Insistent Dryland Narratives: Portraits of Knowledge about Human-Environmental Interactions in Sahelian Environment Policy Documents

Abstract

The drylands in the West African Sahel region have, since the catastrophic drought event in the 1970s, been a focal point of interest in the cross field between environmental research, knowledge systems and policy intervention strategies. Major international institutions, agencies and conventions have played an important role in shaping national planning efforts aimed at reducing environmental degradation in tropical drylands and at limiting their vulnerability to external stressors such as economic globalization, climate variation, and demographic pressure. The paper summarizes how significant, internationally initiated policy documents, such as National Environmental Action Plans (from the 1980s), National Adaptation Plan of Action (from the 2000s), or the Great Green Wall Initiative (signed in 2010), refer to and explain the state, complexity, and change processes in the human-environmental systems that they aim at guiding towards sustainability. It specifically looks at characterizations of land use changes and their relation to multiple driving forces. The paper asks if apparent discrepancies between contemporary scientific advancements and dominant narratives in policy documents can, in part, be interpreted as persistence of environmental myths caused by the repetition of the keywords, which turns theories into blueprints for action.