Land degradation in southwestern Burkina Faso: The environmental effects of demographic and agricultural change

This dissertation presents the results of a multi-scale investigation of the social and biophysical dimensions of land degradation in southwestern Burkina Faso, evaluating how the perceptions and decisions of villagers constitute the crucial links in the causal chain connecting social processes to land degradation. The first part of the thesis focuses on a multi-scale investigation of whether land is being degraded. At the broad scale, aerial photos confirm farmers' perceptions that their land resource is degraded, showing decreases in forest, increases in area under cultivation and increases in land categorized as degraded. When we look at other scales, however, we find that farmers respond to reductions in available land by intensifying their agricultural system in several ways. Farmers are increasing tree densities in their fields, and using more inputs such as manure and fertilizer. Furthermore, when we examine changes in soils first sampled in 1988 and then again in 1996, the analyses of the soil data do not indicate a widespread decrease in soil nutrient status, although fields that have been fallowed have marginally higher nutrient status than fields under continuous cultivation. Therefore, changes apparent on one scale are met with responses which are apparent at other scales. At the same time and in the same place degradation both is and is not a problem; the answer depends on the scale and associated biophysical process and on the assumptions and perceptions of the observer.; The second part of the dissertation further explores the issue of for whom degradation is a problem, examining how farmers experience degradation differently; their experiences are influenced by questions of identity (age, gender, ethnicity, class and political power) and access to resources. I focus on how competition over land, an increasingly scarce resource, is enmeshed in discursive struggles about the meanings of land. Individuals and groups manipulate meanings and representations about rights to land and land management strategies in order to lay claim to land. I also challenge the narrative put forward by many in Burkina that investment in land quality is related to security of tenure. Migrants, who generally have the least secure access to land, are creating tenure security through investment in land quality.