Landscape, people, and parks: environmental change in the Lower Omo valley, southwestern Ethiopia
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Area Studies
Abstract
The River Omo flows from the Ethiopian highlands, southwards to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Reduced rainfall in the Ethiopian highlands has led to a 25m drop in the lake level since the 1890s, the most dramatic fall in level of any 'non-outlet' African lake over a comparable period. The consequent drying out of the lower valley of the Omo, an area of high cultural and biological diversity, has led to large-scale physical changes which have affected patterns of human use and the interaction between humans and wildlife. Since the 1960s, two national parks have been established in the area, reflecting Western assumptions about the equilibrium of 'natural' ecosystems and about the need to protect 'wilderness' areas from human occupation and use. The research will give the human dimension of landscape change a central explanatory role. The aim will be to gain a detailed understanding of:
- the sequence of environmental changes and vegetation history over the past 200 years, including an assessment of whether recent trends have been unprecedented or within the normal range of variability for this period.
- the way these changes have influenced, and been influenced by, the land-use practices, migratory and seasonal movements, social institutions and cultural values of the local population.
- the culturally specific ways in which landscape is described, imagined and 'constructed'; and
- the impact of incorporation into wider political and economic processes (including national park and tourist development) on local understandings of landscape, locality, territory and belonging.
Research will be conducted by a multi-disciplinary team trained in the methods of ecology, history and anthropology. A chronology of vegetational change over the past 200-500 years will be established, through the radiocarbon dating of fossilised pollen samples. Population movements over the past 200 years will be reconstructed using archival and oral historical materials. The interaction between environmental change, local techniques of land management and the institutional and cultural context of these techniques will be documented and analysed. The 'spatial practices' (settlement construction, field layout, ritual events and linguistic usages) by which landscape is made culturally meaningful and a sense of place and belonging established will be identified. The research results will be targeted at historians, anthropologists and geographers working on African environmental history; at conservation scientists, environmentalists and policy makers, including governmental and international bodies, concerned with the role of human activity in environmental degradation and biodiversity loss and with the links between conservation, poverty reduction and development; and at academics from a range of disciplines interested in the social construction of landscape, locality and belonging.
- the sequence of environmental changes and vegetation history over the past 200 years, including an assessment of whether recent trends have been unprecedented or within the normal range of variability for this period.
- the way these changes have influenced, and been influenced by, the land-use practices, migratory and seasonal movements, social institutions and cultural values of the local population.
- the culturally specific ways in which landscape is described, imagined and 'constructed'; and
- the impact of incorporation into wider political and economic processes (including national park and tourist development) on local understandings of landscape, locality, territory and belonging.
Research will be conducted by a multi-disciplinary team trained in the methods of ecology, history and anthropology. A chronology of vegetational change over the past 200-500 years will be established, through the radiocarbon dating of fossilised pollen samples. Population movements over the past 200 years will be reconstructed using archival and oral historical materials. The interaction between environmental change, local techniques of land management and the institutional and cultural context of these techniques will be documented and analysed. The 'spatial practices' (settlement construction, field layout, ritual events and linguistic usages) by which landscape is made culturally meaningful and a sense of place and belonging established will be identified. The research results will be targeted at historians, anthropologists and geographers working on African environmental history; at conservation scientists, environmentalists and policy makers, including governmental and international bodies, concerned with the role of human activity in environmental degradation and biodiversity loss and with the links between conservation, poverty reduction and development; and at academics from a range of disciplines interested in the social construction of landscape, locality and belonging.