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WorldCat Discovery. WorldCat Discovery allows current BU faculty, staff, and students to borrow books directly from other Boston Library Consortium libraries. Turnaround time is approximately three working days. (How to use WorldCat Discovery)
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ILL online request forms for all patrons except those affiliated with the Schools of Law and Medicine
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For general inquires to the Interlibrary Loan office, please call (617) 353-3706 or email ILLMML@bu.edu.
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- BLC Cards. A Boston Library Consortium Card allows the bearer to borrow—in person—circulating material from a member library, just as you would from a BU library. Boston University faculty, staff, and students on the Charles River Campus may obtain a Consortium Card by filling out an application form. Medical Campus affiliates apply at the Alumni Medical Library.
Recent Books: Africa & the Environment
Environmental History - General
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The Myth of Wild Africa
by
Western explorers and hunters created and perpetuated the myth of Africa as the world's last great wilderness, a sparsely populated land of spectacular beauty and savage mystery. The conservationists built national parks upon this myth, ignoring the fact that this continent was filled with ancient cultures that have lived with wildlife for countless generations. They took away rural Africans' land and livelihood, squeezing them into smaller areas that could not support their farming methods.
Location: QL84.6.A1 A33 1992ISBN: 0393033961Publication Date: 1992 -
An Environmental History of the World
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This second edition of An Environmental History of the Worldcontinues to present a concise history, from ancient to modern times, of the interactions between human societies and the natural environment, including the other forms of life that inhabit our planet. Throughout their evolutionary history, humans have affected the natural environment, sometimes with a promise of sustainable balance, but also in a destructive manner. This book investigates the ways in which environmental changes, often the result of human actions, have caused historical trends in human societies. This process has happened in every historical period and in every part of the inhabited earth. The book is organized into ten chapters. The main chapters follow a chronological path through the history of mankind, in relationship to ecosystems around the world. The first explains what environmental history is, and argues for its importance in understanding the present state of the world's ecological problems. Chapters two through eight form the core of the historical analysis, each concentrating on a major period of human history (pre-civilized, early civilizations, classical, medieval, early modern, early and later twentieth century, and contemporary) that has been characterized by large-scale changes in the relationship between human societies and the biosphere, and each gives several case studies that illustrate significant patterns occurring at that time. The chapters covering contemporary times discuss the physical impacts of the huge growth in population and technology, and the human responses to these problems. Our moral obligations to nature and how we can achieve a sustainable balance between technology and the environment are also considered. This revised second edition takes account of new research and the course of history containing new sections on global warming, the response of New Orleans to the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the experience of the Dutch people in protecting their low-lying lands against the encroachments of rivers, lakes, and the North Sea. New material is also offered on the Pacific Islands, including the famous case of Easter Island. This is an original work that reaches further than other environmental histories. Rather than looking at humans and the environment as separate entities, this book places humans within the community of life. The relationship between environmental thought and actions, and their evolution, is discussed throughout. Little environmental or historical knowledge is assumed from the reader in this introduction to environmental history. We cannot reach a useful understanding of modern environmental problems without the aid of perspective provided by environmental history, with its illustrations of the ways in which past decisions helped or hindered the interaction between nature and culture. This book will be influential and timely to all interested in or researching the world in which we live.
Location: GF13 .H83 2009ISBN: 0415481503Publication Date: 2009 -
People, Contact, and the Environment in the African Past
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This is the first in a newly launched series entitled Studies in the African Past. Recent research results from the region are drawn on to examine how prehistoric Africans settled in particular landscapes, how they exploited resources and engaged in trade networks, and how they affected their environment and responded to enviromental change. The contributors are from Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Bostwana. Fourteen papers included.
Location: GN658 .P45 2001ISBN: 9976603444Publication Date: 2001 -
Sub-Saharan Africa
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A wealth of information and analysis on the environmental forces that have helped shaped the cultures of the African continent. * Contains a handy chronological overview of chapters complete with detailed and informative reference features * Detailed maps and a comprehensive bibliography accompany the book's wide-ranging analyses
Location: GE160.A357 M33 2006ISBN: 1851095551Publication Date: 2006 -
Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land
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James C. McCann provides a synthesis of evidence and a narrative of Africa's evironmental history over the past two centuries. In a book readily accessible to undergraduates and nonspecialists, Professor McCann argues that far from being pristine and primordial spaces, Africa's landscapes were created by human activity. This argument contrasts strongly with the idealized notions of an African Eden commonly held in the West and in Africa itself. It also confronts more recent alarm about degradation of Africa's natural and human resources by examining the historical evidence of environmental change. Key topics within the book are the effects of population growth, disease, agricultural change, the state of natural resources, and the changing role of the state in how Africans have managed and changed their own landscapes.
Location: GE160.A35 M36 1999ISBN: 0325000964Publication Date: 1999 -
Misreading the African Landscape
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Islands of dense forest in the savanna of 'forest' Guinea have long been regarded both by scientists and policy-makers as the last relics of a once more extensive forest cover, degraded and degrading fast due to its inhabitants' land use. In this 1996 text, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach question these entrenched assumptions. They show, on the contrary, how people have created forest islands around their villages, and how they have turned fallow vegetation more woody, so that population growth has implied more forest, not less. They also consider the origins, persistence, and consequences of a century of erroneous policy. Interweaving historical, social anthropological and ecological data, this fascinating study advances a novel theoretical framework for ecological anthropology, encouraging a radical re-examination of some central tenets in each of these disciplines.
Location: GF746.2 .F35 1996ISBN: 0521563534Publication Date: 1996 -
Resurrecting the Granary of Rome
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Location: GF 702 D38 2007ISBN: 0821417517Publication Date: 2007 -
Pastoralism in Africa
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Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the southwest and northeast regions. Unraveling the complex prehistory, history, and contemporary political ecology of African pastoralism, results in insight into the ingenuity and flexibility of historical and contemporary herders.
ISBN: 0857459090Publication Date: 2013 -
Population, gender & social history
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The Peopling of Africa
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Discovering the African past takes one on a journey back to the origins of humanity over four million years ago, which is where the author begins his account of the continent's peoples. He ends it at the onset of the colonial era in the late-19th century, noting that Africa and Africans deserve to be known on their own terms, and to achieve this goal we need to improve our understanding of what took place before colonialism rewrote many of life's rules.
Location: GF701 .N48 1995ISBN: 0300060033Publication Date: 1995 -
Social History and African Environments
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The explosion of interest in African environmental history has stimulated research and writing on a wide range of issues facing many African nations. This collection represents some of the finest studies to date. The general topics include African environmental ideas and practices; colonial science, the state and African responses; and settlers and Africans' culture and nature. The contributors are Emmanuel Kreike, Karen Middleton, Innocent Pikirayi, Terence Ranger, JoAnn McGregor, Helen Tilley, Grace Garswell, John McCracken, Ingrid Yngstrom, David Bunn, Sandra Swart, Robert J. Gordon, and Jane Carruthers.
Location: GF701 .S63 2003ISBN: 0821415387Publication Date: 2003 -
Sustainable Intensification to Advance Food Security and Enhance Climate Resilience in Africa
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This 32-chapter volume represents the core of several oral and poster presentations made at the conference. In addition to Introduction and Conclusion sections, the book is thematically divided into 7 sections, namely, 1) Land Use and Farming Systems, 2) Effects of Climate Change on Crop Yield, 3) Soil Nutrient and Water Management for Carbon Sequestration, 4) Rehabilitation of Degraded Lands through Forestry and Agroforestry, 5) Management of Animal Production for Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 6) Smallholder Adaptation to Climate Change, and 7) Economic, Social and Policy Issues. It addresses these themes in the context of sustainable intensification (SI). It implies increasing agronomic production from the existing land while improving/restoring its quality and decreasing the C or environmental footprint. Simply put, SI means producing more from less.
Location: Online AccessISBN: 9783319093604Publication Date: 2014 -
Continuity and change in Sub-Saharan African demography
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Contents: Introduction and organisation / Clifford O. Odimegwu and John Kekovole -- Examining the accuracy of age-sex data: an evaluation of Sub-Saharan African population censuses / Chuks J. Mba -- Analysis of mortality using census and household data: a practical Bayesian multilevel spatial modelling approach / Lawrence Kazembe and N.B. Kandala -- Child health and mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa: trends, causes and forecasts / Yohannes Kinfu, Collins Opiyo and Marilyn Wamukoya -- Indirect estimation of levels of adult mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa / Steve Adebowale and Sunday Adepoju Adedini -- Fertility transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from census data / Sunday Adepoju Adedini -- Nuptiality patterns and differentials in Sub-Saharan Africa: analysis of African census data / Gideon Rutaremwa -- Population distribution in Sub-Saharan Africa: internal and international migrations in Sub-Saharan Africa / Akanni Akinyemi and Sunday Omoyeni -- Demography of labour force in Sub-Saharan African censuses / Clifford O. Odimegwu and Dorothy Ononokpono -- The dynamics of household structure in Sub-Saharan Africa / Latifat Ibisomi and Nicole De Wet -- Sub-Saharan African children and adolescents: economic gain or burden? / Onipede Wusu and Emmanuel Olagunju Amoo -- Orphaned children in Sub-Saharan Africa: what can we learn from census data? / Bruno Masquelier and Abdramane B. Soura -- Profiling the elderly: understanding recent trends in acceleration of Sub-Saharan African population aging / Henry Victor Doctor -- Sex profile in education and educational attainment in Sub-Saharan Africa / Serai Daniel Rakgoasi -- Living arrangement of children in Sub-Saharan Africa and their implications on schooling / Esther W. Dungumaro -- Armed conflict and demographic outcomes in Mozambique and Rwanda: what can censuses tell us? / Carlos Arnaldo -- Population policies in Sub-Saharan Africa: evolution, achievements and challenges / John Kekovole and Clifford O. Odimegwu.
Location: Online AccessISBN: 1315879441Publication Date: 2014
Land Use, agriculture, energy use ..
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Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land
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James C. McCann provides a synthesis of evidence and a narrative of Africa's evironmental history over the past two centuries. In a book readily accessible to undergraduates and nonspecialists, Professor McCann argues that far from being pristine and primordial spaces, Africa's landscapes were created by human activity. This argument contrasts strongly with the idealized notions of an African Eden commonly held in the West and in Africa itself. It also confronts more recent alarm about degradation of Africa's natural and human resources by examining the historical evidence of environmental change. Key topics within the book are the effects of population growth, disease, agricultural change, the state of natural resources, and the changing role of the state in how Africans have managed and changed their own landscapes.
Location: GE160.A35 M36 1999ISBN: 0325000964Publication Date: 1999
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The Nile River Basin: water, agriculture, governance and livelihoods
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The Nile provides freshwater not only for domestic and industrial use, but also for irrigated agriculture, hydropower dams and the vast fisheries resource of the lakes of Central Africa. The Nile River Basincovers the whole Nile Basin and is based on the results of three major research projects supported by the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF). It provides unique and up-to-date insights on agriculture, water resources, governance, poverty, productivity, upstream-downstream linkages, innovations, future plans and their implications. Specifically, the book elaborates the history and the major current and future challenges and opportunities of the Nile river basin. It analyzes the basin characteristics using statistical data and modern tools such as remote sensing and geographic information systems. Population distribution, poverty and vulnerability linked to production system and water access are assessed at the international basin scale, and the hydrology of the region is also analysed. This text provides in-depth scientific model adaptation results for hydrology, sediments, benefit sharing, and payment for environmental services based on detailed scientific and experimental work of the Blue Nile Basin. Production systems as they relate to crops, livestock, fisheries and wetlands are analyzed for the whole Blue and White Nile basin including their constraints. Policy, institutional and technological interventions that increase productivity of agriculture and use of water are also assessed. Water demand modeling, scenario analysis, and tradeoffs that inform future plans and opportunities are included to provide a unique, comprehensive coverage of the subject.
ISBN: 9781849712835Publication Date: 2013 -
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Maize and Grace: history, corn and Africa's new landscapes, 1500-1999.
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Sometime around 1500 A.D., an African farmer planted a maize seed imported from the New World. That act set in motion the remarkable saga of one of the world's most influential crops--one that would transform the future of Africa and of the Atlantic world. Africa's experience with maize is distinctive but also instructive from a global perspective: experts predict that by 2020 maize will become the world's most cultivated crop. James McCann moves easily from the village level to the continental scale, from the medieval to the modern, as he explains the science of maize production and explores how the crop has imprinted itself on Africa's agrarian and urban landscapes. Today, maize accounts for more than half the calories people consume in many African countries. During the twentieth century, a tidal wave of maize engulfed the continent, and supplanted Africa's own historical grain crops--sorghum, millet, and rice. In the metamorphosis of maize from an exotic visitor into a quintessentially African crop, in its transformation from vegetable to grain, and from curiosity to staple, lies a revealing story of cultural adaptation. As it unfolds, we see how this sixteenth-century stranger has become indispensable to Africa's fields, storehouses, and diets, and has embedded itself in Africa's political, economic, and social relations. The recent spread of maize has been alarmingly fast, with implications largely overlooked by the media and policymakers. McCann's compelling history offers insight into the profound influence of a single crop on African culture, health, technological innovation, and the future of the world's food supply.
Location: SB191.M2 M14 2005ISBN: 9780674025578Publication Date: 2007 -
The Ecology of Survival: case Studies from Northeast African History.
by
Location: GF 720 .E26 1988ISBN: 0813307279Publication Date: 1988 -
Politics of Land Reform in Africa: from communal tenure to free markets
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This book examines the trend in Africa today to replace communal forms of customary tenure with Western-type private land tenure arrangements. These are markets in land that treat it as a commodity like any other, and forms of rural credit involving land as collateral. The author develops an aetiology of the main actors in this historic process which is already having huge human consequences. It is likely, if more widely implemented, to transform the face of African rural society towards landlessness, forced migration to big city slums, and rising inequality.
Location: HD 1333.A35M36 2006ISBN: 1842774948Publication Date: 2006 -
Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt
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In one of the first ever environmental histories of the Ottoman Empire, Alan Mikhail examines relations between the empire and its most lucrative province of Egypt. Based on both the local records of various towns and villages in rural Egypt and the imperial orders of the Ottoman state, this book charts how changes in the control of natural resources fundamentally altered the nature of Ottoman imperial sovereignty in Egypt and throughout the empire. In revealing how Egyptian peasants were able to use their knowledge and experience of local environments to force the hand of the imperial state, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt tells a story of the connections of empire stretching from canals in the Egyptian countryside to the palace in Istanbul, from the forests of Anatolia to the shores of the Red Sea, and from a plague flea's bite to the fortunes of one of the most powerful states of the early modern world.
ISBN: 9781107008762Publication Date: 2011 -
Conservation Song
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A CONSERVATION HISTORY WITH LESSONS FOR TODAY Conservation Song explores ways in which colonial relations shaped meanings and conflicts over environmental control and management in Malawi. By focus- ing on soil conservation, which required an integrated approach to the use and management of such natural resources as land, water and forestry, it examines the origins and effects of policies and their legacies in the post-colonial era. That interrelationship has fundamental contemporary significance and is not simply a phenomenon created in the colonial period. For instance, like other countries in the region, post-colonial Malawi has been bedevilled by increasing rates of environmental degradation due, in part, to the expansion of human and ani- mal populations, cash crop production, drought and consequent deforestation. These issues are as critical today as they were six or seven decades ago. In fact, they are part of a conservation song that has a long and complex history. The song of conservation was initially composed and performed in the colonial peri- od, modified during the immediate postcolonial period and further refashioned in the post-dictatorship period to suit the evolving political climate; but the basic lyrics remain essentially the same. This book attempts to explain the evolution of the conservationist idea whilst demonstrating changes and continuities in peasant-state relations under different political systems. The dominant narrative posits conservation as a progressive movement aimed at re-organising natural resources and protecting them from destruction but the idea was contested and deeply embedded in colonial power relations and scien- tific ethos. Conservation emerged as an important tool of colonial state interven- tion and control concerning people and scarce resources. Conservation Song shows how the idea of conservation was rooted in and driven by a particular type of science about the organisation of space and landscapes. It offers a strategic entry point to understanding the historical roots of Africa's social and ecological problems over time, which are also intertwined with power and poverty relation- ships. In the postcolonial period, the conservation tempo subsided and became neglected in public discourse, only to re-emerge in the 1990s through the democratisation movement.
ISBN: 1874267634Publication Date: 2011 -
Natures of Colonial Change
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In this groundbreaking study, Jacob A. Tropp explores the interconnections between negotiations over the environment and an emerging colonial relationship in a particular South African context-- the Transkei--subsequently the largest of the notorious "homelands" under apartheid. In the late nineteenth century, South Africa's Cape Colony completed its incorporation of the area beyond the Kei River, known as the Transkei, and began transforming the region into a labor reserve. It simultaneously restructured popular access to local forests, reserving those resources for the benefit of the white settler economy. This placed new constraints on local Africans in accessing resources for agriculture, livestock management, hunting, building materials, fuel, medicine, and ritual practices. Drawing from a diverse array of oral and written sources, Tropp reveals how bargaining over resources--between and among colonial officials, chiefs and headmen, and local African men and women--was interwoven with major changes in local political authority, gendered economic relations, and cultural practices as well as with intense struggles over the very meaning and scope of colonial rule itself. Natures of Colonial Change sheds new light on the colonial era in the Transkei by looking at significant yet neglected dimensions of this history: how both "colonizing" and "colonized" groups negotiated environmental access among and between each other, and how such negotiations helped shape the broader making and meaning of life in the new colonial order.
ISBN: 0821416987Publication Date: 2006
Environmental Change: Climate, hydrology...
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Local Environmental Change and Society in Africa
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The obsession of social and natural scientists with globalization has not been matched by equal interest in the study of the consequences of local environmental change on society. As a result, our attention has been drawn away from community and locality to global processes often indifferent to the reality of those at the receiving end of the social, economic, and political problems globalization creates. Larger (global) synthesis obscures local reality, and imposes conditions often insensitive to local needs, resource management institutions, and production systems, even distorting them. The case studies presented in this book illustrate how environmental degradation has contributed to the distortion of local institutions and economies, thus denying local communities the right to eke out their living in a productive and healthy environment. The contributors highlight the seriousness of the difficulties involved in conflating national policies and local reality, and imposing global policy instruments on local communities.
Location: GE 160 A35L63 2001ISBN: 9781402000461Publication Date: 2001 -
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Societies and Nature in the Sahel
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This book explores the links between environment and social systems in the Sahel, integrating ecological, demographic, economic, technical, social and cultural factors. Examining the conditions for land occupation and natural resource use, it offers a conceptual and practical approach to social organization and environmental management.
Location: GE160 S15 R39 1997ISBN: 0415141028Publication Date: 1997 -
The New Frontier: farmer's response to land degradation - A West African study.
by
In many parts of the tropics, intensive, export-oriented monocropping has destroyed both local self-sufficiency and biologically rich and stable environments. The rehabilitation of these savanna regions - as yet relatively neglected by environmentalists - is vital for the success of any strategy for sustainable development. This study focuses on just such a district in Ghana and uncovers the complex factors responsible for environmental degradation. It suggests policies based on the regeneration of the local economy, diversification of agricultural products and markets, making use of local farmers' knowledge, and involving the community in drawing up environmental agendas.
Location: HD1022A75 1994ISBN: 1856492427Publication Date: 1994
Searching for Books
Search BU Libraries Catalog for more books
The best way for finding books about the environmental history of Africa is to search the BU Library Search interface. Try a ‘Subject’ search using the following Subject terms/headings:
Ex.: Environment* Africa history; “Human ecology” Africa history.
To find books on specific sub-topics such as desertification, land use, diseases, drought and famine etc., look for associated terms or events around the sub-topic and try using them as keywords / subject terms in combination with ‘Africa’ or the specific region, country or locality you want to research.
Ex.: “soil degradation” AND Sahel; ecotourism AND Masai
To find books on specific countries replace 'Africa' with the name of specific country or region you are interested in and combine your search with the keyword or subject heading used as search term.
Begin with a keyword search and try various combinations. How you search can determine the number of results:
Example: Kenya
Using AND narrows the search: Kenya AND Conservation
Using OR broadens the search: Kenya OR East Africa AND conservation
The BU Library Search also has many facets that can be used to refine your search in various ways.
Example, try searching only in the author field: Author search for Wangari Maathai
You can further limit your results in various ways, for example choosing only articles or selecting specific years.
The results provide a breakdown of books and articles on that topic and other similar subject headings you might want to investigate.
Head, African Studies Library
Beth Restrick
Contact:
African Studies Library
6th floor, Mugar Memorial Library
Mon-Fri, 9am- 5pm
6th floor, Mugar Memorial Library
Mon-Fri, 9am- 5pm
617-353-3726
Subjects: African Studies