Please wait while schedule loads.
Regulating Eucalyptus in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study in Experts, Farmers, and Unintended Outcomes
Type of Session
Individual Paper Presentation
Abstract
The exotic tree eucalyptus is arguably one of the greatest successes of agricultural extension in East Africa and the world. Forestry departments have encouraged eucalyptus planting and have subsidized eucalyptus research, nurseries, and seedling distribution. Unlike many other plans of agricultural extension, eucalyptus has captured the popular as well as the professional imagination and has become a favorite of smallholders and plantation farmers alike. Nonetheless, over time experts have come to appreciate its potentially harmful environmental impacts, particularly on biodiversity and water supply. Forestry departments in Kenya and other African countries now recommend planting eucalyptus away from water bodies and also now provide seedlings for other tree species (as well as other species of eucalyptus) alongside common eucalyptus species.
Running parallel to expert recommendations and agency regulations, eucalyptus has its own life in society and politics. By favoring eucalyptus, farmers move away from the traditional strategy of growing diverse tree and crop types that insure against market and weather volatility. Eucalyptus serves newer forms of land ownership and newer strategies of land use by marking farm borders, stabilizing soils, and occupying land on behalf of absentee landowners. Produced as a commodity and for domestic use, eucalyptus fits into and enables the lives of those who cultivate it. As experts try to change course on eucalyptus and prevent some of its negative environmental impacts, the farmers who are investing in eucalyptus often resist.
This article compares the use of eucalyptus on the ground with expert recommendations and laws governing eucalyptus over time. Based on qualitative interviews with smallholders in Kenya, and research on land use regulation, the research highlights the difficulty of deploying expert authority within complex socio-environmental systems. It argues that objective authority with singular purposes is easily converted over to, and deployed in, unpredictable and multi-outcome social projects.