Reading suggestions for the summer

The summer is approaching and (hopefully) you will have enough time available to read some popular/fictional literature. Here comes my suggestion! 

I just finished reading the memoir One day I will write about this place by Binyavanga Wainaina a Kenyan writer who is a contributor to several international magazine as the Guardian and has been recently nominated by the TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in 2014. With both parents from Uganda in his memoir Wainaina writes about growing up in Nakuru and recalls the political development of his country - and to some extent of South Africa where he attended university - from the Moi regime until the 2010 elections. I found it a fascinating and illuminating piece of work reflecting both on personal and national struggles. It gives an insider look on Kenyan societal issues in the last 30 years, but it also contains great descriptions of landscapes: personal favorites the bus trips he took to Pokot and Uganda. 

Now, going back to the more academic focus of this blog and adding to the reading suggestions: check out the blog post I recently got published in the London School of Economics and Political Science "Field research lab" blog about member checking! 

Shutting off Crimea's Water Supply?

According to various sources, Crimea had had its water supply cut-off (See this and this). Crimea receives 80% of its water (drinking and irrigation water) from the Northern Crimean Canal which, despite its name, begins in Kherson Oblast on the Ukrainian mainland. The source of the water is the Dnipro river. The Ukrainian authorities appear to have either completely cut off the water or significantly reduced the flow -- sources are somewhat contradictory here. 

Former Prime Minister and current presidential candidate Julia Timoshenko herself said in March that, if Kyiv wants to consider Crimea a part of Ukraine, Kyiv should not shut off their water and electricity, which also comes from the Ukrainian mainland. I wonder then if cutting off water is a small indication that Kyiv sees Crimea as lost. In either case, I'm not sure this is a good idea. 

Anyway, I have produced a quick map of the canals in southern Ukraine based on information from openstreetmap.org, which is an open source mapping site. You can see how Crimea is connected in terms of water to the Ukrainian mainland. Note that, as openstreetsmap relies on volunteers to upload their local maps, the accuracy cannot be guaranteed. However, in my experience with openstreetmap, the accuracy is pretty good, and as good as or better than a lot of other map layers available out there. 

A gender perspective on the upcoming Tanzanian constitution in light of the recent legislative developments in Kenya

Tanzania is to have a new constitution by the end of the year, President Kikwet stated recently. The official enactment was originally planned for the end of this month. The new constitution is set to limit the power of the central government (reducing its areas of responsibility from 22 to 7; the number of ministers to 15; the MPs from 300 to 75) and to move to a three-tier federal government. This will be composed by Tanganyika, the federal government and Zanzibar, trying to put to an end the Zanzabari claim that the central government is caring most for the interests of the mainland.

The unveiling of the new constitution comes at the end of a two years constituent process during which the Constitutional Review Commission has toured the country and sat with interests groups. Among which women´s groups. The most apparent gain for women with this new piece of law is the 50% guarantee of parliament representation as opposed to the current 30%. Yet, there is no consideration on the same quota to applied in presidential appointments. As in the international debate, the idea of quota based on gender has been widely contested both by the general Tanzanian men public and most notoriously by the Charles Kitima, the vice chancellor of Saint Augustine University, who claimed such quota would be unnecessarily costly and that qualification should override gender in appointing officials. This last statement could be widely agreed upon whether Tanzanian women would have equal access to qualifying education as men have, but in the current situation women are starting the race from the back row.

Accordingly, Tanzanian women´s organization have been critical about the upcoming constitution for several reasons. First, they say that the term "person" should be defined in the constitution as it is commonly interpreted as meaning only men, which is the case in the current constitution which reads i.e. "every person is entitled to respect and protection of HIS person". Secondly, art. 46 on the rights of women currently states that women are free to participate in politics and governance, but it does not assert the right to be protected from marginalization and oppression or the right to equal pay, which is stated in the Ugandan and Zimbabwan constitutions, for instance. Finally, the text is also missing references to a minimum age for child marriage, which is an ever worrying topic in Tanzania. World Bank data shows that 22.8 % of girls aged 15 to 19 in Tanzania had children or were pregnant in 2010 and that Tanzania has the highest adolescent fertility rate in the world (129). These two facts are directly linked with early marriage and a high school dropout rate.

As for the Kenyan constitution, which entered into force in 2010, women in Tanzania will be given equal inheritance rights and access to land and property during marriage, after the termination of marriage or the death of their husband. The battle for equal land rights was fought by the Kenyan Federation of Women Lawyers during the constituent process. Nevertheless, such provision should stop the countless cases of widows who are taken away their land, but it does not necessarily ensure that in case of divorce women are recognized any right. In fact, as stated in the Kenyan constitution, litigation should be resolved by "local community initiatives", which are often composed by village elders who tend to go with the traditional norms that land should not be given to women.

Following the traditional norms is also what the Kenyan parliament is aiming at with the bill passed last month giving leeway to polygamy. The text of the bill recites that a man is allowed to take as many women as he can support. No reference is made to a prior agreement with the first wife, if there has ever been one. This bill, who is to be signed by President Kenyatta to enter into force, has sparkled a great divisive debate in Kenya, which prided itself on a more gender equal constitution. Hopefully, lawmakers and women organizations in Tanzania will make sure that the new constitution results in a tangible advancement of women´s condition and will not suffer any future step-back as in Kenya.

More iconic farming images

One observant reader of the last blog post   reminded me that the man with the pitch-fork is probably a conscious or unconscious reference to the iconic painting American Gothic by Grant Wood.


Yes of course!! And that raises the issue why Eco-energy´s artist decided to exclude the woman... a thought I was struggling with before I realised the connection to this serious American couple.. Image-google "American Gothic" and you will find more artists using this iconic image to convey other messages. But they seem all to have the woman there, all except Eco Energy...

Funny pictures about farming

I have previously commented on the naive image-language of the Swedish company SEKAB, now Agro Eco Energy. which is displacing small-holders in Tanzania to create a sugar plantation.   See my blog in Swedish from 2009.

This is even more funny. It is supposed to illustrate inclusive growth and can be found on the now updated webpage of  EcoEnergy. The way I read this picture is that a Swedish farmer (with a typical Swedish red house, and a pitchfork) can easily become an African businessman...

see more on http://www.ecoenergy.co.tz/sustainability/social-development/inclusive-growth/

Landesque Capital book now published

Landesque Capital
The Historical Ecology of Enduring Landscape Modifications
Editors: N.Thomas Håkansson & Mats Widgren

Read some comments:

"This book, representing fresh work from several academic disciplines, on case studies from several continents, brings readers up to date with the current debates on the concept of 'landesque capital.' It shows convincingly how the features of an agrarian landscape — terraces, irrigation ditches, and so forth — are embedded both in social systems and in nature simultaneously. The book realizes the potential of historical ecology to illuminate both past and present, both locally and globally."

- J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University

" Landesque Capital is a delightful, diverse and invaluable book offering a detailed analysis of investment by rural people in their land to meet economic, cultural and spiritual needs. The book tests and demonstrates the value of the concept of landesque capital in theory and in practice, through case studies of landscape and agricultural history from Sweden to Solomon Islands, via Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is scholarship of a high order: theoretically sharp, empirically deep and highly relevant in a world searching for sustainability. "

- W. M. Adams, University of Cambridge

"Håkansson and Widgren consider well landesque capital, an underused concept critical for scholars studying the political economy and ecology of traditional societies. They show how an approach deriving broadly from landesque capital is vital to issues of sustainability and control."

- Dr. Timothy Earle, Northwestern University 

More at Left Coast Press

'Balancing Ecosystem Services and Disservices: Smallholder Farmers’ Use and Management of Forest and Trees in an Agricultural Landscape in Southwestern Ethiopia'

Below is an abstract of our: Tola Gemechu Ango, Lowe Börjeson, Feyera Senbeta and Kristoffer Hylander, recent paper in 'Ecology and Society'.


Abstract

Farmers’ practices in the management of agricultural landscapes influence biodiversity with implications for livelihoods, ecosystem service provision, and biodiversity conservation. In this study, we examined how smallholding farmers in an agriculture-forest mosaic landscape in southwestern Ethiopia manage trees and forests with regard to a few selected ecosystem services and disservices that they highlighted as “beneficial” or “problematic.” Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from six villages, located both near and far from forest, using participatory field mapping and semistructured interviews, tree species inventory, focus group discussions, and observation. The study showed that farmers’ management practices, i.e., the planting of trees on field boundaries amid their removal from inside arable fields, preservation of trees in semimanaged forest coffee, maintenance of patches of shade coffee fields in the agricultural landscape, and establishment of woodlots with exotic trees result in a restructuring of the forest-agriculture mosaic. In addition, the strategies farmers employed to mitigate crop damage by wild mammals such as baboons and bush pigs, e.g., migration and allocation of migrants on lands along forests, have contributed to a reduction in forest and tree cover in the agricultural landscape. Because farmers’ management practices were overall geared toward mitigating the negative impact of disservices and to augment positive services, we conclude that it is important to operationalize ecosystem processes as both services and disservices in studies related to agricultural landscapes.


Full text can be freely retrieved from:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06279-190130