Lie of the Land

• Environmental change & policy by Melissa Leach & Robin Mearns - Range management science & policy: politics, polemics & pasture in southern Africa by Ian Scoones - Soil erosion, animals & pasture over the long term: environmental destruction in southern Africa by William Beinart - Desertification by Jeremy Swift - Wildlife, pastoralists & science: debates concerning Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania by Dan Brockington & Katherine Homewood - Rethinking the forest-savanna mosaic: colonial science & its relics in West Africa by James Fairhead & Melissa Leach - Dryland forestry: manufacturing forests & farming trees in Nigeria by Reginald Cline-Cole - Soil erosion: breaking new ground by Michael Stocking - Irrigation, erosion & famine: visions of environmental change in Marakwet by W.M. Adams - Land & capital: blind spots in the study of the 'resource-poor' farmer by Mary Tiffen - The cultural construction of environmental policy: paradigms & politics in Ethiopia by Allan Hoben

The title says it all. The collection of essays in this fine book sets out to demolish the myths, half-truths and downright falsehoods that have shaped thinking and policy-making on the African environment over the last few decades....It is always fun to see idols being knocked from their pedestals, though rather disturbing to see a whole gallery of them smashed at once. The authors would not wish us to conclude that there are no serious environmental problems in Africa. But they do urge us to be much more critical about environmental diagnoses, and the data on which they are based. Above all, we should probe the motives of those who propound, accept, and act upon narratives that are unproven and unsound.