Political Economy, Fuelwood Relations, and Vegetation Conservation: Kasar Kano, Northern Nigeria, 1850–1915

The consequences of increased population pressure combined with changes in economic activity have historically taken the form either of environmental degradationsuch as soilerosion and deforestation or environmental conservation such as terracing and agroforestry. The outcome depends on historically specific processes that link social structuresand technologies with populationgrowth.1 Late-nineteenth-century Kasar Kan0 in northern Nigeriaprovides an exampleof the useand management of sylvan resources, particularly firewood, in a context of precolonial population pressure, rapid economic growth, and intensified land use. In this part of Africa, as in the nineteenthcenturyUnitedStates, firewood was a "great necessity of life," the exploitation and conservation of which were integral to wider land-usestrategies and to the emergence and maintenance of a diversified humanized landscape.' An agro-sylvi-pastoral system linkedmajor elements of this landscape spatiallyand temporally. Karkara was permanently settledland that supported intensive cultivation and major industrialand commercial activity; saura was farmland/fallow regrowth used for grazingsedentary livestock and as a sourceof raw material for craftwork; and daji was mostly uncultivated bush or wilderness used for hunting,grazingnomadicherds, and mining. Allthree produced fuelwood to satisfy demand in the densely populated belt adjoining the emirate capital,Kano Town." A rapid increase both in the rate and extent of natural vegetation modification characterized this close-settled zone (CSZ) during approximately sixtyyearspreceding and for a few years immediately followingBritish occupationin 1903. Duringthis period the CSZ experienceda localized increase in competition for, heightened tensionover, and intensified commercialization of natural resources, including firewood. This combinationwas potentially destructive since resources in the area were also increasingly privatized.' Nonetheless, management of landbased resources combined private and communal initiatives in a way that ensuredpopulation pressure did not lead to land degradation. Heinrich Barth thought the area "one of the most fertile spots on earth" in the mid-1800s, whileEdmund Morel described it at the turn of the twentieth centuryas a "smiling country." Intensive agroforestry practices and limitations on state predation helped maintain ecological stability,' Fuelwood demand also did not exceed regional supply,and surpluses extractedfrom firewood activity were not important either as emiraterevenue or ruling classincome.' As natural landscapes are modified, vegetation undergoes physical changes such as deforestation and selective elimination of flora. Thesemodifications have an effect on crop, livestock, or fodder production, implying social or economic consequences. Social institutions operatingwithin wider socioeconomic-ecological systems mediate between the natural environmentandsocial and economic outcomes. In KasarKano, political-economic institutions of the late-precolonial and early-colonial periodsmediated the