Degradation Narratives

Early analyses by French colonial botanist Auguste Chevalier attributed the increase in fire-setting to greater movement and trade in the post-occupation period.^[3] More recent studies, often funded by international environmental programs, have attributed deforestation to factors such as urban development, population growth, commercialization, and monetarization of the rural social environment. Each of these analyses contributed to the emerging narrative that Kissidougou once had an extensive forest cover, which was maintained by low population densities and by a functional social order whose regulations controlled and limited people’s inherently degrading land and vegetation use.^[3] Population growth and the breakdown of organized resource management under internal and external pressures have led to deforestation. Following this narrative, policy responses have been altered very little from the colonial period. Historically, policy has focused on reducing upland farming, controlling bushfires, regulating timber felling, and attempting forest reconstitution through tree planting.^[3] The narrative of environmental destruction/degradation justified the removal of the villagers' “control” over resources in favor of the state, leading to government administrations taking over resource tenure and regulating local use through permits, fines, and sometimes even military repression.

Counternarratives

In 1995, anthropologists James Fairhead and Melissa Leach challenged the degradation narrative that the inhabitants of Kissidougou are responsible for the decrease in forest cover.^[3] Historical evidence, including aerial photographs from 1952-53, descriptions and maps from the early French military occupation (1890s-1910), oral histories, and personal accounts, indicate that the vegetation pattern and forest cover in Kissidougou has remained relatively stable or even increased during these periods. Interviews conducted as part of the study included accounts of villagers establishing forest islands around their settlements and the formation of secondary forest thickets in the savanna. In 27 of the 38 villages Fairhead and Leach investigated, they report that “elders recounted how their ancestors had founded settlements in savanna and gradually encouraged the growth of forest around them.”^[3] This counters the interpretations that suggest forest loss due to local practices. Fairhead and Leach further cite earlier documentary sources from the 1780s-1860s to demonstrate that the forest cover is increased as a result of human intervention, rather than degraded. Oral history accounts also support this historical data.

Based on their historical research, Fairhead and Leach argue that the local land use can be both vegetation enriching as well as degrading.^[3] In Kissidougou, vegetation enrichment has often involved encouraging the formation of forest patches around their villages for various reasons. The Kissidougou villagers have accomplished this through both routine activities on the village periphery as well as intentional techniques. Routine activities include collecting thatch and fence grass, tethering cattle to reduce flammable grasses, and depositing household waste that fertilizes developing forest successions. Intentional methods involve planting trees that initiate forest growth and cultivating margins to establish soil conditions conducive to tree growth.