The gaze from space is very seductive. Satellite image analysis seems to dominate land use systems science these days and certainly the technologies available have far outstripped the careful analysis of air photos with optical steroscopes and chinagraph pencils. But the satellite gaze can be misleading. Trends can be asserted when in fact variation is central. Patches where important dynamics occur can be missed. This is why careful interpretation, as any GIS analyst will tell you, is key.
When we first analysed our satellite images (see the first blog in this series), a set of graphs of changes in different land use types across the time periods were produced. These covered a whole site and were impossible to interpret. There seemed to be no pattern. We had to go to the field and ask people who lived in these landscapes over the past 25 years to get any meaningful interpretations. And in our workshops across the sites, the discussions were incredibly revealing. A number of themes emerged, which we discuss in the following sections.
Non-linear environmental change
As the aggregate graphs suggested, there were no simple, linear trends across our sites. A non-linear dynamic was observed. This was driven in part by variable rainfall, resulting in increasing vegetation cover in certain periods and declines in others, along with the appearances of wetland patches in periods of high rainfall. But our participatory discussions showed that these were not just biophysical changes, but were driven by human use and politics.
There were periods of extensification as land was cleared and crop fields expanded, but also periods when fields contracted, and home gardens were the focus. Wetland areas, which are so important for key resource grazing and small-patch irrigated agriculture, especially in the drier, sandy soil sites, also expanded and contracted over time. These changes were in part in response to rainfall availability, but also changing labour patterns, ageing of households, availability of cattle for draft power and manure, and so on. Certain areas also saw sudden deforestation, running against the wider trends, and these were often explained by the settlement of people by politicians eager for votes or through invasions by former farmworkers and others. Soils changed too, with sandy soils losing fertility rapidly through cultivation, but certain areas accumulating nutrients and organic matter as erosion processes redistributed soils in the landscape, creating new configurations of patches.
A whole series of ecological, economic, social and political drivers therefore intersected, often resulting particular moments of significant change, but always unpredictable and contingent on conjunctural circumstances. And change often occurred in particular patches – for example key resources such as wetlands or hills. For these landscapes are far from uniform, even in small areas. Environmental heterogeneity means that aggregate pictures across space as with time are problematic.
These non-linear spatial and temporal patterns mean that standard narratives about environmental change and management don’t hold up. There is often easy recourse to the usual arguments about carrying capacity, soil fertility decline, desertification and land degradation that emerge from technically-driven land use assessments. But these are quickly undermined when the non-linear nature of environmental change is revealed.
Beyond the population pressure argument
The commentary by local people in our workshops analysing the satellite images often focused on the challenges of ‘population increase’. At face value it sounded like a familiar Malthusian argument for increasing population pressure resulting in scarcities and so resource intensification and degradation. When stories were told over the full 25 years, they sounded like a linear process of change from a simple baseline, when all was fine. But when probed a bit further, this was not just a demographic story of population pressures increasing environmental degradation contrasting with a relatively pristine state when white farmers used the land, but one of changing politics, land control and social relations.
For sure, populations in all our sites have increased over time. This is what happens with redistributive land reform: from one white owner and some workers to many families taking the land. That this results in land use change is hardly surprising. More interesting are the changes that have happened since the land was taken, and how changes in land control have emeged.
Some of the land use changes seen were the direct result of subdivisions of land for the next generation. But there was also in-migration, often at certain times, usually around elections when favours were bought through allocating land by local politicians. And the changes that were seen were also driven by commerce, and the growing importance of tobacco in Mvurwi in particular. Capitalist relations in a commercialised agricultural economy, changing the value of land, the relations of labour and the demand for wood fuel for curing Virginia tobacco all combined. This was not just ‘population pressure’, but the operation of capitalist relations in the environment affecting land use change.
The declining commons
One feature highlighted in all our sites was the decline in common land and the subsequent undermining of common property resource management institutions. As land use intensifies, land values increase and more people arrive, the incentives to enclose and exclude increase. The result has been a change in how people hold land with new forms of property relation. The expansion of land into what were common areas for grazing, wood fuel and non-timber forest product collection has been seen in all our sites. Sometimes people would enclose a small hill near their home, once used collectively. In other cases, people would expand fields into grazing areas. And most dramatically, local leaders would settle whole groups in common areas illegally, and usually for some form of payment.
The decline in cattle populations due to disease impacts (notably January Disease) has coincided with this trend, but those still with any cattle have to find new ways to graze their animals, sometimes enclosing new land themselves or resorting to stall or tethered feeding. The decline in common land hits people unevenly, as participants in our workshops explained, with livestock owners suffering but also those who used to collect firewood, indigenous fruits and plants, as younger people and women explained.
The failure to exclude outsiders, the lack of sense of a bounded community and the absence of collective rules to manage resources these days is, people explained, the direct result of a lack of stable authority in these areas – whether chiefs, headmen and traditional leaders or VIDCOs and party people. The ‘design principles’ of common property resource management that Elinor Ostrom highlighted many years ago no longer apply, and this is largely down to failures in politics and confusions over authority. In all discussions across sites, the incumbent leaders were castigated, and it didn’t matter whether these were ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’ party leaders, as none were able to uphold the long-standing systems that once governed the use of common property areas.
Sacred spaces
Within all our sites, local people were able to identify sacred sites where spirit guardians traditionally protected the environment. These were particular wetlands that never dried up with pools and ponds where njuzu (mermaids) lived. These were hills where rain-making ceremonies took place and where particular codes of conduct were required, lest the spirits became angry. And these were particular sacred trees, protected by snakes and other spirits, often associated with ancient grave sites. Sacredness in the new resettlements however had to be remembered or reinvented after land reform as these areas had previously been inhabited by whites, with labourers often originally from other countries.
The war veteran leaders who occupied the land, however, had to respect the original spirits of the land and supplications were carried out during the invasions. Once the land was taken over, the Seven Member Committees often offered guidance on what areas needed protecting, while spirit mediums and local traditional leaders were enlisted. But because these areas did not come under the formal jurisdiction of chiefs and their headmen, there was often a tussle between chiefs over who had control, with a to and fro between different chiefs, often influenced by wider politics. This has been an issue in a number of our sites, causing confusion over who is in charge. The result is that that chief’s guidance can be inconsistent and confusing, with the chief’s ‘police’ in charge of enforcing environmental rules often undermined by the lack of chiefly authority.
The village and party committees that stepped into this power vacuum often failed to uphold environmental rules. Although emerging from the powerful Seven Member Committees who were established following the land invasions, they did not have the same associations with ‘tradition’ and respect for spiritual land governance. Sacred sites therefore are few and far between these days and many go unprotected, despite local knowledge of their importance. As participants in our workshops commented, people these days do not respect these traditions, with ‘modern ways’ of the younger generations and the rise of Christianity undermining traditional systems of environmental management.
Resource politics
Environmental change is inevitably political, both influenced by politics and influencing politics. Across our sites, we see major changes in land use precipitated by political interventions, with party officials often lobbying during election periods through the preferential allocation of land. The mobilisation of ‘youth’ without land to do politicians’ bidding, especially during the contested elections, was often paid for with the allocation of plots. And local leaders, notably sabhuku headmen, have been very busy in the land reform areas allocating land in former grazing areas, hills and mountains as demand for land has increased, and usually for payment. The enclosure and privatisation of land is driven by this politics, pushed on by commercial pressures as land becomes more valuable.
But, as already hinted, it is the lack of firm authority that has undermined the capacity of local communities to manage their land, much to their frustration. Changes between traditional authorities and village committees, the shifts between chiefs controlling areas and the interference of party politics into local affairs have all upset attempts to gain control. Many look back to the period of the land occupations – ironically often seen as a time of chaos and violence, of ‘jambanja’ – as one where clear authority was exerted to the benefit of environmental management. Local governance remains in flux, and the lack of clarity from the state on how devolved authorities should be managed, combined with much political interference from party organs, disrupts local contexts to the detriment of the environment.
The hidden politics of satellite image maps
In sum, underneath the colour-coded maps lies a complex struggle over authority, with implications for land use and management. The neat statistics emerging from land use and land cover assessments belie a much more complex social and political story, one that is fundamentally about land, power and politics. Without attention to these dimensions, the technocratic recommendations about ‘combatting desertification’, ‘reducing deforestation’ or ‘managing wetlands’ for example emerging from such satellite-based land use assessments will be of no use. This makes the type of engaged, participatory analysis that we have been conducting across our sites essential. Only through such explorations, as this blog series has shown, can the real politics of land use change be revealed.
This is the final blog in a series on land use and environmental change and was written by Ian Scoones, with Tapiwa Chatikobo, Keen Marozva and Felix Murimbarimba. Photo credit: Alport Ndebele. The blog first appeared on Zimbabweland