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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
7/52 Secondly, West African ideas and practices of soil creation, as described here by James Fairhead (my PhD supervisor btw) and Ian Scoones. Soils are thought of as actively created and improved by humans, and people do make better, 'oily' soils that contribute to forest growth in many different ways.
8/52 It's #Day3 of #COP15 and of my #HistoricalEcology mini-series. Today it's the Amazon, really the heartland of historical ecology research. Just wanted to share this great Horizon documentary on how many areas now covered in rainforest were agricultural, thriving towns and cities, until 1492 and epidemic decimation in its wake; and how the Secret of Eldorado was Terra Preta - highly fertile soils created by people. Enjoy!
9/52 And here a collection of essays by William Balee, on the role of humans in shaping Amazon forests. As he puts it: "we can no longer think about species and landscape diversity in any tropical forest without taking into account the intricacies of human history and the impact of all forms of knowledge and technology"
10/52 On #Day4 of our #COP15 #HistoricalEcology series, we travel to East Africa. Landscapes like the Serengeti are, for many, quintessential African wilderness, but as Jan Shetler showed in 'Imagining Serengeti', these landscapes were in fact created by Serengeti peoples, whose maintenance of water holes and seasonal, strategic burning created the conditions for wilderbeest and other wildlife to thrive
11/52 There is no doubt that today's rapidly increasing global meat consumption is unsustainable, and that cattle is a major contributor to carbon emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss. I am 100% for synthetic meat, plant-based diets, etc. But this does not mean that ALL pastoralism, everywhere, is bad. As Ian Scoones shows here, pastoralism can help biodiversity thrive in areas unfit for treeplanting or crops.
https://theconversation.com/how-pastoral-farming-can-help-to-avoid-a-biodiversity-crisis-195274
12/52 This is all the more important to stress now that #COP15 seems to be seriously considering the 30x30 plan. This plan is part of a long history of colonial land appropriation in the name of conservation, such as in Serengeti, and as it stands, could affect the lands and livelihoods of 300 million people, the ones least responsible for environmental destruction.
https://africanarguments.org/2022/12/why-30x30-would-be-the-worst-possible-outcome-of-cop15/
13/52 As Scoones says, pastoralists can play an important role in conservation as land stewards, but so much conservation is about exclusion rather than inclusion, from the colonial period right to the 30x30 plan.
Right now, 150,000 Maasai are battling eviction from their land in Tanzania and Kenya.
Biodiversity conservation is vital, more so today than ever, but it needs to be ecologically right and just. So important not to blame and harm the wrong people
14/52 On #Day5 of this #cop15 #HistoricalEcology on more positive, dynamic human/biodiversity relations, we stay in East Africa but go from plains to mountainous areas, the Pare Mountains in Tanzania. Here, extensive pastoralism from the 16th-19th century did create grassier, less bushy landscapes (so not always suitable). Here, the loss large cattle herds due to Maasai raids and rinderpest, (post)colonial tree planting and above all the organic, local fostering of various trees all contributed
15/52 to widespread increase in tree cover throughout the South Pare Mountains. You can read more about this in two of my own papers (for which i combined repeat photography, archival and ethnographic research): this one on tree symbolism discusses in more depth the different dynamics and ways people relate to sacred groves, colonial exotic trees and tree planting scheme, and indigenous and fruit trees in farms and around homesteads
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26393259#metadata_info_tab_contents
16/52 This second paper is on repeat photography as a method in environmental anthropology, but also grapples very much with the kind of narratives we construct around environmental change, Perhaps not strictly about human/biodiversity relations, but an attempt to think through and discuss the complexities as well as the politics involved in all this, so maybe of interest too.
17/52 It's #Day6 of #COP15! Today we are in Southeast Asia, to look in a little more depth into shifting cultivation, also known as slash-and-burn or swidden agriculture or horticulture, widespread throughout the tropics. Shifting cultivation has long been regarded as hugely environmentally destructive. Here is an example of a colonial officer in Nigeria condemning it; everywhere colonial powers justified forest reserves as protection against this 'evil practice'
![“the high forest area of Nigeria [is] being destroyed by the axe and fire of the shifting cultivator at a rate of 2,000 square miles a year. [..] it is obvious that provided this destruction is not checked the forests of Nigeria, excepting the reserves, will in a very few years have become things of memory only. […] The rapid extension of reserves is the only way in which this menace can be held in check, and in this case it is a race between conservative activities of the Forest Department and the destructive activities of the shifting cultivator”](https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/109/501/996/156/739/816/original/ff715478e8ea6be0.png "“the high forest area of Nigeria [is] being destroyed by the axe and fire of the shifting cultivator at a rate of 2,000 square miles a year. [..] it is obvious that provided this destruction is not checked the forests of Nigeria, excepting the reserves, will in a very few years have become things of memory only. […] The rapid extension of reserves is the only way in which this menace can be held in check, and in this case it is a race between conservative activities of the Forest Department and the destructive activities of the shifting cultivator”")
18/52 But in fact, colonial officers in Nigeria & elsewhere on the ground did see that, in reality, shifting cultivation often worked very well - they just didn't translate this into policy (I have a chapter on this if anyone is interested). This was patently obvious to anyone paying a bit more attention. In the 1950s, the ethnoecologist Harold Conklin described in detail the ecological benefits of Mangyan swidden agriculture system in the Philipines, the high biodiversity
19/52 and ecological resilience achieved. Another example is swidden horticulture in Papua New Guinea. The ever-changing patchwork of farm, forest and fallow described by @tutam in his chapter on Mengen landscapes here captures the dynamics and people-nature relations of shifting cultivation here and in so many other places really well
20/52 There are many different kinds of challenges to shifting cultivation today; in most places in the world, there is huge competition for land, for many different reasons. But this makes it all the more important to protect the rights of those with the least destructive practices,. This is expressed so well in this animated film made with the Coalition against Land Grabbing (CALG) - Philippines and to the the Batak Federation (Bayaan it Batak kat Palawan – BBKP)
21/52 Today on #Day7 of this #COP15 #HistoricalEcology series, a look at Japan's #Satoyama system. I have to admit I only learned of this quite recently, when @BuildSoil mentioned that #StudioGhibli's My Neighbour Totoro was set in a Satoyama landscape. So this is more of a #fandom post - both of Studio Ghibli films (which I love) and of the Satoyama system. 'Satoyama' describes the mountain foothills and arable flat land border zone. Sato (里) means village, and yama (山) hill or mountain.
22/52 Satoyama fosters a symbiotic relationship between small local forests, managed & coppiced by villagers, & farming, in particular rice paddies. It creates high biodiversity, in particular through its many ponds. It declined due to rural depopulation in the mid 20th century, but since the 1980s the Satoyama Iniative has been doing great work reviving the system. Here is a v nice National Geographic film Satoyama (with David Attenborough voiceover - bit out of sync!)
@pvonhellermannn The way I read Monbiot (cited in one of the linked papers as a proponent of rewilding), his argument is not so much about subsistence grazing, but about the internal colonialism of the British situation that combines sheep, hunting, enclosures and desert-like UK landscapes that should be forests.
@ubx yes - I think so too and I’ve been a tiny bit frustrated by some of those concerned about the interests of East African pastoralists rallying against Monbiot (I missed that in this piece!) who, as you say, is actually targeting other scenarios (and who wrote ‘No Man’s Land’). I am completely supportive of M, whilst also wanting to champion EA pastoralists in view of 30x30. For me that position is possible to take - certainly easier here than on bird site, so polar always
@pvonhellermannn Absolutely agree. (The Monbiot-reference is not in the conversation-paper, but in a related paper linked there.)
@pvonhellermannn What I find fascinating about this is new research is showing that the wildebeest migration is a recent response to human activity in the area and not some long term evolutionary adaptation.
@robertpatalano yes, that is really fascinating! Do you have any links to recent research to hand?
@pvonhellermannn thank you for this!
@pvonhellermannn @IrishRainforest
Yes I like participatory agroecologic approach, excellent posts!
This a favorite of mine, Wetlands need People!?
Lots traditional ecological knowledge aka #ancestraltech n re water, towards oasification. mamanteo, amuna; waru waru, chinampas, johads...
@greeneralia @IrishRainforest Thank you Laura!
@pvonhellermannn
My pleasure - I'm already learning a lot from you 
Laura