Abstract
Carbon policy is a fascinating topic in geography and political ecology, because carbon is a new exchangeable good, which links the local to the international arenas through a complex set of instruments, norms, and institutions. In this paper, after explaining my theoretical and conceptual framework rooted in Africanist geography and currents of political ecology, I analyze the responses of local actors (knowledge, practices, logic, and strategies) to environmental policies and consider the effects of new mechanisms, upon local dynamics in Africa. I focus my attention on the impacts of mangrove reforestation policies on women, who harvest shellfish. My research, conducted over 35 years on coastal mangroves in Africa and Madagascar, provides me with examples. Through a long-term approach to the perception of mangroves and the changing modes of policies, I highlight the weight of imperialism and neo-liberalism and analyze types of environmental injustice against mangrove harvesters, particularly the women, who are the most directly concerned by the preservation of their heritage and are rarely recognized as stakeholders in environmental policies that are defined internationally and implemented at national and local levels. They are not informed (or are deliberately kept unware) of new devices such as REDD+. They have lost their rights of access to the reforested mangrove areas. Carbon policy requires comparative and empirical research, giving voice to local actors, especially women, about their perceptions of policies and actions. The approaches in terms of political ecology must be combined with analysis of the bio-ecological and socio-cultural dynamics of the mangrove.
Highlights
West African mangroves are found discontinuously from Senegal to the Niger Delta and represent about 20% of the world mangrove cover, totaling some 15,000 km2 [1]
After explaining my theoretical and conceptual framework rooted in Africanist geography and currents of political ecology, I analyze the responses of local actors to environmental policies and consider the effects of new mechanisms, upon local dynamics in Africa
Through a long-term approach to the perception of mangroves and the changing modes of policies, I highlight the weight of imperialism and neo-liberalism and analyze types of environmental injustice against mangrove harvesters, the women, who are the most directly concerned by the preservation of their heritage and are rarely recognized as stakeholders in environmental policies that are defined internationally and implemented at national and local levels
Summary
West African mangroves are found discontinuously from Senegal to the Niger Delta and represent about 20% of the world mangrove cover, totaling some 15,000 km2 [1] They belong to the western Atlantic bio geographical region, which counts eight species of trees [2,3]. In the past 10 years, carbon policies, in Africa, have been the subject of more and more studies, examining their efficiency as an instrument to mitigate climate change, and denouncing the risks of land/green grabbing and environmental injustice [14,15,16,17,18] These critiques have led, in particular, to changes in the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) mechanism by adding “+” in order to better take into account social safeguards [19]. Launched in 2006 in the Casamance estuary, and in 2008 in the Saloum Delta, it is based on a partnership between a Senegalese NGO, Oceanium and a set of public and private—the FFEM, Carbon Livelihoods Venture Fund and private companies (Danone, Yves Rocher) [9]
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