Preludes to an Ecology of Famine in Africa

Abstract

Preludes to an Ecology of Famine in Africa edition is now available from the University of Michigan Press). But governments, the news media, and the concerned public are often quick to blame crises either on natural forces, which are beyond human control, or on the victims of the disaster themselves. The fallacy here lies in assigning a single proximate cause, such as overgrazing, for a process such as desertification, crop failure, or famine. This makes about as much sense as concluding that a population is starving because no one is eating. Why overgrazing? Why deforestation? Why overfarming? And ultimately, why famine? Nowhere do these questions apply more forcefully than to the study of crisis among the populations of the Horn of Africa. The region, which includes parts of the Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, has an enormously complex terrain and climate. Areas of higher elevation commonly give way sharply to lowlands, with accompanying