From livelihoods to lifeways: Reflections on conservation justice from West Africa's Upper Guinean forests and beyond
Abstract
Forests and the people who live in and with them are under the global scientific, policy and popular spotlight as never before. Forest-human interactions, often framed as disturbance of natural forest, are blamed for climate change, biodiversity loss and related planetary predicaments, whilst also celebrated for contributing to solutions. The importance of engaging local communities and indigenous people with forest conservation and management efforts is now well recognised, and approaches that emphasise local livelihoods and related equity and governance concerns are now commonplace. Yet do they go far enough to promote conservation that is not only effective but also socially just? Drawing on several decades of ethnographic and historical-ecological research in the Upper Guinea forest zone of West Africa, and more briefly on perspectives from North America and the UK, I will lay out a ‘lifeways’ approach that more fully recognises diverse ways of being and knowing in ‘more than human’ forest worlds, and the ways that past events – including conservation interventions – leave layered legacies in landscapes, shaping forest composition and claims in the present and hopes for the future. Lifeways highlight additional dimensions of equity that are missing or underplayed in livelihoods-focused approaches, paving the way for a fuller, multi-dimensional notion of conservation justice with important practical and political implications.
Biography
Melissa Leach is currently Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge and Executive Director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI). She was Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. She brings 35 years of ethnographic research experience in West Africa where she has worked extensively with natural scientists and practitioners on forests, soils and biodiversity, with particular commitments to bringing local communities’ knowledge and perspectives into science-policy processes and practical conservation and restoration approaches. Relevant book publications include Rainforest Relations: Gender and Resource Use among the Mende of Gola, Sierra Leone; Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice, and with James Fairhead, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-savanna Mosaic; Reframing Deforestation: Global Analysis and Local Realities; Science, Society and Power: Environmental Knowledge and Policy in West Africa and the Caribbean; Green Grabbing: A New Appropriation of Nature, and (in press) Naturekind: Language, Culture and Power Beyond the Human.
PHOTO CREDIT: ‘Gola Rainforest National Park. Photo: Marten Voors’.
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.
Date:
14 February 2025, 16:15
Venue:
Dyson Perrins Building, off South Parks Road OX1 3QY
Venue Details:
Main lecture theatre
Speaker:
Melissa Leach (CCI)
Organising department:
Environmental Change Institute
Organisers:
Carlyn Samuel (University of Oxford),
Jane Applegarth (University of Oxford, Oxford University Centre for the Environment)
Host:
Professor Yadvinder Malhi (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and the Biodiversity Network seminar series
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://oxfordbiodiversitynetwork.bookwhen.com/
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Carlyn Samuel
