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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Land or Peasants? The Dilemma Confronting Ethiopian Resource Conservation
Author:Campbell, John
Year:1991
Periodical:African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society
Volume:90
Issue:358
Period:January
Pages:5-21
Language:English
Geographic term:Ethiopia
Subjects:rural poverty
environmental policy
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Development and Technology
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/722637
Abstract:Ethiopia provides a well-known example of a severely degraded African environment with the consequent implications for food shortage and famine. Resource conservation, initiated in the early 1970s, has attempted to conserve and regenerate soil and water. This paper, which focuses primarily on northcentral Ethiopia, examines some of these conservation activities in an attempt to identify how conservation is related to national economic and development policies and to assess their effectiveness. The author argues that the available evidence strongly indicates that conservation work is neither effective nor sustainable. Further, conservation projects appear to threaten the livelihood of increasing numbers of rural poor. This occurs directly through the removal of arable land for afforestation, and indirectly because conservation, and agricultural policy generally, are generating contradictions which work against the interests of peasants and enhance resource 'mining' of the soil. The discussion is divided into three parts: first, a look at the present state of land degradation together with an analysis of its causes; second, a look at evidence concerning growing impoverishment of the rural peasantry; and finally, an examination of policy options which do not require saving land at the expense of peasants. Notes, ref.
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