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World Developmenr, Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 1037-1051, 1995 Copyright 0 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd

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Environment, Development, Crisis, and Crusade:

Ukambani, Kenya, 1890-l 990

DIANNE E. ROCHELEAU PHILIP E. STEINBERG

and PATRICIA A. BENJAMIN*

Clark University Worcestel; Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Summary. - For over a century Ukambani, the home of the Akamba people, has been the object of intense scrutiny and repeated interventions by international and national experts. Outsider narratives have por-

trayed the region as a crucible for a series of crises, including human and livestock epidemics, overgraz- ing, soil erosion, low productivity, underdevelopment, fuelwood shortage, biodiversity loss, and

threatened wildlife. Akamba farmers and herders recount a very different story in which land alienation. land hunger, and limits on mobility of people and their herds have restructured the ecological and spatial

order of their homeland, to the benefit of some and the detriment of many. The history of crisis construc-

tion and resolution by outsiders, juxtaposed with the diverse experience of people within the region sug- gests that simple solutions to single problems may actually create new crisis, in Ukambani and elsewhere.

1. THE NAME OF THE CRISIS

Throughout the last hundred years the dry savannas of East Africa-and Kenya in particular - have been portrayed alternately as a paradise lost (Myers, 1979; Western, 1988) or as a crucible of crisis on the continent (Timberlake, 1988; World Bank, 1989). The paradise accounts abound with images of untamed wilderness and noble hunters, while the crises are por- trayed in images of poverty, pestilence, hunger, and a ravaged wasteland. It is hard to imagine that these recurring, but contrasting narratives apply to the same place. Nonetheless, they have themselves altered the shape of history, the landscape, and regional identity in the savannas of Kenya.

Travellers journals in the mid- 1800s spoke of east- em Kenyas fertile lands, vast herds of livestock and wildlife, and prosperous settlements of heathly people (Krapf, 1860). These reports drew eager investors, big game hunters, and adventurers. By contrast, accounts from the 1890s picture societies and ecosystems in a state of collapse (Hardinge, 1899; Hobley, 19 10; Tate, 1904). These narratives attracted military and relief administrators, new waves of missionaries, and oppor- tunistic investors to an imagined chaos in need of order, charity, and economic progress (Ainsworth, 1900).

In the 20th century, a series of crises in the Kenyan environment and economy have been identi- fied by experts within the colonial, national, and international government, academic, and nongovem-

* Over the last IO years, rural residents, local officials, field

extension agents, and researchers in Ukambani have con- tributed to field work and analyses that have informed this

paper. Especially helpful were Luis Malaret, Ahson Field-

Juma, Calestous Juma, Richard Mwendandu. Ana Nzisa, Muhammud Jama, Alex Dianga, Lawrence Kyongo,

Veronica Ndunge. Japheth Kyengo, Bernard Muchiri Wanjohi, David Mutiso Kiilu, M. Musyoki, Alice Mwau.

Ana Ndungwa, Charles Gichuki, Betty Wamalwa, and Isaac

Jondiko. We also wish to recognize many prior research collaborators, including Patrick Maundu Munyao, Annette

Hoek, Kamoji Wachira, Rosemary Mutiso, Remko Vonk,

and other colleagues and residents too numerous to name.

We are indebted as well to Phil Porter, B.L. Turner II. Kate Showers, Francis Lelo, Simon Batterbury. Jeanne

Kasperson, Jean Hay, and Michelle Reidel for comments on

earlier versions of the paper and especially to Emery Roe for

careful critique and editorial assistance. Field research and writing (1988-93) was suppotted by

the World Wildlife Fund, the United Nations Unrversity. the

National Science Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, the

Rockefeller Foundation, the International Development

Research Centre, and the International Council for Research in Agroforestry

A longer version of this paper was presented at the annual

meeting of the African Studies Assoctatton. Boston.

Massachusetts, USA. December 1993 and has been published under the title A Hundred Years of Crisis

Envnonment and Development Narrattves in Ukambani. Kenya, as Working Paper No. 189 within Boston

University African Studies Centers Working Papers tn

African Studies series. In addition. portions of tht\ arttclc will appear m Rochelenu PI ctl forthcoming.

1037

1038 WORLD DEVELOPMENT

mental organization (NGO) communities. Histori- cally, the specific crisis identified has varied consider- ably. Crises have included famine, disease, soil erosion, desertification, fuelwood and energy short- age, overpopulation, poverty and unemployment, deforestation, and, most recently, the decline of biodi- versity. The name of each crisis has carried with it the seeds of each solution. Unfortunately, measures pro- posed to ameliorate any given crisis have generally failed to address the entire problem, and they have often assisted in the construction of new crises in their wake (Watts, 1989).

The variety of crisis narratives suggests something other than a single recurring crisis endemic to the region. Rather, these accounts reflect a series of spe- cific problems, defined by outsiders and extrapolated to regional characteristics and conditions at different historical moments. Below, we argue that each of the crises attributed to the Kenyan landscape and society can be viewed as successive internal impacts of processes which have their origin - in large part - outside the region. Contradictions and conflicts emerging in the First World and on the global scale have been continually exported to Kenya, where they have merged with regional social and ecological systems to give the appearance of a series of local, uni- dimensional crises. Our contention is that the series of crises experienced, documented, and named in the Ukambani region of Kenya have revolved around an ongoing and multi-faceted encounter with the global restructuring of economies, ecologies, and cultures.

2. THE POLITICS OF NAMING

We provide our own Crisis Narrative here, the heart of which is our critique of the way in which development practitioners have historically accepted their eras prevailing definition of a unidimensional, single-scale crisis. By focusing on the representation and articulation of crises we are not implying that there is not a real crisis behind each official crisis. Indeed, there are several problems behind each named crisis. That is why the selection and reifica- tion of one crisis to define the problems encountered by people in a given place within a given era has such significant ramifications for policy interventions in the region. It is when the causes and effects of a problem are complex, uncertain, and are constituted at a num- ber of scales that it becomes particularly important to uncover the stories and assumptions - both explicit and implicit -which have been used in the naming of the crisis (Roe, 1992, 1993).

Throughout the case study below, we discuss cri- sis construction in two interdependent senses. On the one hand, crises are constructed as representational discourses. lndividual and collective actors attempt to exert social power by telling one particular story of

crisis. For instance, one might choose to identify a food shortage crisis during time of drought as a crisis of land degradation resulting from past agricultural practices. Alternately, the food crisis could be constructed as one of global political economy: changes in the world economic system and in a regions integration into that system have led farmers to abandon certain crops that had formerly provided a highly reliable and drought-resistant food source.

This representation of crisis is, however, insepar- able from the construction of actual crisis conditions. The representational construction of one particular crisis as opposed to another will lead to particular poli- cies (and specific acts of resistance) which will con- tribute to the material construction of the next crisis. In the above example, an attempt to rectify the con- structed crisis of past agricultural practices may, for instance, lead to policies designed to modernize agricultural production. These policies could, in turn, further construct the (as yet unnamed) crisis of abandonment of drought-resistant food crops.

This papers own Crisis Narrative resonates with the growing critique of the latest development trend: sustainable development (Peet and Watts, 1993; Watts, 1993). Early critics of sustainable development demanded that attention be directed to the question of what was to be sustained and for whom (Martinez- Alier, 1990; Redclift, 1987; Thrupp, 1989). Close on the heels of this debate over equity and the greening of development as usual has come a broader critique of the development discourse (Escobar, 1992; Marglin and Marglin, 1990; Sachs, 1992, 1993).

Our Crisis Narrative - with its implicit critique of mainstream conceptions of scale and causation - also builds upon the insights of political ecology. Political ecologists meld analytical and methodologi- cal traditions from cultural ecology, international development, environmental politics, and political economy in an effort to examine concurrently the local-scale changes in agricultural and social systems alongside the dynamics of global political economy (Blaikie and Brookfield, 19