Environment and Livelihoods in Africa

Catalog description

An enquiry into the relationships between the environment, resource control, resource conservation, rurual livelihood systems and poverty in Africa. AFR 532 Environment and Livelihoods in Africa (3) The seminar examines the relationships among the environment, resource control, conservation and rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Readings will allow students to develop a critical understanding of the ideology and epistemology of environmental management, resource control, rural development and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Students will be encouraged to interrogate modernist doctrines such as population-environment narratives, poverty-stewardship narratives and related environmental ideologies/narratives that embody sustainability and rural (under)development in sub-Saharan Africa. Through case study examples, students will use these conceptual foundations to trace the relationships between sustainability and poverty in a number of livelihood systems and resource control regimes. Some examples are resource (land/water) management between the state and nomadic pastoral systems; land reform and rural peasant livelihood systems; mining and rural livelihood systems; and national parks, trans-frontier parks and rural livelihood systems.