Our first article² uses the lens of introduced plants to approach the subject – for one aspect of the conservationist critique of smallholder farming landscapes is that they dilute native biodiversity and serve as conduits for threatening invasive species.  We argue that the arrival of alien plants in these ever-changing landscapes can contribute to people’s adaptation to social and environmental changes, to a diversification of livelihoods and habitats, to avoided deforestation, to biodiversity conservation, and finally to sustainability.  We do so using a simple analytical framework centered around productivity (are these landscapes sustainable and resilient sources of products useful to subsistence and economic activities, locally and beyond?), community (do they contribute to the vibrancy, social justice, and resilience of culturally rich rural communities?), and environment (are they resilient contributors of ecosystem services, aiding or at least not damaging biodiversity conservation, water resources, and soil fertility?).  These criteria are applied to case studies describing the rubber gardeners of Indonesia, the cacao farmers of Cameroon, and the rice and eucalyptus smallholders of Madagascar.

We suggest that certain smallholding tropical farm landscapes be called “melting pots”, for they mix native and alien species and are jointly built by farmers and by natural processes.  They blur boundaries between human and natural, native and alien, production and conservation.  We chose this term in direct reference to the hotspot approach to conservation, which was not built to cope with a world dominated by anthropogenic spaces where people introduce species and build a different kind of biodiversity.  The melting-pot concept promotes a focus on hybrid biological and social processes, on the novel ecosystems³ that can result, rather than emphasizing distinctions between people and nature, or between aliens and natives.  Hot spots and melting pots are complementary, but not enough recognition, attention, and promotion goes to the latter.  Focusing conservation and development efforts on encouraging and protecting melting pot landscapes is, for us, the missing link in the paradigms of conservation and sustainable development.

In the second article⁴, we critique the standardization of biodiversity approaches and associated marginalization of agroecosystems as habitat and matrix for biodiversity.  They are marginalized because standardized assessments—by their very design—find more value in “wild” areas, with, for example, larger numbers of endemic species.  Echoing some of the arguments of the other article, we remind readers of the mounting evidence of the importance of such anthropogenic landscapes to broader ‘land-sharing’ conservation approaches.

These collaborations arise out of a small workshop I convened nearly four years ago – with money from the French embassy in Australia – on the theme of introduced Australian trees in highland Madagascar.  What a long way we’ve come!

¹  Michon, G (2005) Domesticating Forests:  How Farmers Manage Forest Resources. Bogor Barat: CIFOR, ICRAF, and IRD.

²  Kull, CA, SM Carriere, S Moreau, H Rakoto Ramiarantsoa, C Blanc-Pamard & J Tassin (2013) Melting pots of biodiversity: tropical smallholder farm landscapes as guarantors of sustainability. Environment 55 (2) 6-16.

³  Hobbs, R et al. (2013)  Novel Ecosystems.  Wiley.

⁴  Carrière, SM, E Rodary, P Méral, G Serpantié, V Boisvert, CA Kull, G Lestrelin, L Lhoutellier, B Moizo, G Smektala & J-C Vandevelde (2013) Rio+20, biodiversity marginalized. Conservation Letters 6 (1):6-11. author version pdf   official link

While social scientists have described how international conservation has sometimes ignored local knowledge, disrupted already fragile livelihoods, or even dispossessed local people, not as much attention has been paid to the place of the national government in this.  In a new book, geographer Hervé Rakoto Ramiarantsoa and colleagues point out (among other things), how ‘ecopower’ is today largely in the hands of international actors (bilateral and multilateral donors, large environmental NGOs, mining corporations), pushing out the weak and troubled Malagasy state to a secondary, subservient, but omnipresent role.

The edited volume* printed on ultrathin paper comes out of two mini-conferences sponsored by the French international development research agency (IRD), one at the Université d’Orléans in 2009 (link), and the other at the Université d’Antananarivo in 2010 (link1, link2, pictures below) .  The chapters cover diverse terrain; here are some of the main themes that caught my eye.

The Introduction (Chantal Blanc-Pamard, Florence Pinton, Hervé Rakoto Ramiarantsoa) highlights the role of international environmental agencies and organizations in globalizing the ‘nature’ of places like Madagascar, and in doing so sacrificing rural livelihoods.  They introduce a geopolitical approach based on a trio of interrelated concepts:  norms, actors, and territories.

Chapter 1, by Stéphanie Carrière and Cécile Bidaud, presents a good critique of how the environment – and how we think about it, categorize it, label it – is constructed by conservation scientists, and is always political.  They investigate concepts such as ‘wilderness’, ‘primary forest’, and ‘corridors’ and how they shape certain types of thinking, certain kinds of interventions.  (In her conference presentations, Carrière showed with particular alacrity how the new buzzword of ‘conservation corridors’ was too readily latched onto in Madagascar, largely because it geographically fit the elongated form of the remnant forests, rather than due to any ecological processes.)  In effect, Carrière and Bidaud show how a certain kind of conservation thinking, largely of an ‘anglo-saxon’ origin and centered in biocentric fetishism of ‘naturality’ at the expense of human-shaped agroecological landscapes, has replaced an earlier, colonial, French hegemony (demonstrated in part through the analysis of authors in the benchmark book Natural History of Madagascar edited by Goodman and Benstead, or through the conflicts they witnessed between francophone and anglophone epistemological communities involved in the Durban Vision group tasked with expanding the protected areas network after 2003).  Interestingly, they assert that the choice of conservation tools (corridors, protected areas) isn’t made on the basis of universal scientific knowledge, but instead lots on a strong political will to create protected areas to respond to the expectations of the international community.

Chapter 2, by Philippe Méral, takes an ‘international political economy’ approach to analyzing bilateral and multilateral aid politics.  His thesis is that Malagasy environmental policy cannot be understood without taking into account outside influences.  He documents the 1990s boom in African environmental action plans, and the way in which American funding very much focused on the environment while the French not.  His chapter reviews the evolution of Madagascar’s National Environmental Action Plan from integrated conservation and development in phase 1, towards community-based approaches in phase 2, and back towards the Durban vision and a top down approach in phase 3, and the reasons for these swings.  He argues that the current promotion of REDD and other payments for environmental services is the result of globalization of environmental issues and the displacement of the centre of gravity for decisions on these matters outside of Madagascar.

Chapter 3, by Ramarolanty Ratiaray and Saholy Rambinintsaotra, both law professors at the University of Antananarivo, is a useful review of history, policy, and current situation of land tenure in Madagascar.  They then apply these ideas to questions of customary rights, protected areas, and land grabs for industrial agriculture (e.g. the Daewoo deal in 2008).  They argue that the new 2005 land tenure act is quite important, but not really in practice yet.  They trace the consequences of its shift in presuming land to be in the public domain to a presumption of private domain.  They critique the way the central government overrode the regional/communal land tenure offices in giving away land, and promote a principle of free, prior informed consent in things like protected areas and land delimitation.

My Chapter 4 (pdf 3Mb), the fourth one, reviews the contributions of (largely Anglophone) political ecology research to investigating Madagascar’s “environmental question”.  I review four main themes in the research:  analyses of conflicts over natural resources, the analysis of dominant environmental discourses, multi-causal investigations of environmental change, and analyses of environmental institutions and actors.  I make several suggestions for lacunae in the political ecology research agenda, all of which are now somewhat dated.  These include attention to environmental questions not necessarily linked to forests and parks, like extractive industries and urban pollution; attention to the role of the Malagasy state; and attention to the important role of international capital flows, whether investments, extraction, or linked to payments for environmental servces like REDD.

Chapter 5, is by the agronomist and modeller Dominique Hérvé.  He discusses a number of different kinds of dynamic environmental models that he sees as policy tools – such as those dealing with forest cover, with institutional control, or with rural household economics.

Chapter 6, by Bruno Ramamonjisoa of the University of Antananarivo’s forestry school (ESSA-Forêts), carefully reviews several theories (or analytical frameworks) for analyzing governance, and then applies them to Madagascar, showing how environmental governance has gotten much more complex.  There used to be three main actors – the state and its services, large agribusiness and forestry actors, and rural communities.  Now there are more – the political state, technocratic state, NGOs, donors, villages, economic actors…  He reviews some of the institutions and committees that governed decision making during the 1990-2009 era of the Environmental Action Plan, and their power and composition.  He asserts that the strategy of going around the state began with this Plan.  Those who have the money – like foreign donors or commercial operators – are in the end the ones that have the decision making power, whether through formal or informal channels.

Chapter 7, by Estienne Rodary, shifts our regard from the usual Euro- or American- centric one, and reviews the relationship of Madagascar with South Africa.  It contains a very useful summary and perceptive analysis.  Despite intentions on both sides to build links, South Africa’s view has always been terrestrial, towards the countries which are accessible to it by land.  And Madagascar has always had the strong French presence (and others, i.e. American in conservation, Chinese in imports) that prove too strong competition for the South Africans.

Chapter 8, by Aimé Lala Razafinjara, member of the Academie Malgache and Directeur Général of FOFIFA, reviews the state of government-led rural development and agricultural research on the island.  He shows how agencies like FOFIFA struggle to research topics and methods of interest to them, as they have very little recurring budget of their own.  Their research agendas are strongly shaped by the funding of by international ‘partners’ on current themes of interest to the partners (he reviews a smattering of recent trends, like carbon, no-till agriculture, biocontrol or industrial insecticides for locusts, biofuels).

Chapter 9, is by Jean Roger Rakotoarijaona, who co-leads the national technical committee for REDD and led the preparation of Madagascar’s Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PP).  He presents a historical and sharply critical review of Madagascar’s environmental politics of the past few decades.  Then he introduces the ‘REDD’ tool for financing environmental management, arguing that it has potential as it is more results-based than the flawed previous programs and strategies (because payment comes only upon reaching success).  His chapter reviews the status of REDD in Madagascar and asks good questions about the risks uncertainties of a REDD approach.

The Conclusion (Hervé Rakoto Ramiarantsoa, Chantal Blanc-Pamard, Florence Pinton, and Samuel Razanaka) usefully ties together the diverse contributions.  It contains the material cited in my introduction about ecopower and the diminished role of the state.  They further point out (p. 277) that the state is present across the categories of ‘customers’, ‘actors’, and ‘owners’ of environmental actions, but is never the primary beneficiary, operator, or director.

* Rakoto Ramiarantsoa, H., C. Blanc-Pamard, and F. Pinton, (eds.) Géopolitique et environnement. Les leçons de l’expérience malgache, Collection Objectifs Suds. Marseille: éditions de l’IRD, 2012.  (publisher’s website, Amazon, Fnac)

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, an entirely different story is developing.  On 2 November, there was a small seminar and dinner in Hanoi celebrating the contributions of Australian and Vietnamese scientists to the forestry sector, primarily through the promotion of Australian acacia species.  The Vietnamese Government awarded medals to Sadanandan Nambiar, Chris Harwood, Khongsak Pinyopusarerk, Rod Griffin and Stephen Midgley for “contributions to Vietnam’s forest development.”  Australian acacias are now a common part of Vietnam’s rural landscape, rehabilitating denuded landscapes, and providing wood for industry and fuel.  Australian aid (via CSIRO, AusAID, and ACIAR) played a role in supporting such initiatives since 1987, working together with Vietnamese partners like the Research Centre of Forest Tree Improvement and the Forest Science Institute of Vietnam.

According to Stephen Midgley, there are now about 900,000 ha of Australian acacia plantations in Vietnam (about the same area as the Californian Pinus radiata in Australia).  Just last year, an estimated 120 000 ha of acacias were planted in Vietnam – some 70% by smallholders.  Acacias have been used as nurse crops to rehabilitate native forest areas; examples include the protection forests of Hai Van Pass and the Perfumed River catchment behind Hue.  Acacias are now a valuable commercial asset, as hardwood woodchips and as furniture wood.  Product value exceeded US$1.5 billion in 2011, with some US$400 million returning directly to the pockets of the growers, leading to improvement to livelihoods among acacia-growing communities.

An ecologist may look at this situation and worry that the acacias in Vietnam are going to ‘explode’ in the future, becoming problematic pests or replacing ‘natural’ forest.  That is, they will become too successful for their own good.  Indeed, apparently the weediness of acacias will be addressed to some extent at the upcoming IUFRO acacia sylviculture working party meeting in Vietnam.  Chris Harwood, of Australia’s research agency CSIRO, wrote to me:

“One my just-completed trip to Vietnam I had a careful look (as I always do) in the farming landscapes of northern, central and southern Vietnam for signs of acacias spreading as weeds.  There are no such signs.  All the farming land is too intensively cultivated (Vietnam has a land area of 33m ha and a population of 87m), and  all the acacias in the landscape are planted rather than naturally regenerated, except for very occasional patches of vacant ground which may have a few ‘volunteer’ acacia seedlings but which will soon go under cultivation.  Quite large areas formerly under acacia plantations in southern Vietnam have been converted to rubber plantations during the last 5 years, with no evident difficulty.  In the north, tea is successfully grown under Acacia mangium.  The only caveat regarding weediness in Vietnam is that care must be taken when planting adjacent to native ecosystems to ensure that acacias  do not spread into them.  But this is a manageable potential problem and is just not an issue for the vast majority of acacia plantations that do not abut natural ecosystems.”

In addition to ecological questions about invasion potential, social scientists may ask about how access to land and other rural power relations are altered by such forestry development.  Indeed they have already (link).  But the point here might be that shouting from diametrically opposed ideological camps is probably not the best way to move forward.  In this case, there is a will to plant acacias (what combination of government diktat and social consensus I don’t know) and they are already deeply incorporated into the physical and socio-economic landscape.  In addition to shaping the already very anthropogenic landscape by farming rice, other crops, and tree crops like rubber (over 1 milliion ha), the Vietnamese are farming acacias.  The question then, instead of “go acacia go” or “doom is coming”, is how farmers, foresters, villager leaders, government agents, and scientists might each in their own way address the questions of the future of Vietnam’s regional landscapes – what values are important, what are the options, what are the constraints and potential problems, what does the evidence show.  It is this kind of measured approach Jacques Tassin and I tried to make in our response to Tim Low.

*   *   *

Ps.   In case you are wondering why the blog’s title, the “Third Wattle War”?  Yes, it is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m building on what historian Libby Robin has already referred to as the Wattle Wars or Battles for Acacia.  The First Wattle War was a diplomatic spat between South Africa and Australia over the use of acacia flowers as a national symbol one hundred years ago (see Carruthers et al. 2011).  The Second Wattle War was the highly contested debate that took place over the last decade on whether Africa or Australia would keep the botanic name Acacia for its native trees (see several earlier blogs, and Kull & Rangan 2012).

But things are never as simple as that.  There are plenty of other voices.  Indeed, the inspiration for Kahn’s interview was a conference beginning tomorrow at the Université d’Orléans, entitled “Géographie, écologie, politique : un climat de changement” (conference website here).  The conference organisers Denis Chartier and Estienne Rodary (both editors of the journal Écologie et Politique) position the event directly as a challenge to, or questioning of, the apolitical and skeptical approaches above.  This parallels a flourishing of interest in France in the anglophone tradition of “political ecology” as a research approach.  In 2009, for example, a number of key figures in the discipline (Tom Bassett, Nancy Peluso, Paul Robbins, Tor Benjaminsen) were invited to spend a month workshopping with interested French researchers (see link, photo below).

That event was emblematic of an increasing traffic of influence between anglophone and francophone geography, though currently the traffic is largely one-way (French human geographers reading the Anglophone literature and feeling more and more pressure to publish in international – hence Anglophone – journals) .  Anglophone human geography tends to only read (and fetishize) French theorists like Rancière, Lacan, Lefevre, Foucault.  Then again if the above accusations by my colleagues about mainstream French geography are true, this might be understandable!   In any case reading scholarly work in different languages is not easy, and I do not envy anyone who has to work outside their language(s) of comfort.  Juliet Fall, who is an excellent bridge-builder between French language and English language geography, makes a good point in her latest article.  She says it is “unrealistic and somewhat self-serving to suggest that everyone should read widely in other languages. Instead of making this a requirement for all… perhaps individuals who read other languages have a responsibility for sharing the debates they encounter, and concurrently, and most importantly, others have a responsibility for publishing and making such diverse voices available.”  So, in my contribution at the conference tomorrow, co-written with Simon Batterbury, I will point out (to the French audience) two key moments when Anglophone geography injured its otherwise strong society-environment tradition – once around 1970, when the quantitative revolution and human-physical divisions meant the discipline was largely absent from the development of “environmental studies” (Michael Watts comments on this moment in this interview), and second in the 1990-2000s with some of the excesses of the nature-culture debates and deconstructionism (mea culpa too).  Perhaps, this will inspire.  And, in turn, this blog translates certain elements of the French debate back to an Anglophone audience.

Political ecology arrives in France

Picture 1: Do plants need passports? Who should control plant movements, and on what basis? Silver wattle (Acacia dealbata), native to Australia, invasive and assimilated as mimosa in the Côte d’Azur, France.

Picture 2: Do Australian acacias need passports? Australian passports specify “free passage without let or hindrance”…

The view of many workshop participants was that Australian acacias (i.e., wattles) were water-hungry, ecosystem-changing aliens requiring control.  This comes not only from their field experience in places like the Western Cape, Portugal, Chile, or diverse oceanic islands, but also because most participants were trained in ecology and invasion biology.  Metaphorically, the message of much invasion biology has long been that plants need passports, and that many should be denied immigration visas and those already present should be deported or at least kept under house arrest.

Picture 3: Acacia dealbata in Valparaiso, Chile

Picture 4: Stellenbosch acacia workshop participants on fieldtrip, in suburban field cleared of Acacia saligna

This view was also influenced by the fact that many participants came from South Africa – a country strongly attuned to issues of invasion – and particularly from the Cape Town area, where wattles are prominent colonizers of grassland and fynbos shrubland environments containing a prized local flora.  The tone of the meeting might have been different had the workshop taken place in southeast Asia, a place where farmers and foresters widely use wattles such as Acacia mangium, and where a chief environmental concern is over plantations replacing natural forest, not over invasion.  After the conference, one disgruntled invitee even formally urged organizers to consider a future fieldtrip to Vietnam for a different perspective:

“From my recent interactions with many of the stakeholders in the recent Acacia workshop held at Stellenbosch, I suspect that the widespread social/environmental/commercial use of acacia may be rather abstract to people who have spent their lives in landscapes where they are regarded as unwanted weeds.  The reality in SE Asia is that populations are rising and there is a concomitant increase in the demand for wood and wood fibre. It is highly unlikely that native forests will be able to meet these needs and plantations will become the dominant source of wood and will remain an important and productive part of the landscape.  I shared my thoughts with my Vietnamese partners who were puzzled at some of the very negative opinions on acacias….”

Picture 5: Acacia dealbata (‘mimosa’, ‘silver wattle’) in the southern highlands of Madagascar

Yet the clairvoyant conference organizer Dave Richardson (see his overview paper) had also invited historians, geographers, agroforesters, and others who provided a different perspective.  For instance, Rod Griffin outlined the commercial uses of Australian acacias overseas (link), Jane Carruthers and Libby Robin described the historical contexts and ideologies around wattle introductions (link), and I reviewed the uses and perceptions of wattles by rural households and communities around the world (link).

Picture 6: Tim Low, Brian van Wilgen, and John Wilson on field visit during Stellenbosch acacia workshop, 2010

Picture 7: Dave Richardson during Stellenbosch workshop

Richardson also encouraged the production of several multi-authored papers for a special issue of the journal Diversity and Distributions.  The process of writing these papers was interesting and illuminative of the compromises necessary in collaborative science.  In my paper on community acacia uses, I had several exchanges with co-authors who wanted a stronger emphasis on the damaging aspects of invasions (which I asserted was amply covered elsewhere) and the need for more public awareness about this (which is hard to disagree with, but who chooses what the message is?).  I was also associated with a paper about acacia control and eradication, which made me somewhat uncomfortable.  However, lead author John Wilson, who invited my contributions, was very accommodating to my concerns that the paper tended to be heavy-handed in its presumptions of introduced acacias as ‘guilty-as-charged’, therefore recommending control and/or and eradication.  The result is that the crucial wording, like in IPCC reports, is very much worked over.  While I still do not agree with everything, I respect it as a good negotiated outcome (link).

Picture 8: Acacia mearnsii (black wattle) streetside in Nairobi, Kenya

Less in the spirit of dialogue and negotiation was the keynote speech by Tim Low, author of Feral Future and The New Nature.  Low implied that invasion biologist are the unchallenged, all-knowing authority and proposed a categorical end to the movement of acacias.  No more passports, no more visas, for these very useful trees.  He framed the debate as one between ‘bad invaders’ and ‘good miracle trees’, and painted perceptions of the tree as the latter (by development workers and agro-foresters) as absolutely misguided.

I was incensed enough to prepare a reply to the published article version of Low’s speech, proposing an alternative to his blanket condemnation of plant transfers, emphasizing the importance of the regional socio-ecological context, taxon specificity, and participatory political process (official link to my article; author version pdf).  I was heartened that the journal (Biological Invasions) allowed this response, despite a sometimes rather partisan editorial attitude.  Together with Jacques Tassin, I argued that it was false of Low to frame things so starkly between ‘good’ and ‘bad’.   We wrote that “the uncritical promotion of an alarmist view of introduced plants misses a chance to see introduced plants as important elements of dynamic human-shaped landscapes, important elements that may achieve various utilitarian aims and also may provoke ecological change, and whose place in those landscapes may be viewed differently from different social and temporal vantage points….  Instead of using an a priori judgement to call for a blanket ban of a wide array of plant species, the focus should be on the processes that societies (communities, governments, agencies) use to anticipate and debate the changes to landscapes and human lives that are possible outcomes of the introduction and diffusion of specific plants in specific places.  Who are the winners and losers, now and in the foreseeable future?  What tradeoffs can be expected?  Who has the right to decide, and the might to enforce?  What is the evidence that can inform these decisions?  Human societies are usually well equipped to deal with such decisions, even in polarized debates in which compromise appears intractable.  That is what the political arena is for.”  It is a rather geographical view, seen through the lens of political ecology.

Picture 9: Acacia mearnsii (black wattle) on upland slopes of Reunion Island

At a wider level, my debate with Low is but a small contribution to a wider shift in thinking about biological invasions.  The science of invasion biology has been evolving rapidly in the past decade to accommodate internal and external critiques.  Mark Davis, in a textbook titled Invasion Biology, proposes the disestablishment of that field, and its reconstitution as “species redistribution ecology”.  Numerous social scientists and humanities scholars have dissected problems of labels, ideologies, and even nationalistic xenophobia in discussions of “alien invaders” (see also the Million Trees blog).  From what I can tell, the discussion at the cutting edge of the field is evolving, with spirited debates in Science and Nature, and a variety of reflective new books like Emma Marris’ Rambunctions Garden or Brendon Larson’s Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability).  This does not mean that concern with problem plants is lessened, but that the link between ‘alien’ and ‘pest’ is no longer automatic, and the fetishism of ‘native’ is seen as a social preference, not a scientific fact.

Picture 10: Acacia mearnsii (black wattle) at Pillar Rocks tourist site, Palni Hills, Tamil Nadu, south India

One interesting part of the evolution of invasion biology is recent research that shows that introduced plants are rather quickly becoming quite distinct from their overseas ancestors, moving towards speciation (in a biological sense) or acquiring native status or new roots (in a metaphorical, social sense).  There is genetic evidence for this, for example, in the ‘formerly Australian’ Acacia saligna in South Africa [links].  University of New South Wales biologist Angela Moles provides botanic evidence for such a pattern in a large variety of newcomers to Australia, which, as she elaborates in a wonderful TED talk, might imply that it is time to grant Australian citizenship to introduced species.

PIcture 11: Acacia dealbata (silver wattle) at home roadside in Gippsland, Australia

So, do plants need passports? [3]  And if so, who should have the authority to stand at the border and let plants in or not?  I advocate that we stop judging plants on their origins, allow the responsible diffusion of plants, and focus management efforts on problem plants and noxious weeds (as defined by local or regional social negotiation) irrespective of origin.  As Jacques Tassin and I wrote in our response to Tim Low, “as opposed to Low’s all-out ban, we suggest an evidence-based, context-specific, socially-negotiated approach.  Instead of advocating a ban on planting all Australian acacias, for example, we would suggest that people be forbidden to plant particular acacia species or cultivars in particular environments (like in fynbos riparian areas) ifthe political consensus across interest groups in that area is that the value of those acacias (as a resource, or as an ecological restoration tool) is less than the potential damage now and in the future to aesthetics, flora, fauna, and other resources like water.”

Picture 12: Acacia mearnsii (black wattle) in South Africa, near the Swazi border

The “Global South” is a geographic euphemism that distracts from the real criteria and processes (economic, political, historical) that merit inclusion in the group of countries (and in-country regions) that are typically poorer or less developed (by economic and social measures like GDP, life expectancy) and typically have some sort of a colonial past.

Instead of implying, as its users must intend, a fuzziness and fudging of strict divisions, the adjective “global” to me has an opposite impact, implying a planetary scale division of hemispheres.  Yet dividing the planet at the Equator excludes from the “global south” a raft of poor places where folks shiver through winter in January, not July.  The French have luckily avoided the “global” adjective; their discussions of le développement in the countries of le sud makes some sense given that Paris lies far north of the former colonies to which this label is usually applied.

What, then, is the solution?  How about another geographic euphemism – “the tropics”.  This is a more representative label than “the south” – the tropics and subtropics capture more of the developing world than “the global south”.  Yet it too is an imperfect euphemism (Mongolia and Tajikistan are not tropical; Singapore is), and it opens a fetid can of worms of geographical determinism.

Perhaps we should stick to less euphemistic descriptions that are relevant to the socio-economic, political, geographical, or historical processes being evoked.  Useful, relevant, descriptive, straightforward terms like “poor” and “rich”, “industrialised”, “ACP” (for the really poor countries of Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific linked by the Cotonou convention) are effective enough and don’t insult one’s geographic conscience…

This shows that African environments, characterised by a long co-evolution of hominids with fires and vegetation, are more analogous to Madagascar, where humans were long absent, than typically admitted.  What kinds of inspiration can be found in African research?  For one, Sally Archibald and colleagues undertook a modelling study of the evolution of human-driven fire regimes in African savannas, published recently in the journal PNAS.  One of their results is that in open landscapes (which would have their equivalents in central and western Madagascar), the total area burnt was not very different whether lightning or humans were doing the burning.  What is radically different, however, is the season of burn – humans universally move fire into the dry season, as opposed to lightning strikes which are more of a wet season phenomenon (which doesn’t mean they don’t burn:  as I see here in Fiji, a week without rain is enough to allow grass to burn).

William Bond, in the Journal of Biogeography, uses botanic tools to argue that Madagascar’s grasslands are analogous to South African ones (and were present long before humans and their fires).  In his broader work, he investigates the evolution of C4 plants in grassy biomes and argues that grasslands are under-researched and poorly conserved (see Bond and Parr 2010).  For Madagascar, an ideological blinder that shapes how we ask questions about the fire-vegetation-human dynamics is the presumption that forest is more valuable, better, and more natural than grasslands – a topic I previously addressed in my book Isle of Fire.  An advantage for South African researchers like Archibald and Bond is an appreciation of savannas and grasslands as valuable and natural.   Perhaps this can be an inspiration for future studies in Madagascar.

Kull, C.A. & H. Rangan (2012)  Science, sentiment and territorial chauvinism in the acacia name change debate. 197-219 in S.G. Haberle & B.David (eds), Peopled Landscapes. Terra Australis 34.  Canberra: ANU E-Press. pdf