Deforestation and reforestation in Namibia the global consequences of local contradictions / by Emmanuel Kreike.

• Superior document: Afrika-Studiecentrum series, v. 17
• Author: Kreike, Emmanuel, 1959-
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Afrika-Studiecentrum series ; v. 17.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (244 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Descriptions of the late 1800's landscape in the Ovambo floodplain in north-central Namibia closely match the area’s late 1900's appearance, suggesting that little change occurred between the pre-colonial baseline and the postcolonial outcome. Yet, paradoxically, colonial conquest, population pressure, biological invasions, new technology, and economic globalization caused both dramatic deforestation and reforestation in less than a century. The paradox stems from the fact that the prevailing global environmental models obscure and homogenize the process of environmental change: different and contradictory interpretations are dismissed as alternative readings or misreadings of the same process. Deforestation and Reforestation , however, argues that the paradox highlights the need to reframe environmental change as plural processes occurring along multiple trajectories that may be dissynchronized and asymmetrical.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / E. Kreike -- 1. Approaches To Environmental Change / E. Kreike -- 2. Tree Castles And Population Bombs / E. Kreike -- 3. Conquest Of Nature: Imperial Political Ecologies / E. Kreike -- 4. Fierce Species: Biological Imperialism / E. Kreike -- 5. Guns, Hoes And Steel: Techno-Environmental Determinism / E. Kreike -- 6. Naturalizing Cattle Culture: Colonialism As A Deglobalizing And Decommodifying Force / E. Kreike -- 7. The Palenque Paradox: Beyond Nature-To-Culture / E. Kreike -- 8. The Ovambo Paradox And Environmental Pluralism / E. Kreike -- Bibliography / E. Kreike -- Index / E. Kreike.