ISBN:
0-905347-57-9
,
978-0-905347-57-8
Language:
English
Pages:
232 Seiten
,
Illustrationen, Karten
Series Statement:
An _Earthscan Paperback
Keywords:
Afrika Landwirtschaft
;
Fischerei
;
Hunger
;
Hungersnot
;
Politik und Gesellschaft
;
Geschichte, politische
;
Apartheid
;
Ländliches Gebiet
;
Diskriminierung
;
Grundeigentum
;
Landnutzung
;
Wirtschaft
;
Wirtschaftliche Bedingungen
;
Wirtschaftlicher Wandel
;
Soziale Bedingungen
;
Sozialer Wandel
;
Ressource
;
Umwelt
;
Ökologie
;
Bevölkerungswachstum
;
Wasser
;
Wasserversorgung
Abstract:
Famine - but why? The rich world has been watching television - wathching African childreg stave to death in closeups of misery and despair.Famines and hunger have swept across Africa, from Ethiopia to Mauritania, from the Sudan south to Mozambique and the bantustans. Everyone knows that the famines were caused by drought - but were they?This important new book argues that although the drought may have been an Act of God, the famines are the direct result of unsound economic, agricultural and environmental strategies.Drought triggered the famines; human mismanagement caused them. But even in the worst-hit areas there are sparks of hope, projects which are building up environmental capital instead of squandering it. This book suggests some of the new stategies which are needed if Africa is to reduce and then eliminate its vulnerability to crisis. Year after year, African peasants have been forced, in their efforts to suvive, to take more from their forests, soils and rivers than these natural resources can provide. Such withdrawals are bankrupting Africa's environment, steadily undermining virtually every nation's ability to feed itself. Have African governments and foreign aid agencies been adopting the wrong policies, following the wrong advice?Environmental bankruptcy makes sense of many apparently unconnected issues: subsistence agriculture and food prices, overgrazing and soil erosion, deforestation and fuelwood, oil imports and foreign aid, national debt and a high dollar, environmental refugees and urban shanty towns - and political instability, coups and revolution.
Description / Table of Contents:
A continent on the brink -- Why famine? Is the climate changing -- The backdrop to despair. Importing poverty. The population "crisis". Health and poverty -- Misuse of land, misuse of water. Overcultivation. Cash crops versus food crops. Irrigation: the need and the reality. The big dam -- Overgrazing and the nomads -- Forest, fuel and energy. Energy and firewood -- Soil and fish: peasant farmers, peasant fishermen. Peasants and rainfed food crops. Conserving Africa for Africans. The fisheries of Africa -- Apartheid: institutionalised bankruptcy -- Conflict, refugees and the environment -- Aid, development and the future. Africa: is there hope? -- References -- Further reading
Note:
Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 227-233
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