Reframing Deforestation (Global Environmental Change Series) - Softcover

Fairhead, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415185912 ISBN 13: 9780415185912

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

... a variety of arguments which serve to reframe forest history and question how and why deforestation has been exaggerated throughout West Africa, setting the analysis in its institutional and social context.
–Environment International

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0415185912
• ISBN 13: 9780415185912
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268