The Arid Lands by Diana K. Davis

Author:Diana K. Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2016-04-13T11:54:30+00:00

In French North Africa, such notions of deserts and desertification would continue to inform policies related to the environment, from forestry to agriculture to range management, well into the postcolonial period and in other French territories ringing the Sahara.85 The results of the implementation of such policies for the indigenous populations were grim. By independence, the vast majority of North Africans had been disenfranchised of their lands, forests, and livestock, and many were reduced to wage labor and deep poverty.86 This had been accomplished, in large part, by the continuous claim over a century and a half that the ignorant and destructive indigenous populations had deforested and desertified the environment and were not fit to own or work the land. The contributions of French colonial activities to deforestation and environmental degradation, however, were conveniently overlooked by most.87 This claim of moral failing and environmental destruction by the “natives” was common across the European colonial world of the nineteenth century. With respect to deserts, accusations of moral failing were particularly strong in territories under British rule.

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