The politics and ethnography of environmentalisms in Tanzania

This article explores the forms of environmentalism flourishingin Tanzanian villages and district and central government. Itargues that their apparent unity should be explained by severalfactors. In central government, there is support for environmentalistpolicies because they generate revenue. In local government,environmentalism diverts attention away from bureaucratic failure,while simultaneously being the subject of intense politickingamong the legislature. In villages, environmentalism reflectsrealities of environmental change, different ecologies of agriculturalactivity, competition and jealousy and the manipulation of officialdiscourse. This article highlights the diversity of sourcesof environmentalist prominence in different sites of politicalactivity. ^1. The word used for ‘waste’ is translated from theSwahili: ‘jangwa’. It is also translated as ‘desert’but can be used in a wide variety of contexts and scales. Ihave heard it used to describe small patches of land, and itis also the name for the Sahara. It can be used in both aridlowlands and humid mountains [cf. C. Conte, ‘The forestbecomes a desert: forest use and environmental change in Tanzania’sWest Usambara mountains’, Land Degradation and Development10 (1999), pp. 291–309]. I prefer the term ‘waste’because its central notion is lack of productivity, rather thanaridity.^2. > Accessed on 18 October 2002.^3. Cf. O. B. Rekdal, ‘When hypothesis becomes myth: the Iraqiorigin of the Iraqw’, Ethnology 37, 1 (1998), pp. 17–38.^4. R. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical islandEdens and the origins of environmentalism (Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge, 1995); J. Fairhead and M. Leach, Misreadingthe African Landscape (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1996); R. Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over livelihoodand nature preservation in Africa (University of CaliforniaPress, Berkeley, CA, 1998); D. Brockington, Fortress Conservation:The preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania (JamesCurrey, Oxford, 2002).^5. J. P. Brosius, ‘Analyses and interventions: Anthropologicalengagements with environmentalism’, Current Anthropology40, 3 (1999), pp 277–309.^6. J.-F. Bayart, The State in Africa: The politics of the belly(Longman, London, 1993); J.-F. Bayart, S. Ellis, and B. Hibou,The Criminalisation of the State in Africa (James Currey, Oxford,1999); P. Chabal and J.-P. Daloz, Africa Works (James Currey,Oxford, 1999).^7. J. M. Klopp, ‘Pilfering the public: the problem of landgrabbing in contemporary Kenya’, Africa Today 47 (2000),pp. 7–28.^8. The constituency building reached the British press. Cf. ‘Kenya’srulers clear way for drought and disaster by felling forestfor votes’, The Independent (London), 16 January 2002,p. 14.^9. J. M. Klopp, ‘ "Ethnic clashes" and winning elections:the case of Kenya’s electoral despotism’, CanadianJournal of African Studies 35 (2001), pp. 473–517.^10. P. Richards, Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology andfood production in West Africa (Allen and Unwin, Hemel Hempstead,UK, 1985); M. Leach and R. Mearns, The Lie of the Land: Challengingreceived wisdom on the African environment (James Currey, Oxford,1996).^11. M. Leach and J. Fairhead, ‘Fashioned forest pasts, occludedhistories? International environmental analysis in West Africanlocales’, Development and Change 31 (2000), pp. 35–59.^12. J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’,depoliticisation and bureaucratic state power in Lesotho (CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 1990).^13. Cf. R. A. Schroeder, ‘Community, forestry and conditionalityin the Gambia’, Africa 69, 1 (1999), pp. 1–22.^14. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.^15. Klopp, ‘Pilfering the public’.^16. E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The origin of the Black Act(Pantheon Books, New York, NY, 1975); J. Scott, Weapons of theWeak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance (Yale UniversityPress, New Haven, CT, 1985); B. Berman and J. Lonsdale, UnhappyValley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey, London,1992).^17. J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge, 1979).^18. R. Willis, A State in the Making. Myth: history and social transformationin pre-colonial Ufipa (Indiana University Press, Bloomington,IN, 1981).^19. See S. Charnley, ‘Communal resource use and migrationinto the Usangu plains, Tanzania’ (PhD thesis, StanfordUniversity, California, 1994); P. B. Coppolillo, ‘Thelandscape ecology of pastoral herding: spatial analysis of landuse and livestock production in East Africa’, Human Ecology28, 4 (2000), pp. 527–60; F. Cleaver, ‘Reinventinginstitutions: bricolage and the social embeddedness of naturalresource management’, European Journal of DevelopmentResearch 14, 2 (2002).^20. J. Ford, The Role of Trypanosomiases in African Ecology: A studyof the tsetse fly problem (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971); J.Igoe and D. Brockington, ‘Pastoral land tenure and communityconservation: a case study from north-east Tanzania’,Pastoral Land Tenure Series 11 (IIED, London, 1999); J. G. Galaty‘Pastoral and agro-pastoral migration in Tanzania: factorsof economy, ecology and demography in cultural perspective’,in J. W. Bennett and J. R. Bowen (eds), Production and Autonomy:Anthropological studies and critiques of development (UniversityPress of America, Lanham, MD, 1988), pp. 163–83.^21. E. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The short twentieth century 1914–1991(Abacus, London, 1994), p. 236. In 1961, US military expenditurewas 9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); and althoughit was to decline (just over 5 percent in the 1970s), it remaineda powerful trope for explaining US economy, society and politics.Indeed the military-industrial complex is still important nowwith the Cold War won and US military expenditure down to lessthan 4 percent of GDP.^22. Tanzania Wildlife Sector Review Task Force, A Review of theWildlife Sector in Tanzania. Volume 1: Assessment of the currentsituation (Ministry of Tourism, Natural Resources and the Environment,Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1995).^23. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, United Republicof Tanzania, Tourism Master Plan. Strategy & Actions, April2002 >Accessed on 9 November 2004.^24. Brockington, Fortress Conservation.^25. K. Hart, The Political Economy of West African Agriculture (CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 1982).^26. DANIDA, Overview of Donor Supported Environmental Activitiesin Tanzania (Royal Danish Embassy, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,1999). Spent in 1 year, this would be equivalent to just over4 percent of the country’s GDP.^27. Leach and Fairhead, ‘Fashioned forest pasts’, pp.47–9.^28. W. A. Rodgers, T. T. Struhsaker, and C. C. West, ‘Observationson the red colobus (Colobus badius tephrosceles) of Mbisi forest,Southwest Tanzania’, African Journal of Ecology 22 (1984),pp. 187-94.^29. J. Igoe, ‘Ethnicity, civil society, and the Tanzanianpastoral NGO movement: the continuities and discontinuitiesof liberalized development’ (PhD thesis, Boston University,Boston, MA, 2000).^30. Mr. Mbegu’s stance on the forest, and emphasis of theimportance of the red colobus monkey, encouraged villagers toname him Mr. Colobus. His name was unfortunately similar tothe Swahili for the black and white colobus.^31. D. Brockington, ‘Communal property and degradation narratives:debating the Sukuma immigration into Rukwa Region, Tanzania’,Cahiers d’Afrique 20 (2001), pp. 1–22.^32. Ibid.^33. Presidential Commission of Inquiry Against Corruption, Reporton the Commission of Corruption (Dar es Salaam, United Republicof Tanzania, Tanzania, 1996).^34. Brockington, ‘Communal property’; D. Brockington,‘Local government, taxation and natural resource management:corruption, accountability and democratic performance in Tanzania’,Development and Change, forthcoming.^35. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine.^36. I was unable to discuss the purpose of the visit and its causewith the representatives. However, the circumstances and languagedo suggest that villagers were exploiting government rhetoric.This explanation was favoured by people in the valley with whomI discussed the case. The result of their complaints was a largepublic meeting which unearthed many of the problems of governanceunderlying the grievances. See Brockington, ‘Communalproperty’.^37. With good reason — the concentrating of dung in kraalsis sometimes referred to as ‘nutrient stripping’and forms an important part of the patch dynamics of semi-aridrangelands.^38. One of the most lively contests in the village while I was therewas between two herders who had broken that agreement.^39. This is a Sukuma innovation. Weeding parties I observed containedmixtures of residents and immigrants.^40. Nicknamed Chuma (steel) because it was so tough.^41. The importance of herd boy skill was underlined by the lamentof a (Fipa) herd owner whose herd boy was going to leave hisemployment and who had remarkably managed to guard his cattlefor 3 years without causing any case of crop damage.^42. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among theAzande (OUP, Oxford, 1937), p. 82, 540; C. Geertz, Local Knowledge:Further essays in interpretive anthropology (Basic Books, NewYork, NY, 1983), p. 75.^43. ‘Local knowledges’ here could cover a vast arrayof understandings and beliefs in all parts of the world. Ithas proven particularly productive to consider the incoherence,incompleteness and lack of co-ordination of Western knowledgesand certain areas of supposed expertise (R. Grove-White, ‘Newwine, old bottles? Personal reflections on the new BiotechnologyCommissions’, Political Quarterly 72 (2001), pp. 466–72).^44. J. Fairhead and M. Leach, Science, Society and Power: Environmentalknowledge and policy in West Africa and the Caribbean (CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 2003).^45. Leach and Fairhead ‘Fashioned forest pasts’, p.35.^46. K. Milton, Loving Nature: Towards an ecology of emotion (Routledge,London, 2002).^47. I am grateful to Dr. John Lonsdale for this point.^48. It is indicative of the importance of environmental concernsin Tanzania that its value can be equated with that of development.I have heard a funeral peroration for a village chairman whichconcluded with the praise that he had tried hard to bring developmentand conserve the environment.^49. As the manager of the Mkomazi Game Reserve of northern Tanzaniatold me in 1994, when justifying the eviction of herders fromthe reserve — we cannot have these people living out therelike animals, they must develop.