (i) the settlement of pastoralists around wells, and (ii) the expansion of agriculture north into the pastoralists' grazing lands. Land was lost both from overgrazing and from planting with cash crops coincident with increasing human and cattle populations. This has resulted in continuous famine in various parts of the Sahel since 1968. In addition, widespread soil denudation may be causing climatic changes towards aridity. [...] [Note that the 1950s/1960s settlement change coincides with “independence”.]
Some other stuff:
How devegetation in a seasonal woodland or subtropical/tropical forested area promotes self-reinforcing feedback loop of dieback (from Pearce, “Rivers in the Sky” 2018):
In another post I made about local Sahelian drought’s effects on global climate in far-away places:
The annoying graphic I made in that original post which illustrates the effect of this in the Sahel:
Which might promote hurricanes in the tropical mid-Atlantic:
And which might also promote things like “the largest seaweed bloom ever recorded”:
These noreasterlies, flowing over the Sahel, after traveling the tropical mid-Atlantic, also affect Amazonia:
“Forest species changes” and biodiversity loss in the Sahel, 1960 (independence era) to 2000. Graphic from Patrick Gonzalez, “A Climate Change Threshold ...” 2006:
--
Anyway, again, I’m not a good person to ask about this stuff. I hope some of these articles might be a good starting point to learn more, though.
39 notes
·
View notes
big disclaimer: i don’t like talking about more-technical ecology outside of North American environments (or some parts of South America or Pacific Ocean littoral), because i don’t know much (outside of North/South America, mostly interested in environmental history rather than technical ecology), so i don’t want to step too far out of my lane, and i’m only recommending some stuff because i’ve had friends/mentors/acquaintances whomst worked with forests/horticulture in West Africa, and they’ve made interesting observations on regional ecology/climate trends. (in reference to this post about colonial plantation monoculture, deforestation, the Sahel, and precipitation.) i know i already (partially) responded to your message, but thought you’d want to see this stuff about “flying rivers” or “sky rivers”, too, since i’ve made claims about how the removal of woodlands/forest promotes a self-reinforcing cycle of desertification not just because of the loss of soil fertility/structure/microorganisms, but also because woodlands/forests themselves instigate local precipitation patterns. “forests create rain.” and the noreasterly air currents moving over the Sahel are heavily altered if woodland is lost. basically: devegetation of colonial plantation monocultures set off a chain reaction. and this is kinda what i was referring to:
i’ve previously referenced/joked about how some ecologists/climatologists think that excessive focus on carbon dioxide in ecological apocalypse disk horse undermines the importance of devegetation and devegetation’s effects on regional precipitation:
the Pearce article also references this:
i’ve also referenced how regional devegetation and environmental degradation seems to have dramatic effects across the world despite the apparent “local” or “limited” scale of the devegetation (for example, Sahelian devegetation influencing South American climate). the Pearce article also references this:
this is what some ecologists say happened in the Sahel. it’s not that the Sahara simply “moved southward and encroached” on the region. it’s that devegetation itself provokes self-reinforcing cycles of drying/soil death. from Bunyard’s “How the Biotic Pump Links ...”
i’ve previously shared shitty homeemade maps (again, from this post) that look like this (in this case, how the deforestation of colonial and “post-independence” plantation monoculture of Sahelian West Africa alters continent-wide precipitation patterns quickly and dramatically after environmental degradation).
old annoying text from me:
again some of the stuff i recommended about the Sahel:
and these two texts are available for free online if you just search for their titles:
52 notes
·
View notes
characters who share the same personality as you!
tagged by samuelhale
RULES: FIND OUT WHAT CHARACTERS SHARE THE SAME PERSONALITY TYPE AS YOU HERE, AND LIST THE CHARACTERS THAT YOU FIND RELEVANT BELOW. THEN TAG FIVE PEOPLE AND LET THEM KNOW YOU TAGGED THEM!
Type: infj
Characters I find relevant/my favorites:
Cameron Frye and Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Anthony from Bottle Rocket
Shepherd Book from Firefly
Lindsay from Freaks an Geeks
Remus Lupin from Harry Potter
Merlin from Merlin
Mako Mori from Pacific Rim
Ann Perkins from Parks and Recreation
Mia Thermopolis from The Princess Diaries
JD from Scrubs
Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars
Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks
Fox Mulder from X-Files
Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones
I am tagging thecaptainsbonnet, scarymarryy, noreasterly, twistybrastrap and freakyfeatures
1 note
·
View note