Reframing Deforestation Global Analyses and Local Realities: Studies in West Africa

"Reframing Deforestation" argues that the scale of deforestation wrought by West African farmers during the 20th century has been vastly exaggerated and global analyses have unfairly stigmatized them and obscured their more sustainable, landscape-enriching practices.

This study reviews how West African deforestation is represented and the evidence which informs deforestation orthodoxy. On a country by country basis (covering Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin), and using historical and social anthropological evidence the authors evaluate this orthodox critically. Reframing Deforestation suggests that the scale of deforestation wrought by West African farmers during the twentieth century has been vastly exaggerated. The authors argue that global analyses have unfairly stigmatised West Africa and obscured its more sustainable, even landscape-enriching practices. Stessing that dominant policy approaches in forestry and conservation require major rethinking worldwide, Reframing Deforestation illustrates that more realistic assessments of forest cover change, and more respectful attention to local knowledge and practices, are necessary bases for effective and appropriate environmental policies.

Introduction 1. Deforestation in West Africa: the foundations of orthodoxy 2. Cote d'Ivoire 3. Liberia 4. Ghana 5. Benin 6. togo 7. Sierra Leone 8. Power and knowledge of deforestation 9. Conclusions

James Fairhead is Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and Melissa Leach is a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.