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Rural people as conservationists: querying neo-Malthusian assumptions about biodiversity in Sierra Leone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

H. B. S. Kandeh  and
Paul Richards
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Résumé

Contrairement aux suppositions néo-malthusiennes, l'augmentation de la population ne veut pas nécessairement dire quʼil y a moins de bio-diversité. Davantage de gens pourrait signifier une plus grande attention prêtée à l'environnement. Cela dépend beaucoup des circonstances dans lesquelles les populations locales développent une prise de conscience de la gestion de la bio-diversité et un engagement pratique dans celle-ci. Cet article considère deux cas.

Dans le premier cas, une forêt tropicale apparemment primitive s'avère être, lorsquʼon l'inspecte de plus près, chargée de traces d'une occupation humaine antérieure. Il se peut que ceci ait été une bonne chose pour certaines classes de bio-diversité comme les oiseaux par exemple. Dans un deuxième cas, on prête attention aux ressources des cultures agricoles génétiques dans un paysage agricole avec une forte densité de population. Ici, il se peut que la bio-diversité génétique ait été conservée par les agriculteurs qui ont sélectionné des semences adaptées à des conditions physiques difficiles. Ce genre de données obtenues durant l'étude de cas fournit une base sur laquelle les partisans de la défense de l'environnement et les groupes socio-éducatifs peuvent développer une compréhension mutuelle.

Type
Biodiversity on the farm
Information
Africa , Volume 66 , Issue 1: The Social shaping of biodiversity: perspectives on the management of biological variety in Africa , January 1996 , pp. 90 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1996

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References

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