Concern about desiccation – the effects of deforestation on climate
and soils – was an early and pervasive theme in colonial science, present at the
onset of West Africa's colonial era and with roots in previous centuries.
As a set of scientists' ideas linked to soil and forest conservation policy, the
impact of desiccationism was initially muted, struggling unsuccessfully in
nascent administrations with more pressing political and administrative
agendas. But by the end of the colonial period it can be argued that anxiety
about desiccation had become a cornerstone of development practice and
state penetration. This article uses a case study to consider the transformation
of the status of the ‘science’ of desiccation within colonial development
agendas, the responses this transformation eventually provoked and its
enduring legacy.
Our reflections here complement what has, in West African studies,
become a general consensus about shifts in colonial forest policy. From the
outset, many colonial administrations – both francophone and anglophone –
were concerned both about the effects of forest loss on climate, hydrology
and soils, and about the effects of ‘irrational and wasteful’ exploitation of
forest as an economic resource. But early policy imperatives to establish
reserves either failed to reach the implementation stage or could not be
implemented due to the resistance they engendered, both from populations
and indeed from agricultural or political administrations. A significant phase
of reservation, at least in West Africa's humid forest and transition zones,
began only in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and was pursued until the mid
1950s by colonial states which increasingly gained the strength to impose
unpopular policy despite resistance. From this perspective, and given that
nationalist sentiments in pre-independence struggles were often pitted
against repressive colonial forest services, it could be hypothesized that
independence would bring regimes more responsive to local concerns and
more likely to heed resistance. Yet such a view, focusing simply on state
capacity in changing political contexts, overlooks qualitative changes in the
configuration of science-policy relationships within the state, a
reconfiguration that it is necessary to grasp if we are to understand how post-colonial forest policy was less a rupture than a continuation or, indeed,
reinforcement.