Paper short abstract:

This paper examines key narratives of environmental change in Africa in relation to the Pare Mountains in Tanzania, and then explores the usefulness both of identifying similar narratives about climate change and of conceptualising it in terms of multiple simultaneous processes.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1990s a powerful critique of environmental crisis narratives and their influence on environmental policies in Africa emerged. Anthropologists in particular challenged received wisdom on deforestation, desertification and degradation by not only demonstrating that, on close investigation, many of the most alarming statistics and accounts used in producing crisis narratives were misleading, but also by exposing how vital such crisis narratives were for justifying colonial and post-colonial conservation interventions. But there are several additional narratives about landscape change in Africa: narratives of improvements brought about by colonial and post-colonial intervention and opposing narratives of the disastrous environmental consequences of such interventions. On the basis of repeat photography, and ethnographic and archival research, this paper explores 'actual' environmental change in the South Pare Mountains of Northeastern Tanzania, arguing that not any one of the dominant narratives applies here, but rather that a multiplicity of simultaneous processes mean that all different narratives can be and are told about the same area. It then goes on to examine what the anthropology of climate change can learn from this, firstly with regard to identifying similar crisis and other narratives, and secondly with regard to conceptualising global climate change, too, in terms of multiple simultaneous processes.