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1/52 Good to see this Guardian Long Read, but as a historical ecologist I would like to add: humans do not just either stay within boundaries or destroy nature. It's often been a positive, dynamic human-nature symbiosis, with humans actively shaping and creating forests & #biodiversity #historicalecology
— here a (long!) thread with examples from across the world
2/52 Coinciding with #cop15 I've decided to do a little series here on some examples of *positive" human/biodiversity relations - prompted by above article and a recent exchange with @IrishRainforest
To state from outset: i fully recognise that so much human impact has been vastly, overwhelmingly detrimental - especially under capitolocene but also sometimes before. I am as devastated and aware as anyone. But this is why I think it is important to also know that it doesn't have to be this way,
3/52 that there are other 'possibilities', to use David Graeber's phrase. This is not just about 'indigenous', 'nature-based' people living 'in harmony with nature'. Indeed, the idea of the 'ecologically noble savage' is as much of a stereotype as its agricultural counterpart, 'homo devastans'. In reality, whilst some 'nature-based' forage-hunters in the past have hunted some species to extinction, many agricultural practices are not as devastating, indeed can enhance biodiversity. Overall,
4/52 it has not ALL been just a history of unilinear destruction of nature by humans.
So I will post different examples of this here every day this coming week.
1. Today, it's forest islands in West Africa. These were long thought of as last remnants of forest, surrounded by 'derived savanna', but James Fairhead and Melissa Leach showed that they were growing and created by people through villages, habitation and farming. Watch their film 'Second Nature' here:
5/52 Today on #Day2 of my #cop15#HistoricalEcology mini series, I would like to stay in West Africa, looking at two further dimension of human/biodiversity relations here. Firstly: overall forest dynamics. We tend to assume that, other than human caused deforestation, forests are stable - hence vegetation maps like these, with WA 'forest zone'. And hence the intriguing historical puzzle of West Africa's famoua "forest kingdoms" (Benin, Asante, Yoruba) - how did centralisation occur in forests?
6/52 But there is now increasing evidence that, during major dry periods around 3000 years ago, forests shrank to small refugia. It was only in the wake of depopulation (due to political upheavals, slave trade political upheaval) in 19th century that large parts of West Africa'a forest zone became heavily forested. You can read more in Fairhead and Leach's 1997 Reframing Deforestation, and in my own 'Was Benin a Forest Kingdom?'
(on researchgate) - Benin Iya earthwork, old pictures and all
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