John Sutton 1937-2023

John Sutton in Engaruka September 2011, Daryl Stump to the left.

John E.G. Sutton passed away October 2^nd 2023. He was Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa 1983–1998. His work on the archaeological study of the agrarian history of Africa has had much influence on historical geographers at Stockholm University and we worked closely together in the project Islands of intensive agriculture in Eastern Africa financed by SIDA and FRN.

I first met John Sutton at a conference in Mombasa in 1993. I then had only limited research experience from Africa. My research had focused on field systems – morphology and dating - in Sweden.

In Mombasa my eyes first fell on a table of publications showing aerial photography of the ancient fields of Engaruka and then on the bearded man behind the stand, a stand of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Before that I did not know of any research in Africa on the history of field systems. This meeting with John was the beginning of a series of conversations, field visits and conference sessions with John. For me personally it was decisive for the rest of my research career. What I learnt from John was the beginning of the second part of my research, moving from agrarian landscapes in Sweden to the history of agrarian landscapes in Africa and subsequently the globe. John was my mentor in this process.

I have come to look at researchers of ancient fields as fellow nerds, not unlike narrow gauge railway amateurs. We ancient-fields-nerds are obsessed with following winding collapsed stone walls, faint signs of lynchets or of irrigation canals. The understanding of such systems cannot be reached at one spot, however meticulous you observe that spot. You must understand the totality of a large system. This makes ancient-fields-nerds into fast walkers. They prefer to browse the landscape. The answers may lie kilometres away. Unlike many other archaeologists John knew that.

A colleague of mine who was more used to sitting with African farmers interviewing them last week sent me the following witness of John. He wrote that he will

“never forget our visit to Engaruka where I tried to keep up with Sutton's pace in a T-shirt, jeans and sandals, while the thorn bushes cut through the sandals and I, without a headgear, was completely burnt by the sharp sun. Sutton looked more like an alpine mountaineer in heavy khakis, heavy boots, hat and old-fashioned grey rucksack. He walked fast like an antelope and talked all the time....I had a hard time keeping up”

I know only a handful of international colleagues – in historical geography and in archaeology – who can compare with John in that respect: the skills in disentangling horizontal stratigraphy, understanding the underlying function of the once living farming system of canals, fields, cairns, settlements. And walking fast like an antelope. There are no methodology text books for the skills he had in landscape archaeology. The methods are usually learnt only by own hard work and walk.

John Sutton was clearly a leader of archaeology on African agrarian history. As pointed out by James McCann he changed the place of agrarian history within African historical studies. From having been a backdrop to history he brought the history of field systems, technology, and cropping patterns to centre stage. The special issue of Azania from 1989 under the heading History of African Agricultural Technology and Field Systems was rightly characterised by James McCann as a “something of a watershed in the historical ecology of African agriculture”. 

My first meeting with John in Mombasa in 1993 led to series of field trips, seminars, and joint sessions on conferences. We borrowed from Tim Maggs the metaphor islands of intensive agriculture, brought in a group of colleagues researching such “islands” in living landscapes or in archaeological. We published the volume Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa: Past & Present in 2004.

During all these meetings John was always very generous towards younger colleagues. His style of field work was inviting. Other leading researchers may take the visit to “their” site as an opportunity to give to a complete picture and convince the visitors of an elegant synthesis.  But John did not do that. Trying to keep the pace of John on these walks was not about him convincing us of his grand solutions and his interpretations. He rather invited us to be part of his laboratory.

This was especially clear on a workshop in Tanzania in 2002 when we spent time in Engaruka with John. Researchers from many different universities were then generously guided by him. In the years to come original publications on Engaruka, inspired by John´s work, were published by researchers from the universities of Oulu, Helsinki, Stockholm, Lund, York, and Cambridge.

John Sutton´s imprint on the agrarian history of Africa cannot be overestimated. We miss him.

Mats Widgren, emeritus professor in Geography, Stockholm University 

 

Readings:

McCann, James, Agriculture and African history, Journal of African History 32, 1991, 507-513

Sutton, John E.G. (ed) History of African Agricultural Technology and Field Systems (special issue), Azania, 24, 1989

Sutton, John E.G., Engaruka: an irrigation agricultural community in northern Tanzania before the Maasai, British institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, 2000

Widgren, Mats & Sutton, John Edward Giles (red.), Islands of intensive agriculture in Eastern Africa: past & present, Oxford: James Currey, 2004 

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Read also the obituary by Matthew Davies and Daryl Stump in Azania  58:4, 485-489

 

Child labour supports forest cover preservation

The forest in southwestern Ethiopia is a biodiversity hotspot of global importance. Here smallholder farmers produce coffee under the shade of trees. The coffee grown in this region is the main source of cash income for several million people in Ethiopia. Coffee is also a primary export commodity for the country. Apart from the economic importance, this shade coffee production system has contributed to preserve forest cover and nurture habitats for forest-dwelling mammals. But there is also a negative consequence to this synergy between smallholder cash crop production and biodiversity values. 

A recently published study by Tola Gemechu Ango and co-authors, shows that child labour plays an important role in coffee berry picking and the protection of crops from being eaten by forest-dwelling mammals. Such work caused serious problem of school absenteeism in many children’s formal education. The findings expose how some of the measures taken to mitigate the problem of school absenteeism were also coercive and posed threats to poor households as well as to their school children. The study concludes that child work in coffee production and crop protection is at the cost of school attendance for many children, which represents a critical social justice issue and a trade-off with the economic and environmental values of the forest. It highlights that reducing poverty would likely mitigate the problem of child labour and school absenteeism and promote synergistic development in the region.

A photo (©: TGA, 2019) showing part of the agriculture-forest mosaic landscapes in southwestern Ethiopia. Coffee is produced under the shade of forest trees. 

The article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2022.102681  

A new doctoral dissertation: “Accumulation from Below: Smallholders and public irrigation investments in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania”

The dissertation was written by Victor Mbande and was defended on September 23, 2022. 

Abstract: 

Smallholders in Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa are increasingly differentiated. This thesis contributes to the empirical and conceptual understanding of the differentiation processes in irrigation by following the internal dynamics among smallholders linked to public investments in improving smallholder initiated small scale irrigation schemes in Kilombero district, Tanzania. The aim of the thesis is to examine the role of public investments in irrigation in transforming rural smallholder farmers and how inclusive these investments are likely to be, specifically, in the current context where policies in irrigation are widely focused on poverty reduction among the smallholders. In this thesis I have used data collected from both irrigating and non-irrigating villages in Kilombero district, Tanzania so as to capture overall transformations in the area and how irrigation contributes to agricultural development and differentiation among smallholders. A combination of methods was used in this thesis, these includes participatory wealth rankings, interviews and walking interviews, focus group discussions, questionnaire survey, and remote sensing data. This thesis consists of four papers and an introductory “kappa”. The study mainly problematizes the general conception within agriculture and irrigation policies that smallholders are homogenous and builds on theories of ‘accumulation from above’ and ‘accumulation from below’ to analyse development and differentiation among the smallholders in irrigation. In following processes of accumulation among the smallholders, the study links public investments in smallholders’ small-scale irrigation with the processes of ‘accumulation from below’.

Findings of this thesis indicate that public investment in smallholders’ small-scale irrigation builds on pre-existing social differences among the smallholders. In all sub-cases in Kilombero, initial development of irrigation was done by farmers through their own initiatives as a form of a ‘farmer-led’ irrigation development. These developments were mainly traced from the late 1970s to early 1980s, and attracted state investments in lining the canals later in the 1990s onwards. However, it was until the late 1990s to early 2000s where there was increased cultivation in the irrigated areas. The increase went hand in hand with neo-liberalisation of the Tanzanian economy since late 1980s and privatisation of agriculture in the area from 1998. As smallholders were responding to market stimuli and increased productivity in both irrigated and rain-fed cultivation, they became increasingly differentiated. The wealthier farmers were cultivating mostly extensively in relatively larger pieces of land, and the less wealthy farmers were combining cultivation in smaller rain-fed fields and providing labour to other wealthier farmers. Most of the middle wealthy farmers were concentrated in irrigation, and therefore investment in irrigation was clearly benefiting the middle wealthier farmers. The thesis argues that expansion of rice irrigation in Kilombero plays a crucial role in the current agricultural transformations in Kilombero as rice is both a food and commercial crop in the area. In conclusion, the thesis argues that the current investments in smallholders’ small-scale irrigation are fueling processes of ‘accumulation from below’ which are more inclusive as they benefit middle smallholders rather than the large wealthier farmers. These findings points to the importance of focusing on smallholders’ in agriculture and irrigation development for a more inclusive agricultural transformation.

The thesis is available here.

Improved livelihoods in rural Tanzania, 1991-2016

Studies of long-term change in rural villages in Africa are comparatively rare. The data required is usually just not there. The project "Long-term livelihood change in Tanzania", coordinated by the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Sheffield, tackles this problem. It has identified and re-studied 40 villages in Tanzania where records spanning a few decades are available. A couple of papers are already available. The most recent has just been published: "Tracing Improving Livelihoods in Rural Africa Using Local Measures of Wealth: A Case Study from Central Tanzania, 1991–2016" by Wilhelm Östberg, Olivia Howland, Joseph Mduma, and Dan Brockington. Land 2018, 7(2), 44:1-26. It can be down-loaded free of cost at http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/7/2/44

The article analysis livelihood changes and poverty dynamics over a 25-year period in two villages in central Tanzania. The villages were, in the early 1990s and 2000s, strikingly poor with between 50% and 55% of families in the poorest wealth groups. 25 years later people had become substantially wealthier, with 64% and 71% in the middle wealth groups. The new wealth had been generated locally, from farming. This goes against a conventional view of small-scale farming in Tanzania as being stagnant or unproductive. The area of land farmed per family has increased, almost doubling in one village. Most villagers can now support themselves from their land, which is a notable change to the early 1990s when 71% and 82% in each village respectively depended on casual labour for their survival. This change has come at a cost to the environment. By 2016, the village forests are largely gone and have been replaced by farms. 

The Sahel region is becoming greener, but in unexpected ways

The Sahel region is becoming greener, but in unexpected ways

The Sahel region south of the Sahara desert is well known for the disastrous droughts that struck the region in the 1970s and 1980s, which ignited global concerns about a remorselessly advancing desert perpetuated by unsustainable farming practices. New climate data shows, however, that the decline in rainfall during the 1970s and 1980s was, in a global historical perspective, an exceptionally rapid and enduring climatic event. The recovery in rainfall since the crisis period is thus expected to be accompanied by a regreening (returning vegetation) of Sahelian landscapes. Such a regreening is also documented for the region. However, as a recently published study by Hendrik Hänke and co-authors based on a case study from northern Burkina Faso shows, it is not the same trees and bushes that returns in the landscape. Instead, a new mix of more drought tolerant species dominates and many previously common trees are in decline. This is an important, surprising and somehow paradoxical finding, as more rain is not expected to stimulate a shift to trees and bushes that are adapted to a drier climate. Hence, the results works against the logic that more rain will allow more moisture demanding vegetation to grow. How is this possible? The answer is that not only the amount of rainfall, but also human land use practices, has a decisive effect on what trees and bushes thrive in a specific environment. This conclusion challenges the dominant scientific understanding of the Sahelian regreening as almost exclusively driven by returning rainfall, and points at the importance of a better understanding of how changing social-ecological relations may replace traditional agroforestry landscapes with new a new mix of trees and bushes. Such a nuanced understanding provide an important basis for any organization that wishes to design suitable policies for climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation and the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services that benefit local livelihoods in one of the world’s poorest regions.

Graphical abstract

 

A conceptual model illustrating different tree cover pathways in relation to species composition and rainfall variability. The diagram could be interpreted along any, even small, shifts along these gradients. Wet and dry habitat indicates species thriving under relative wetter to dryer conditions. Brown and green refers to a sparse and dense woody vegetation cover, respectively.

The article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.08.023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A map of agricultural systems in Africa by 1800

This map is the first published result of the project Mapping Global Agricultural History which aims at mapping global agricultural systems at three points of time during the last millennium: 1000 CE, 1500 CE, 1800 CE.

It will be published in
Widgren Mats: Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa by 1800: a map and a gazetteer. In Mercuri, A.M., D'Andrea, A.C., Fornaciari, R., Höhn, A. (eds.): Plants and People in the African Past - Progress in African Archaeobotany (in press), SPRINGER

But the maps, the background references and the GIS-files can already now be downloaded from
doi.org/10.17045/sthlmuni.5173477

By publishing the map  and gis- files on figshare I hope that other researchers will compare with their own material and find the caveats. Needless to say such a work is always preliminary and the revision of this map, has already started. If you have questions, critiques and comments do not hesitate to contact me mats.widgren@humangeo.su.se

The categories used in a regionalization like this are - as always - a difficult compromise between a strict logical system and a pragmatic one based on the sources available. A basis for the classification of global agricultural systems is taken in the works of Whittlesey and Grigg. The following table shows the preliminary global categories and the further refinement that is possible for Africa.

Tab. 1. Classification of agricultural systems

Intensity rank	Global categories	Categories in sub-Saharan Africa
1	Pastoralism, ranching	1	Pastoralism
2	Husbandry of non-domesticated plants		NA
3	Extensive or undifferentiated farming	3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4	Grain Grain and roots Rice Vegeculture
4	Permanent fields	4.1 4.2	Permanent fields Flood retreat and other wetland cultivation
5	Mediterranean complex		NA
	Mesoamerican complex		NA
	Taro complex		NA
	Mixed farming	5.1 5.2 5.3	Infield-outfield Mixed farming, general Mixed farming with terracing
6	Intensive farming	6.1 6.2	Banana gardens Canal irrigation
7	Irrigated rice	7	Irrigated rice
	Oases		NA

Swedish public costs for failed SEKAB/EcoEnergy more than 200 million SEK

Norwegian based journal Development Today is always well informed about news on Nordic devlopment projects. Two articles in today's issue deal with the failed SEKAB/EcoEnergy sugar plantation in Bagamoyo (see my previous posts on this blog Green economy  and Swedish agrobusiness abroad fails)

From the article IFAD days away from cancellling Bagamoyo sugar loan we learn that Tanzanian government must confirm the status of the Bagamoyo sugar and ethanol project to IFAD before the end of this month. IFAD (The International Fund for Agricultural Development - an agency of the UN) has guaranteed huge loans and grants for the development of outgrower schemes in Bagamoyo together with the African Development Bank.

From the article SEKAB never recovered losses from Bagamoyo we learn that the losses of SEKAB when they sold their Africa-based companies to Per Carstedt for 400 SEK were written off early. The chances of getting small pieces of that back through buying cheap ethanol from Bagamoyo according to the agreement from 2011 now seems to have disappeared into thin air.

So it is now possible to start looking at the losses of public Swedish money..

SEKAB is a public-owned energy company where municipalities (local districts)  in the north of Sweden have put in money for the Africa plans. According Swedish television investigative program Uppdrag granskning 500 million SEK disappeared from taxpayers money into the SEKAB Africa companies. This and other problems with their energy company took a heavy toll on the economy of Örnsköldsvik town according Uppdrag granskning in August 2014 .

According to Development Today the losses from SEKAB when selling the company to EcoEnergy were 158 million SEK that were written off  long time ago.

On top of that Swedish International Development Agency Sida, has a claim of SEK 54 millions on EcoEnergy, according to Development Today.

It seems safe to say that losses of Swedish taxpayers for this land grabbing adventure amounts to much more than 200 million SEK.

Green economy, Scandinavian investments and agricultural modernization in Tanzania

New publication in Journal of Peasant Studies

Here a qoute from the NORAGRIC website:

Abstract: ‘Green economy’ is a broad concept open to different interpretations, definitions and practices ranging from the greening of current neoliberal economies to radical transformations of these economies. In Africa, one emerging and powerful idea in the implementation of the green economy seems to be to use a green agenda to further strengthen development as modernization through capital-intensive land investments. This has again reinvigorated old debates about large-scale versus smallholder agriculture. Influential actors justify large-scale ‘green’ investments by the urgency for economic development as well as to offset carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. In this contribution, we discuss the case of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) to give examples of how the green economy may materialize in Africa. SAGCOT is presented by the Tanzanian government as well as investors and donors as a leading African example of an ‘investment blueprint’ and as a laboratory to test green growth combining profitable farming with the safeguard of ecosystem services. In particular, we discuss three Scandinavian investments within SAGCOT, their social implications and their discursive representations through the public debates that these investments have generated in Scandinavia.

Keywords: green economy, agricultural modernization, Scandinavian investments, SAGCOT, Tanzania

Read the article

Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania

Foto

Sagcot.com

Mikael Bergius is a PhD Fellow at Noragric focusing on agricultural development and food sovereignty in Africa (specifically Tanzania).  His doctoral project is: ‘Turning Towards a Corporate Food Regime in Tanzania –  Drivers, Impacts, and Responses’.


Tor Arve Benjaminsen is a Professor at Noragric. His main areas of interest are land tenure; environmental narratives; political ecology and environmental history.

Mats Widgren is a Professor Emeritus in geography, especially human geography, at the University of Stockholm.

Swedish agrobusiness abroad fails - SEKAB and Black Earth Farming

In the last week we have been reached by the final confirming news that two Swedish agro-business ventures abroad have failed totally.

Black Earth Farming, a Swedish owned company that have been operating in the chernozeme black earth region in Russia recently  announced that they are selling the company to a Russian oligarch.

  The Swedish owner Kinnevik will lose about 400 million SEK when they sell the company. I have been following Black Earth Farming since at least 9 years (see my blogpost in Swedish Svartjord på börsen from February 2008) .  Through modest 10 shares which I bought for 800 SEK when they were close to their peak I have been able to follow the general assemblies here in Stockholm. Successively I have got a more and more clear picture of their operations, how they bought the the shares of former kolchos workers, accumulating a "land bank" and more lately trying to make some profits from the agricultural operations. Throughout these meetings the company has tried to convince us shareholders 1) that the shares and the land values were undervalued and 2) that profits from successful farming operations were just around the corner, if not last years weather would have created unforeseen problems... Brian Kuns and co-authors have followed shareholders meetings more systematically and also interviewed key actors. They analyse in detail the performance of different Swedish owned agrobusiness companies in the paper The stock market and the steppe: The challenges faced by stock-market financed, Nordic farming ventures in Russia and Ukraine  . They point to the contradictions between the expectations and the actual operations. In short: far too high expectations from returns to scale, partly fueled by the expectation from the stock market  + a totally unrealistic understanding of the vagaries of farming the steppe seems to explain the failures. My 800 Swedish crowns have boiled down to some 60 or 70 Swedish crowns when I will finally be reached by the offer from Volgo-DonSelkhozInvest to buy my ten shares..... That is a small loss compared to the former kolkhos workers who have once and for all sold their shares of the land to the foreign companies and whose lands will now be in the ownership of a Russian oligarch.

Parallel to this development the Swedish company Agro-Eco-Energy in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, have now finally declared their closing down. They have been criticized for  almost the same time  - at least 9 years now, by Swedish and Norwegian researchers, by Action Aid, scrutinised by Swedish investigative TV Uppdrag granskning etc etc and their grandiose plans for a large sugar cane plantations have not materialised in spite of a decade of planning and misuse of money from Swedish publicly owned energy companies and from Swedish aid through Sida. The land which the Swedish company claimed to have leased has now been confiscated by the Tanzania state -- see my blogpost from November  . Now this has finally also been confirmed from the owner see Sugar project: Swedish investor calls it quits .

It is of course just a mere coincidence that these two total failures of Swedish agro-busíness plans have reached news media the same week. But there is some logic to it. Both projects started druing the financial crisis in 2007-2009 with surging food crop prices in 2007. The expectations for investments in farmlands and for agricultural production were at a peak. It has taken almost ten years for investors and in the case of Agro-Eco-Energy donors to realise that this was an exceptional situation and that realities on the ground were more complicated. Far too high expectations to returns to scale have also played a role. In the case of Tanzania the political realities of the contentious land issues and protest from villagers losing their land have also played a role. .

Has the Tanzanian state confiscated the land of Ecoenergy?

Ever since 2009 we have been a group of concerned Swedish and Norwegian scholars that have followed the plans to establish a Swedish sugar plantation outside Bagamoyo in Tanzania, by the Swedish SEKAB company, later reorganised as Agro Ecoenergy. We wrote an opinion piece in 2009 the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. The involvement of Swedish municipalities and of Swedish aid has one very important reason for raising awareness in Sweden about this case of land grabbing that would force a large amount of smallholders to leave their land. The case has also been the target of Swedish investigative journalism in TV program Uppdrag granskning.

Previous posts on this site are:


june 2016: End of road for Ecoenergy?
March 2016: Sida critised by National Audit for their Ecoenergy support
March 2015: Time running out for Ecoenergy?
April 2014: More iconic farming images
April 2014: Funny pictures about farming
March 2013: Swedish land grab in Tanzania causes protests

On two previous occasions we have almost declared the death of this project first following the withdrawal of Swedish Sida support in 2015 and then in June 2016 following the declaration by the prime minister in Tanzanian parliament that the environmental concerns for wildlife would stop the project.

It will be a future research task to find outwhat has really happened with this project since president Magufuli took over from Kikwete in November 2015. It now seems that the environmental concerns against this project voiced by Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa in parliament in June may just have been a smokescreen for other things going on. According to Daily News in August the president offered 10 000 hectares of land in Bagamoyo to Cuba for a sugar plantation. Since then there have been press reports that the president has offered 10,000 hectares of land in Bagamoyo for sugar plantations to the Tanzanian Bakhresa group.

In todays edition of East African Business Times the circumstances around the 10,000 hectares of land in Bagamayo are reported like this:

“The ministry has opened dialogue with existing sugar producers in a bid to address the challenges farmers face in a bid to increase production through government support,” says Mwijage, adding that the ministry is currently implementing a presidential directive to set aside land in Bagamoyo District for local investor Bakhresa Group of companies to set up sugar factory. The plot of land was offered to the company after the government confiscated it from its previous owner who failed to use it for the benefit of the country."

Although Ecoenergy is not mentioned in this article I can only find this to mean that the Tanzanian government has indeed confiscated the land to which SEKAB/Ecoenergy had a long-term lease on the former RAZABA ranch. If this is true it means that the Tanzanian government is not so concerned about neither the wildlife nor the local smallholders, but is ready to give the land to national agrobusiness interests rather than to Swedish.

Hot off the press: Is it possible to survive on a deserted farm?

Finally published: A long term project covering a long period.  Investigating deserted farms in Sweden to understand tenure, lordship, social relations and farming systems during the Middle Ages:

Is it possible to survive on a deserted farm:  Manors, tenants and farming systems during the Middle Ages in the Lägerbo area, Östergötland.

This study approaches the late medieval farm desertion from a landscape perspective. It focuses on the area of a former medieval estate in southern Östergötland, Sweden. Based on a retrogressive analysis of cadastral maps and historical records the medieval settlement is reconstructed. In this process three formerly unknown deserted farms were identified, with abandoned field systems and building remains.  The volume provides the archaeological documentation of field systems and settlements at these sites. These data provide the background for investigating the shifting social and ecological circumstances that once made it possible for tenant families to survive on these farms. During the height of the manorial system the small farms were specialised units in a redistributive system.  In the late 14^th century the estate and all tenant farms were donated to the convents of Vadstena and Vreta.  Rents were no longer paid in labour but in butter.  In the fifteenth century several farms were abandoned and turned into meadows under the surviving farms. The new tenurial relations prevented the recolonization of the farms. The study is the result of an interdisciplinary project involving medieval archaeology, historical geography, palynology and medieval history.

Buy the book (in Swedish)  http://vitterhetsakad.bokorder.se/sv-se/shop/book/2861?slug=kan-man-leva-pa-en-odegard

Or read a very preliminary (and old) report from the project in The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape

End of road for EcoEnergy?

Remember the Swedish company Sekab that cheated three public energy companies in northern Sweden into investing substantially in ethanol production in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, some fifteen years back? The company secured vast tracts of land, which allegedly was unused. However, it turned out that people were in fact living on the land, and cultivating it, and that it also was important grazing land for pastoralists who had been forced off their grazing areas in Hanang District by commercial grain production.

The ethanol project never got off ground and the Swedish tax payers’ money went down the drain.

Sekab’s Tanzanian wing reappeared as a new company EcoEnergy. Now ethanol was no longer on the agenda. Instead EcoEnergy wanted to start conventional sugar production in Bagamoyo, promising increased land productivity, sustainable livelihoods, and a growing local economy.  However, soon reports appeared (from ActionAid, Oxfam and others) that local farmers lost land and water without being aware of what was happening and that they did not understand the loan agreements they became tied to. Despite considerable criticism against the company’s plans EcoEnergy managed to get Sida to issue a bank guarantee for this project at 120 000 000 SEK.

The Tanzanian daily The Citizen (20 May 2016) now reports that Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa has told Parliament that the government has shelfed the plans for the sugar plantation project in Bagamoyo to safeguard Wami River and the Saadani National Park, which borders on the proposed 20 000 ha sugar project.

Is this the end of EcoEnergy’s decades of attempts to exploit the disputed land in Bagamoyo? Will their investors, now that no incomes for the company are to be expected, secure their money by claiming Sida’s bank guarantee? This would mean that Swedish tax payers have once more lost very substantial sums to a project that from start was heavily criticised by Tanzanian and international researchers and by environmental organisations.

PhD defense "Ecosystem Services and Disservices in an Agriculture–Forest Mosaic: A Study of Forest and Tree Management and Landscape Transformation in Southwestern Ethiopia"

On May 20, 2016 from 10:00 Tola Gemechu Ango will defend his PhD thesis titled: Ecosystem Services and Disservices in an Agriculture–Forest Mosaic: A Study of Forest and Tree Management and Landscape Transformation in Southwestern Ethiopia

Opponent Tobias Plieninger, Associate Professor
Supervisor Lowe Börjeson, Associate Professor
Venue: De Geersalen, Geovetenskapens hus, Svante Arrhenius väg 14, Frescati, Stockholm

Abstact

The intertwined challenges of food insecurity, deforestation, and biodiversity loss remain perennial challenges in Ethiopia, despite increasing policy interventions. This thesis investigates smallholding farmers’ tree- and forest-based livelihoods and management practices, in the context of national development and conservation policies, and examines how these local management practices and policies transform the agriculture–forest mosaic landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia.

The thesis is guided by a political ecology perspective, and focuses on an analytical framework of ecosystem services (ESs) and disservices (EDs). It uses a mixed research design with data from participatory field mapping, a tree ‘inventory’, interviews, focus group discussions, population censuses, and analysis of satellite images and aerial photos.

The thesis presents four papers. Paper I investigates how smallholding farmers in an agriculture–forest mosaic landscape manage trees and forests in relation to a few selected ESs and EDs that they consider particularly beneficial or problematic. The farmers’ management practices were geared towards mitigating tree- and forest-related EDs such as wild mammal crop raiders, while at the same time augmenting ESs such as shaded coffee production, resulting in a restructuring of the agriculture–forest mosaic. Paper II builds further on the EDs introduced in paper I, to assess the effects of crop raids by forest-dwelling wild mammals on farmers’ livelihoods. The EDs of wild mammals and human–wildlife conflict are shown to constitute a problem that goes well beyond a narrow focus on yield loss. The paper illustrates the broader impacts of crop-raiding wild mammals on local agricultural and livelihood development (e.g. the effects on food security and children’s schooling), and how state forest and wildlife control and related conservation policy undermined farmers’ coping strategies. Paper III examines local forest-based livelihood sources and how smallholders’ access to forests is reduced by state transfer of forestland to private companies for coffee investment. This paper highlights how relatively small land areas appropriated for investment in relatively densely inhabited areas can harm the livelihoods of many farmers, and also negatively affect forest conservation. Paper IV investigates the patterns and drivers of forest cover change from 1958 to 2010. Between 1973 and 2010, 25% of the total forest was lost, and forest cover changes varied both spatially and temporally. State development and conservation policies spanning various political economies (feudal, socialist, and ‘free market-oriented’) directly or indirectly affected local ecosystem use, ecosystem management practices, and migration processes. These factors (policies, local practices, and migration) have thus together shaped the spatial patterns of forest cover change in the last 50 years.

The thesis concludes that national development and conservation policies and the associated power relations and inequality have often undermined local livelihood security and forest conservation efforts. It also highlights how a conceptualization of a local ecosystem as a provider of both ESs and EDs can generate an understanding of local practices and decisions that shape development and conservation trajectories in mosaic landscapes. The thesis draws attention to the need to make development and conservation policies relevant and adaptable to local conditions as a means to promote local livelihood and food security, forest and biodiversity conservation, and ESs generated by agricultural mosaic landscapes.

Link to the thesis is available here. 

A new publication on human-wildlife conflict

Crop raiding by wild mammals in Ethiopia: impacts on the livelihoods of smallholders in an agriculture–forest mosaic landscape 

 

Tola Gemechu Ango, Lowe Börjeson and Feyera Senbeta 

Oryx, May 2016, full paper available at doi: 10.1017/S0030605316000028

Abstract 

We assessed the impacts of crop raiding by wild mammals on the livelihoods of smallholding farmers in south-western Ethiopia. Data were generated through participatory field mapping, interviews and focus groups. The results indicated that wild mammals, mainly olive baboons Papio anubis and bush pigs Potamochoerus larvatus, were raiding most crops cultivated in villages close to forests. In addition to the loss of crops, farmers incurred indirect costs in having to guard and cultivate plots far from their residences, sometimes at the expense of their children’s schooling. Raiding also undermined farmers’ willingness to invest in modern agricultural technologies. Various coping strategies, including guarding crops and adapting existing local institutions, were insufficient to reduce raiding and its indirect impacts on household economies to tolerable levels, and were undermined by existing policies and government institutions. It is essential to recognize wild mammal pests as a critical ecosystem disservice to farmers, and to identify ways to mitigate their direct and indirect costs, to facilitate local agricultural development and livelihood security, and integrate wildlife conservation and local development more fully in agriculture–forest mosaic landscapes.

 

SIDA criticised by National Audit for their EcoEnergy support

The events around  Sidas involvement in the Swedish sugar plantation in Bagamoyo continues  to surprise. I thought I know much about the formal aspects of the SIDA support to these plans. But when I recently checked the web address of a document I wanted to refer to in a future publication I was surprised.  I was looking for the decision from early 2014 to support the project with a loan guarantee. The Swedish television had made that document public in connection with an investigative programme in August 2014. And here it is – the decision to support Eco Energy:

Department decision 2014-02-28

The document says that SIDA shall support the company with a guarantee (säkerhet)  for a maximum of 120 million Swedish Crowns for loan that EcoEnergy has got from the Standard Bank South Africa. 

But when I googled for that document I was using the official number 13/000545 and did find another document, that I had never seen before and that, to my knowledge has not been mentioned in the press. 

Sidas delårsrapport 2014 --  Sidas hantering av bistånd i insatsen EcoEnergy Tanzania

In this document from 2014 the Swedish National Audit Office openly criticises SIDA not for the decision but for their  book keeping of the economic flows emanating from the decision. According to the auditors the money sent for this project should be registered in the books as a claim (fordran) rather than as a grant (bidrag) since it was only a guarantee for a loan the company had got from a commerical bank and which should never be used if the project was successful. But SIDA recorded it as a grant (bidrag) on the basis that "risks were deemed so high in the project that the chance that SIDA would get money back is very low" . But as the National Audit Office says "this reasoning is not part of the background material for the decision".   Anyhow it is embarrasing to see that SIDA already then realised they were not just guaranteeing a loan (as they said in the document) but actually planned to give money away.

The National Audit Office recommended SIDA to ask the government for permission on how this has been handled. I do not know how SIDA responded to this . Since then the money flow has (temporarily ? ?) stopped but as Development Today wrote recently The Bagamoyo saga drags on.

Seminar on A research assistant´s perspective: challenges and opportunities of a power loaded research process 8th March 1pm X308

A research assistant´s perspective: challenges and opportunities of a power loaded research process

The speaker is Florence Jemutai Cheptum

Florence is Martina Angela Caretta’s research assistant from Kenya who is visiting our department! She will be giving a presentation on the work that she has been carrying out with Martina since 2011. Florence will focus first on the challenges related to gatekeeping, assistance and translation both in relation to Martina’s and study participants’ expectations and secondly present the opportunities that the research has created both for her and study participants.

Spread the announcement!

Room X308 Geohuset Stockholm University March 8^th at 1pm.