Knowledge Claims and Landscape: Alternative Views of the Fuelwood—Degradation Nexus in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

The existence of competing or contradictory orthodoxies in Nigerian forestry is a long recognised, if little explored research problem. Far from being the product of a monolithic culture, regional forestry, or, more inclusively agrosilvipastoral landscapes and fuelscapes, are social products which have been described as often construed in a plurality of ways and invested with diverse if not antithetical meanings by different individuals and social groups. They represent sites of contestation and cooperation for human agents and state agencies engaged in constructing, maintaining and modifying woodfuel and other forestry-related discourses. The author juxtaposes several such contests, their meanings, and the discourses of which they are a part. He does so with particular reference to perceived linkages between fuelwood use and production, on the one hand, and vegetation and degradation and other environmental change, on the other. The geographical focus is dryland Nigeria, in particular its regional forestry spaces and landscapes. In the conceptual framework empirical theorisation is combined with discourse and landscape analyses. The author concludes that the juxtaposition of forestry discourses, which he attempts, creates spaces for different landscape visions to be seen as virtual realities, which are shaped and sustained by social forces and (technologies of) representation.