On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Barbara Bergmann was quoted as saying:
> I was impressed by some demonstrations of fencing off part of the Sahel
> desert, so that nomads' goats could not freely graze there. The result
> was patches of green in the midst of the desert.
I'm not normally a deconstructionist of minutia, but this is such a breathtaking inversion of reality I can't resist.
The Sahel is a name for the transitional strip between the Savannah and the desert. It is thus naturally the site of that eternal battle between the nomad and the farmer that is perfectly symbolized by the story of Cain and Abel. And Africa being what it is, that story is still going on today.
It is not nomads that denude the Sahel. On the contrary, nomadism is the only way of life that is ecologically in harmony with arid landscapes. In such climates, movement is life for both animals and people. It allows them to live on thin vegetation widely spread out. What destroys borderland grasslands is farming, which disregards the basic facts of aridity, and inevitably suffers for it in the end.
So what undoubtedly Bergmann witnessed (read about?) in these (World Bank?) demonstration projects was nomads being fenced out of their traditional lands in something roughly equivalent to enclosure. And for her to pass on this story that this was saving the Sahel from their depredations is to uncritically swallow pure state & farmer ideology. It's kind of like quoting British landlords that they were saving the common land from the depredations of the peasants.
But besides being factually untrue and downright backwards, the idea that nomads are bad for borderlands, and should be kicked out of them for the good of the land, is kind of breath-taking. If nomads are bad for the desert, on what land would they be good? The only answer I can come up with is nowhere. Which would seem to imply the only solution is to kick them out of this world by force. And I guess the first step is to take away their grazing land so that our chosen lucky few can display to them our superior way of life. That'll edify 'em.
Her metaphor is yet another variant of the old story about how European methods can "make the desert bloom." And like usual, what it turns out to be behind the curtain is stealing someone else's land and resources and then denouncing them for their barbarism.
Gotta hand it to her though:
> That's what the developed world is.
Michael