IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB343326454

‘Growing a World Wonder’: The Great Green Wall and the History of Environmental Decline in the Sahel, 1450–2022 (2024)

John Cropper (Author)

Environment and History
Volume: 30
Issue: 2
Pages: 291-313
Publication date: 2024
Language: English

URI: https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3197/096734023X16702350656933

DOI: 10.3197/096734023X16702350656933

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Desertification Neoliberalism Colonialism Imperialism Slave trade Environmental degradation Environmental history Modern Early modern Medieval Sahel Sahara

This article offers a historical critique of the Great Green Wall Initiative of the Sahel and the Sahara (GGW) – an audacious project to stop the southern encroachment of the Sahara Desert by constructing a wall of trees across the continent. By situating the GGW within the longue durée of the Sahel’s environmental history, it examines how the narratives of environmental decline that underpin the initiative are not only misguided but born out of the transatlantic slave trade, imperialism and colonialism, and the neoliberal development projects of the postcolonial period. In doing so, it argues that narratives of environmental decline have not only served as a dynamic framework to rationalise Western exploitation of the Sahel’s environments over time, but have obscured, or even silenced, the effective practices of dryland regeneration of Sahelian communities.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB343326454

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Headrick, Daniel R.; (2010)
Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present (/p/isis/citation/CBB001030031/)

Chapter Neer, Wim Van; Ervynck, Anton; (2010)
Defining “Natural” Fish Communities for Fishery Management Purposes: Biological, Historical, and Archaeological Approaches (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420428/)

Book Diana K. Davis; (2016)
The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge (/p/isis/citation/CBB601825258/)

Book Reinert, Sophus A.; (2011)
Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213002/)

Article Vincent Banos; Bruno Bouet; Philippe Deuffic; (2023)
From edenic island to endemic park: A historical political ecology of environmental degradation narratives on Réunion (West Indian Ocean) (/p/isis/citation/CBB567743178/)

Book Velayutham Saravanan; (2018)
Environmental History and Tribals in Modern India (/p/isis/citation/CBB693568918/)

Article Smithers, Gregory D.; (2015)
Beyond the “Ecological Indian”: Environmental Politics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Modern North America (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422283/)

Book Hannah Holleman; (2018)
Dust bowls of empire: imperialism, environmental politics, and the injustice of "green" capitalism (/p/isis/citation/CBB798731634/)

Article Samojlik, Tomasz; Rotherham, Ian D.; Jędrzejewska, Bogumi a; (2013)
Quantifying Historic Human Impacts on Forest Environments: A Case Study in Bialowieza Forest, Poland (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320300/)

Book Marks, Robert B.; (2012)
China: Its Environment and History (/p/isis/citation/CBB001214754/)

Book Erasmo D'Angelis; Massimo Gargano; Elisabetta Novello; (2021)
La grande storia d'Italia raccontata dall'acqua (/p/isis/citation/CBB639703806/)

Article Stefano Piastra; (2021)
I laghi di frana nell’Appennino romagnolo. Una prospettiva storico-geografica (/p/isis/citation/CBB386898585/)

Book Alessandra Dattero; (2022)
Il bosco: Biodiversità, diritti e culture dal medioevo al nostro tempo (/p/isis/citation/CBB708100664/)

Book Filiberto Agostini; (2019)
Tra le acque del Vicentino. Dal medioevo all'età contemporanea (/p/isis/citation/CBB612061238/)

Book Paolo Vidali; (2022)
Storia dell'idea di natura: Dal pensiero greco alla coscienza dell'Antropocene (/p/isis/citation/CBB206104480/)

Article Powell, Miles A.; (2016)
People in Peril, Environments at Risk: Coolies, Tigers, and Colonial Singapore's Ecology of Poverty (/p/isis/citation/CBB221681390/)

Article Tiago Kramer de Oliveira; (2019)
Cultura geográfica, colonialidade e economia-mundo: o centro da América do Sul nos ‘mapas sertanistas’ (primeira metade do século XVIII) (/p/isis/citation/CBB818553036/)

Article Viktor Pál; (2024)
The Second Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian Basin: High Modernism and the Ecological Crisis in the Eastern Half of the Habsburg Empire during the Nineteenth Century (/p/isis/citation/CBB826841244/)

Article Mackenzie Cooley; (2021)
The Giant Remains: Mesoamerican Natural History, Medicine, and Cycles of Empire (/p/isis/citation/CBB515132509/)

Book Mark Thurner; Juan Pimentel; (2021)
New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities (/p/isis/citation/CBB590414414/)