Shady Practice: Gender and the Political Ecology of Resource Stabilization in Gambian Garden/Orchards

Abstract

An increasing ecological awareness and greater efforts on a global scale to reverse processes of environmental degradation give rise to new forms of social and economic conflict—a “politics of resource stabilization”—which political ecology theorists have yet to fully explore. Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) argue that the long-term payback period of capital-intensive and natural reclamation processes may potentially lead resource “managers” to adopt coercive labor mobilization tactics or seek out opportunities to capture inequitable subsidies in achieving stabilization goals. Both of these tendencies express themselves quite clearly in a lucrative horticultural production district on the North Bank of the River Gambia in West Africa.

Two decades of drought, since the early 1970s, have prompted hundreds of women's groups in The Gambia to intensify fruit and vegetable production in low-lying communal garden projects. In an attempt at promoting environmental stabilization through tree planting, developers have encouraged male landholders to take advantage of the female labor power invested in the irrigation of garden plots by planting orchards on the same locations. Shade canopy closure eventually undermines gardeners' usufruct rights, restoring the plots to male control. The case thus serves as an illustration of the need to critically examine the political economy of stabilization initiatives. It also raises questions regarding a growing practice in Africa and elsewhere of planning voluntaristic environmental programs around the use of unpaid female labor resources.

Key words:

• environmental stabilization
• political ecology
• gender
• The Gambia
• horticulture