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Periodical article | Leiden University 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. |