Title:	Rural Resources & Local Livelihoods in Africa
Authors:	Katherine Homewood
Keywords:	Rural Resources
Issue Date:	2005
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	Sub-Saharan African populations seem especially vulnerable to drought, famine and disease. Many parts of Africa have high mortality rates, high fertility, widespread poverty and precarious food security (Downing, 1996; Rosenzweig and Parry, 1994). To many outside observers, African environments seem a central factor in people's vulnerability, a major stumbling block to development. At the same time, African rangelands and forests arc a magnet for biologists and ecologists. Some of these ecosystems are spectacular for their biodiversity; others arc commonly seen as overexploited and as spiralling into terminal collapse. Sub-Saharan African rangelands and forests have been a playground for western interventions, and something of a bottomless pit for donor funding on both environment and development. Many if not most of those initiatives have had poor outcomes. That suggests there is something seriously wrong with western understanding of African environments, of the part they play in people's vulnerability, of the ways that people deal with them and of the impacts those strategies entail. This book seeks to analyse and clarify interactions of environment, land use, livelihoods, and natural resource management in African forests and savannas. It aims to develop a better understanding, an approach and a methodology, which in turn will give insights into people's natural resource use strategies, will inform policy and management, and ultimately contribute to more secure livelihoods and welfare for local rural African populations. Too many interventions have subsequently been found to have brought about more harm than good, through lack of awareness of dimensions beyond the experience of those involved. The central aim of this book is to bring home to researchers, policymakers and practitioners the breadth and complexity of issues in rural resources and livelihoods. It sets out to use in-depth case studies, detailed examples linked by analytical overviews, to trigger awareness of the potential of cross-disciplinary approaches to real life environment and development issues in rural sub-Saharan Africa.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/57381
ISBN:	978-1-137-06615-2
Appears in Collections:	Rural Development Studies

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