INTRODUCTION:

The Development of Degradation

and Impoverishment

Exploring East Africa as a student last spring, I was overcome by the beauty and the vitality of the region. The East African countries of Kenya and Tanzania contain nearly 1500 species of birds and hundreds of species of mammals, and are renowned for some of the greatest concentrations of large, mammalian species in the world. Traveling through East Africa, I saw vast biodiversity of flora and fauna, ecosystems ranging from coastal rainforests to semi-arid deserts to alpine moorlands. I also witnessed the immense, rolling plains of savanna and acacia woodlands, which contain the Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti plains of Tanzania, internationally recognized as the cradle of hominid origins. A vast diversity of cultural groups ranging from pastoralists to intensive agriculturalists have lived in East Africa for thousands of years. My time in East Africa clearly impressed upon me the human and environmental richness that has historically thrived in the region.

Exploring East Africa as a student last spring, I was also overcome by the horrible impoverishment and degradation in the region. Soil erosion, wildlife poaching, desertification, deforestation, toxic dumping, industrial pollution, poisoning of coastal waters, and siltation of rivers have been adversely affecting East Africa throughout Kenya and Tanzania on a massive scale. In both urban and rural areas, I witnessed severe human degradation. As human populations continue to skyrocket in Kenya and Tanzania and the majority are denied adequate health care, education, housing, access to resources, and access to the empowerment of their own lives, the social and natural environment in urban and especially rural East Africa continues to worsen. Notwithstanding the "great human and natural resources [in the region], Africa is in crisis" (Veit et al., 1995: 2). The degradation of people and of the environment in Kenya and Tanzania exemplify this crisis situation.

The magnitude of this crisis in East Africa truly impressed upon me the importance of the complex geography of the region. The geography of the East Africa Region is a complex tapestry of social and ecological structures that includes within its weave the slum life and the foreign ownership of resources within the urban centers; the impoverishment and marginalization of rural communities; the agricultural expansion and settlement of an increasing human population; the urban migration of an increasing population of rural males; the ineffectiveness of conservation strategies designed by international organizations and elitist national governments; the gender domination of women that prevents them from owning property; the colonial and capitalist domination of East Africa throughout the last century of its history; and the increasing degradation of the environment throughout the region. None of these phenomena in Kenya and Tanzania are separate issues, but rather are part of a greater context of power dynamics, of people interacting with the environment on a number of levels, with a number of ideological frameworks and intentions. East Africa is in a state of human and environmental crisis today, and within the context of this degradation and impoverishment lies a sociohistorical framework of exploitation, "development," and domination that must be critically examined, revealed, and deconstructed.

I began to consider the complexity of the dynamic between human impoverishment and environmental degradation in East Africa by exploring conservation policies and sustainable development strategies in Kenya and Tanzania, during the 4 months I spent in the region. Land management, environmental protection, and sustainable development in East Africa have been significant forces in Kenya and Tanzania, especially because tourism (primarily eco-tourism) and the export of cash crops have been the main GNP earners for the country in the context of a global economy. This socioeconomic context is important because it reflects the political, economic, and social power that has been wielded in the East Africa Region historically by the British and by the U.S. In this sense, land management and conservation in East Africa are especially significant because they reveal a greater context of power dynamics that Kenya and Tanzania continue to be involved in at international, national, and local levels. Even as I focused on studying the efficacy and limitations of national parks, reserves, and community-based conservation areas in East Africa, it became clear that conservation exists as one thread within the context of a much larger weave of sociocultural interactions and issues of domination and exploitation in the East African geographical, socioeconomic, and political space.

Because Kenya and Tanzania are relatively resource-poor in terms of minerals, fossil fuels, and marine flora and fauna, they depend heavily upon the resources of the land for capital and for the economic and cultural survival of their people. Together, Kenya and Tanzania have about 15 per cent of the countries' space set aside for parks and game reserves, and much of the rest is dependent on intensive agricultural and grazing activities to maintain the livelihood of East African peoples. Within the context of this dynamic of land use and management, the history of colonial domination and of postcolonial, capitalist control of East Africa's resources have continued to significantly shape the interactions between people and the environment; this social and economic partitioning of the land, of the resources, and of the people, is part of an oppressive imperialist legacy of colonial and capitalist involvement in East Africa that continues to be directly responsible for the environmental degradation, the human impoverishment, and the underdevelopment of Kenya and Tanzania within the world economy.

Based on my studies of land management and sustainable development in East Africa, my experience of the East African geography on physical, socioeconomic, political, and cultural levels, and my subsequent, critical analysis of works dealing with and related to the subject, upon my return to America, it is the position of this thesis that the ecological and human crisis in East Africa is directly related to a continuing system of imperialist domination and control guided by development and conservation strategies that preserve the oppressive, dependency relationships between the "North" and "South" globally, between the elitist state and the people nationally, and between cultural groups and men and women locally. Through the course of this thesis I hope to demonstrate that the power dynamics that have fundamentally shaped the history and the geography of the East Africa Region have created and perpetuated the crisis situation of impoverishment and degradation in Kenya and Tanzania today; only by actively addressing this complex system of power dynamics and of systems of domination can truly liberating conservation and development efforts emerge in East Africa and worldwide.

Tracing the Dynamics of Domination and Degradation

The vast complexity of the issues being addressed in this thesis makes a completely linear presentation difficult. This is made even more challenging by the interaction between the dominant issues being considered in this study; we cannot separate the power dynamics of domination and imperialist control of East Africa from their historicity (or vice versa), the ideological systems of the "North" and "South" from socioeconomic, political, and historical considerations, and conservation strategies from the people involved in or marginalized from their implementation. To a certain extent, discussing the threads in the weave of East African geography individually and narrowly is not even desirable, because this type of focused discussion takes the issues of power, domination, resistance, degradation, impoverishment, conservation and development strategies, ideological systems, history, etc. out of a real, living context in which all of these issues actively affect each other. For this reason, this thesis has been structured to include both "traditional" and "nontraditional" approaches to the presentation of information. Although all of the chapters in this study will contain "traditional" and "nontraditional" elements (referring to an expository, linear, written approach for the former, and an exploratory, less linear, and graphic approach for the latter), the first 5 chapters will be primarily "traditional" in approach and the last 5 chapters will be more "nontraditional" in approach.

"Chapter 1: Research Methods," examines briefly the methods, research techniques, and experiences that combined to make this thesis possible. Based on my experiences in East Africa and on an extensive study and analysis of literary and academic works, this section considers the limitations of the methodology behind this thesis, and the consequences for the study itself. "Chapter 2: Literary Framework & Review," discusses the importance of the literary resources for shaping the direction and conclusions of this study, by considering the literary framework of this thesis based on their particular focuses as historical, ideological, sociopolitical, cultural, and theoretical texts. Because of the nature of this thesis, many of the texts focus on a number of issues, and this is considered in reviewing the texts. The importance of the texts in structuring particular sections and in shaping many of my conclusions, and the limitations of the literary framework, are also considered.

The historical context of East Africa is central to an understanding of the power dynamics inherent in conservation and development strategies in the region and the interconnection between the impoverishment and degradation of "the South" and the socioeconomic and political domination of "the North" within the context of these dynamics. All of the chapters address the historicity of domination, oppression, and resource management in Kenya and Tanzania to a certain extent. Chapters 3-5 focus on the historical context, presenting a linear, "traditional" account of conservation, sustainability, land management, and human interrelationships within the framework of the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras, to demonstrate ways in which the sociopolitical, ecological, and cultural geography of the East Africa Region have been profoundly affected by the interactions between people and the environment in each period. By considering the resource policies, the dominant ethical and ideological models, the conservation successes and failures, and factors such as human population densities, resource availability and accessibility in each era, this thesis is intended to reveal the development of power dynamics, forms of resource utilization, human interactions, and development strategies during the colonial and postcolonial periods that have proven increasingly destructive, degrading, and disempowering for East Africa's social and biological vitality.

Chapters 6 through the Conclusion reconsider the historical context of East African conservation, degradation, development, and impoverishment by approaching the issues from a "nontraditional" perspective of photographic images, objects, and events based in the modern, postcolonial period of "reality," combined with my experience of this reality last spring, followed by a tracing of these objects, events, and images to their sources in relation to Kenyan and Tanzanian history, power dynamics, and geography. The intention here is that a "commodity chain" of sorts will link moments from the present to the past, demonstrating the interacting and underlying forces at work that continue to tie together Third World poverty, underdevelopment, and degradation in East Africa to the wealth, overdevelopment, and increasing environmental crises in Europe and America. Chapter 6 proceeds from a consideration of the linkages that exist between domination and inequality on international, national, and local levels by focusing on the complexities of the ivory trade in Africa that was banned internationally in 1989. Chapters 7 offers a more in-depth consideration of power dynamics and control in relation to conservation and development strategies on the international and local levels (in the context of neoimperialism and dependency issues reflected in the involvement of NGOs in East African development projects).

Chapters 6-7 combine a study of power dynamics at the international and local levels with a more general, theoretical questioning of the sustainability of capitalist exploitation and degradation of human and environmental resources in the long-term, especially given its historic record in the context of East African dependency, underdevelopment, and environmental deterioration. Chapter 7 and the Conclusion follow up on this questioning of the long-term sustainability of capitalism in East Africa by considering the potential for alternative conservation and development strategies on the local, community-based level, and the strengths and limitations of these possibilities. The Conclusion section draws together the information presented through the course of this study and stresses the need for a significant reassessment of the capacity of a global capitalist economy to provide a liberating and sustainable model for East Africa and for the "North" and "South" in general. Given the evidence of imperialist power dynamics inherent in East African conservation and development models, socioeconomic and political domination and oppression, local disempowerment and impoverishment, and environmental degradation throughout Kenya, Tanzania, and globally, the Conclusion suggests that massive changes must take place globally in the relationships between the "North" and "South," and in terms of the ways that we respect people and the environment, if unprecedented human and ecological disasters are to be averted worldwide in the near future.

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Send comments to: emmons@lclark.edu