Drug Effects by Lisa Gezon

Author:Lisa Gezon [Gezon, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781315430072
Google: p8xmDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-06-16T06:03:04+00:00

Results

Our analysis of land cover change in this area relied most heavily on a qualitative interpretation of changes in spectral signature that revealed that khat was not the most important threat to the forests of the region, but rather that charcoal production and logging were responsible for the most extensive damage. These destructive practices generally occurred in classified forests—areas still under governmental control but with much less strict enforcement than national parks and reserves. Khat production was, however, an important activity on the borders of the national park and a potential source of pressure on its forests.

On the ground, we learned that in the Joffreville site there had been some forest degradation due to underplanting and clearing for bananas, but little to no damage from the expansion of other crops. Many small, isolated khat fields have been established in the zone peripheral to the national park, sometimes carved out of bare hillsides and sometimes replacing irrigated rice or other food crop fields—only sometimes as a result of forest removal. In Antsalaka (to the southeast), we determined that cyclone damage accounted for the changes we had seen in the satellite images and that people had indeed gone in and planted khat in the degraded forests in the aftermath. There was some minimal evidence of people cutting down forests in or near the protected area to grow khat.

In an interview, a senior official at ANGAP explained his perspective on khat’s influence on forests: Expansion for khat production is more of a problem in Antsalaka and further south than it is in Joffreville. But it is less of a problem than other kinds of cultivation since khat protects the soil from erosion and gives farmers a reason to discourage fires. Khat fields can therefore provide a sort of buffer zone if planted up to but not within the protected area.

The rate of cutting in this area in general has slowed in the last fifteen years, partly due to increased surveillance by the national park service. But certain national park service officials fear that increased prices of rice and other food commodities, and a growing market for khat nationally, will provide people with incentives to diversify crop production to include subsistence as well as cash crops and to expand surface covered with khat. This would have the effect of expanding the amount of cultivated land—and the forest might become valuable as an untapped reserve of cultivable land. Khat is farmed by small holders, with most farmers owning less than 2 hectares of khat. The feared effect on the forest would be that numerous small-scale farmers would carve small fields of less than 1 hectare out of the forest.

The following story reveals the circumstances in which some people choose to cut down the forest. A recent immigrant from the southeast (Antemoro) in 1992, Radimy, lived in Joffreville for three years when he first arrived as a guardian for a house for a Karani of East Indian descent. He met another Anteimoro man who lived in the rice-growing village of Sadjaovato, near Antsalaka.

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