Ebola: failures, flashpoints and focus

As the worst Ebola epidemic on record shows no signs of abating in West Africa, fear and ignorance are increasingly said to be playing a role in its continued spread. Meanwhile, local practices such as the consumption of bushmeat and deforestation are the go-to explanations for the epidemic's underlying causes. However, decades of anthropological research in the region by STEPS Centre and Institute of Development Studies (IDS) researchers, indicates not only that this picture is an over-simplification, but that disease control policies based on these ideas may be unhelpful.

The latest news from West Africa is troubling: outreach and surveillance officers have been attacked, rumours circulate that the disease does not exist, that medical staff are harvesting organs and anyone going to hospital will not come out alive. Tear gas was reportedly used to disperse a crowd at Sierra Leone’s Kenema Government Hospital who were demanding the release of family members admitted to the Ebola treatment centre there. As many as 57 patients are reported "missing" in the country, either fleeing treatment centres or avoiding them altogether. This seriously hinders contact tracing and infection control efforts.

Both the Sierra Leonean and Liberian presidents have said anyone obstructing suspected Ebola patients from receiving official treatment will be punished. But these announcements are unlikely to have much effect, being disengaged from the reasons behind the community suspicion and the complexities of the socio-cultural context.

An important lesson from early outbreaks in Central Africa was to include anthropologists in the response teams so that local knowledge could be used to strengthen control measures and minimise fear. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have been using anthropologists as part of their team in this current episode too, but the rumours are proving hard to beat. IDS Director and STEPS Centre former Director Professor Melissa Leach, has lived and worked in the region. MSF recently asked for her anthropological insights, so we at IDS and the STEPS Centre have been thinking about how to put the disease and responses to it in context.

Disease and health seeking
Even the most remote rural populations should not be assumed to be unfamiliar with concepts of modern medicine, however their engagement with them may be mediated by other logics. People are accepting of Western medicine but are ambivalent about the formal health system. The history of Lassa fever, another viral haemorrhagic disease which has been recognised as endemic in the area for decades, is relevant. During my doctoral research on Lassa fever I was told of longstanding rumours about medical staff administering lethal injections. Patients have been known to avoid the Lassa ward in Kenema.

Underlying health seeking patterns, is the fact that people hold multiple models for interpreting and responding to sickness. In Mende areas, there are general categories of big and small fever, and ordinary and hospital sick, as well as specific biomedical diseases. Lassa was classified a 'big fever' and Ebola may well be too. Diseases can be understood as caused by multiple things, including germ theory or 'witchcraft'. These causes are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A diagnostic test which 'proves' someone has an illness may not be viewed as conclusive. Key to understanding health seeking is to understand how disease categories shift as the illness progresses. The way people and those around them have behaved, the events leading up to the illness and circumstances surrounding its onset all influence the model which is applied and the treatment sought.

Death and 'secret' knowledge
Traditional burial practices have been implicated in transmission as they involve mourners having contact with the deceased infectious body. The importance of burial practices cannot be underestimated as they are strictly controlled by the male and female societies (known as 'secret societies' in English) who are central to local and regional politics. Medical teams wishing to prevent traditional burials will likely be intervening in domains of power and 'secret' knowledge that lie at the heart of the socio-political fabric which society officials control.

Secret knowledge, and membership of particular societies which offer access to that knowledge (to different degrees) characterises this region of West Africa. Much about the medical response may resonate with these themes: hiding patients behind screens (in isolation), wearing masks (protective clothing). It may be that medical teams are interpreted as another 'secret society'. Response teams should be sensitive to these possibilities and aware of why they may face resistance.

As with disease, there are multiple kinds and causes of death. Certain circumstances – such as sudden death or that of a pregnant woman – raise suspicion. 'Witchcraft' is the most frequently discussed but this confuses some distinct phenomena including malicious spirits, bad intent by sorcerers, and inappropriate behaviour. Such deaths may require special practices and again secret knowledge is likely to be important. This may be an additional reason why funerals are proving a flashpoint in this epidemic. It is possible that by not allowing the secret societies to carry out the appropriate cleansing after unusual deaths that medical teams are perceived to be making the situation worse.

Avoiding simple explanations: the need for a social science
While the recognition of Ebola in the area is new, people are likely to be interpreting and responding to it in line with longstanding local frameworks. Public behaviours and attitudes that might at first sight appear to reflect ignorance, can and should be seen as part of cultural logics that make sense given regional history, social institutions and experience.

Viewing conflicts as stemming from opposing categories of traditional and modern does not capture the complex and emergent meanings which define life in this region and this epidemic. This blog highlights only a small part of this, but it illustrates the need for a social science perspective. That perspective should also include examining the politics of knowledge which are at play. Simple narratives that blame the epidemic on local people for eating bushmeat and deforestation are already appearing. Prof. Leach has highlighted how these overlook well established patterns of land use and interaction with bat habits and so are unlikely to explain why the disease has emerged in West Africa now.

It is hard to say much with great certainty about Ebola, except that it is terrifying and tragic for those affected; all the more need for researchers, health workers, policy makers and the media to be cognisant of the power and politics involved in responding to and controlling the disease.

By Annie Wilkinson, post doctorate researcher, Institute of Development Studies

Find out more:

• Hot Topic: Zoonoses and the truth about Ebola
• Ebola in Guinea – people, patterns and puzzles Melissa Leach, Lancet Global Health blog
• Tackling the Ebola epidemic in west Africa: why we need a holistic approach Naomi Marks, The Guardian
• Haemorrhagic Fevers in Africa: Narratives, Politics and Pathways of Disease and Response STEPS Working Paper by Melissa Leach
• The book Epidemics: Science, Governance and Social Justice includes a chapter on Ebola and Lassa fever.
• Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium

The EU-Brazil partnership on development: a lukewarm affair

Lidia Cabral, researcher with our China & Brazil in African Agriculture project, has written a policy brief for the think tank FRIDE assessing the limited success of the EU-Brazil strategic partnership on international development.

In particular, the brief identifies problems with a 'North/South' discourse which persists in spite of the changing dynamics of power and influence across continents.

From the brief:
"Much of the debate is infused by a discourse that, by juxtaposing 'North' versus 'South' and 'traditional' versus 'emerging' players, places Brazil and the EU on opposing sides. Yet, there are opportunities to build alliances around specific thematic issues, such as the global fight against hunger. With regard to trilateral cooperation, the analysis reveals a mismatch between high-level pledges and motivations on the one hand and on-the- ground operational capacity on the other. It also shows a fading emphasis on this modality of engagement. There is still scope, nonetheless, for joint learning on trilateral cooperation."

The EU-Brazil partnership on development: a lukewarm affair (FRIDE website)

Comparing communal areas and new resettlements in Zimbabwe II: People and places

The communal areas are crowded places. The population density in Chivi district was for example 46 people per km squared in 2012. In a dryland environment (average rainfall in Chivi is about 550mm), land areas are not sufficient for extensive cropping and grazing areas are limited. Given their histories as 'labour reserves' – sources of labour for the mines and farms of the Rhodesian settler economy and dumping grounds for the retired, unemployed or inform – it is not surprising that their productive potential is limited. This is why before and since Independence the argument for land reform has been strong.

Some argue that the communal areas can be transformed, by investing in new technologies (conservation agriculture is the latest donor driven craze) or reforming property rights giving people private title (a solution which is of course much disputed) or creating alternative income opportunities in 'growth points' or nearby towns (again a set of interventions that has been tried many times). It is not that transformations of the communal areas should not be attempted; they should, as over 1.1 million households, most of the rural population, live there. But if a wider dynamic of rural economic growth is to occur, people need the land on which to do it.

The resettlement process in the 2000s was of course not the same as that which occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, people moved to resettlement areas often far from their homes, either through the government programme or spontaneously. This meant the links between old and new homes were severed, and on the formal schemes strict rules were applied as part of the permit conditions. In the 2000s, the A1 sites were invaded, occupied by villagers, people from towns and supported by war veterans. They came very often from nearby communal areas; sometimes people invaded the neighbouring farm, as in the case of our Serima CA site and Lonely A resettlement site.

In all cases connections could be maintained. In the years after land invasions, new settlers frequently maintained homes and fields in nearby communal areas, particularly in those sites where uncertainty over tenure prevailed, as offer letters had not been issued. In most cases, they were just keeping a home or field as insurance, and not making much use of it themselves. In 2011 around a quarter of A1 households maintained another home, and 4% and 9% kept a field. Only in Masvingo district resettlements were practically no homes and fields being held on to. For communal area households, there were no households having a home or a field elsewhere in the Masvingo and Chiredzi sites and only 3% in Gutu had a field elsewhere. By contrast in our Chikombedzi site in Mwenezi, 27% of the communal area sample had a satellite home in the nearby resettlement farms.

Even if homes and fields were not being kept, there were still plenty of other connections being maintained: through churches, social events, burials, transfers of food, sharing of equipment and animals, and movement of relatives as workers, for example. These are often tightly linked communities, as new resettlements often have substantial numbers of people from single villages, who joined invasions together. Of course over the decade since settlement some of the links have been formed. New churches have been formed, people are being buried in their new homes, and so on, but social and economic lives remain connected.

What about movements from our communal area sites to the new resettlements? Did 'decongestion' occur? From our comparator sites linked to our Gutu, Masvingo, Chiredzi and Mwenezi sites, there were 20%, 13%, 17% and 18% of households who had some household member move to a new resettlement site. These were usually younger men, looking to establish a new home. By definition, of course, the surveyed household remained.

There was a considerable movement of people. Indeed, government stats shows that across four districts in Masvingo province, a total of 32,500 households were established in A1 sites as part of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, and many estimate that there was an additional 6000 involved in 'informal' settlement (some now regularised). Assuming that 60% came from communal areas, this represents about 12% of the communal area households in these districts as counted in the 2012 census.

Those who went to the resettlements tended to be younger and better educated than their counterparts in the communal areas. According to our surveys, the communal area household heads were on average 5-7 years older; in their mid 50s, rather than in their 40s (compared to being in their 30s a decade earlier during land occupation). While there is of course a distribution in both sites, the overall demographic pattern is different. This means that those in the communal areas have older children, have more likely worked off the farm, and have therefore access to other income sources. The educational level of the 'household heads' reflects the period of their youth. Those in the resettlements who are now in their 40s benefited from the post Independence education provision, and the biggest group is Form 4 (O level) graduates, while the biggest group for those older individuals in the communal areas is Grade 7 (basic primary).

However, while formal school education levels are higher in the resettlements, agricultural qualifications are not. In the A1 villagised sites, only 9% of household heads have the Master Farmer qualifications, while it is 27% in the communal areas. This reflects experiences of the past decade, when extension services collapsed. When people arrived in the new resettlements, they did not get the support, while those in the communal areas who were older probably got trained in the 1990s.

These age demographic differences are reflected in household sizes and composition. The average size of households in the A1 resettlements is larger, around 6.5 people, compared to 4.85 in the communal areas. This reflects the ageing of households in the communal areas, with fewer children at the parental homes, and greater deaths of older adults. Thus there are only 16% of households whose household head was more than 61 in the A1 villagised resettlement areas, while across the communal area sites it ranged from 37% (Chiredzi) to 56% (Chikombedzi). The generation of adults living in the communal areas was also more vulnerable to the impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with many mortalities occurring in that age cohort. With the decline of transmission we can speculate that this affected those who moved to resettlements less (although certainly the epidemic has not spared them either).

Another factor that explains the larger household sizes in the resettlement areas, is what Bill Kinsey and colleagues termed the 'magnet effect'. Successful households in resettlement areas attract others, particularly relatives from poorer settings in the communal areas. They can gain food, some work and housing with relatives in the resettlements. Alongside these movements are of course workers who come and stay permanently and temporarily to work on the new farms. In our 2007-08 surveys, we found that household sizes had increased by on average 2.8 people, up from 4.2 on settlement in 2000-01. This pattern continues as family size increases through births, and other relatives come and stay.

What about the gender composition of households? The proportion of female headed households averaged 14% across the A1 sites in 2012, the same as when we surveyed in 2007. By contrast 37% of household heads in the communal area sites were identified as women. Of course the definition of household head is notoriously difficult, but we have tried to be consistent, including absent males if they are still regarded as 'heads'. In such situations – and indeed when the husband is present – women take on many management and organising roles in the household, and so the term 'head' is often a misnomer. Be that as it may, we therefore only defined female household heads when the male was completely absent (through death, divorce etc.), and when a woman was the sole manager of the farm and home. The high proportion of such 'female headed households' in the communal areas is well known, but this figure is surprisingly high, reflecting an ageing, disease-susceptible population, which has suffered the brunt of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

So are resettlement households different? Well, there is much variation of course, but some generalisations hold. A1 resettlement households are (on average) younger, with more children at home, with adults better educated in school, but less in professional farming qualifications, and with more male resident household heads. These are not the classic 'reserves' – retirement places, or places where people grow up to get out for work. Instead, these are places where people have chosen to go at the prime of their working life, when they are younger, healthy and where they want their children to grow up. Partly this is of course because there are few other choices. There is no land in the communal areas to grow food and no jobs elsewhere, but it is partly out of choice.

Next week, I will look at how they are faring in terms of crop production on their new land compared to their communal area counterparts.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland

The on-going Masvingo study research is conducted by Ian Scoones, Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene.

A culture of extraction and exclusion: How philanthropy impoverishes the vulnerable





Maintenance crew, Zambia by Merlin on Flickr (cc-by-nc-2.0)

Well-intentioned people the world over see transformation to green ways of doing as absolutely essential. Many argue that by switching to green ways of doing, we can have win-win situations in which we tackle both environmental degradation and poverty, through innovative projects and by conserving wild areas where there still exist.


Yet at the Green Economy in the South conference, which took place from 8-10 July in Dodoma, Tanzania, case study after case study has showed how the language and practices of switching to ‘green’ result in the extraction of resources from Africa to the North, from the poor to the wealthy, all under the guise of philanthropy and development. Processes funded by Northern development agencies, such as REDD+, result in capital accumulating more by dispossessing Africans, enclosing African land, and selling ecological services to the wealthy few who can afford the high price tag.

 

Mining: what counts as development?
In extractive industries like mining, despite using development language, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes are problematic. For example, regarding mining companies in Zambia, Tomas Frederikson argued that while CSR models were changing to become more than just public relations exercises, and while CSR projects were ever more complex, employing many staff in development projects, projects were still counting and costing development in controversial ways.

 

For example, when mines build roads to improve transport to and from the mining area to enhance extractive activities, they declare this as development; when they upgrade airports to improve their own access to mining areas, this is called development; and when they build schools (but only for the children of their workers) or healthcare facilities (but only for workers and their families) this is also called development, despite the fact that these were not developments identified or chosen by the ‘recipient’ communities, nor necessarily benefitting them. So while they were being displaced from their land, the touted ‘developments’ of CSR never flowed to all the community members, thus ensuring that they are dispossessed with little compensation.

 

Hope and knowledge in Mtwara

In Tanzania, the newly discovered natural gas boon in Mtwara, is touted to create a ‘boom’ for local communities; the communities themselves have great expectations for this development, and for example, expect that at least one family member per household will be employed in the gas extraction project. Once the gas is extracted, the local community also expects that the power plant for generating electricity from the gas will be located in Mtwara.

 

However, as Nancy Rushohora pointed out, local communities are not aware of the likely disadvantages and challenges of natural gas extraction, such as adverse environmental impacts. Nevertheless,‘if extracting natural gas will not serve to benefit local communities, local communities feel it would be better not to extract the gas at all’, Rushohora said, and at this stage there is no clear explanation of nor legislation ensuring that benefits will accrue to the Mtwara people.

 

‘Revenue Sharing’ in Kilimanjaro

Similarly, as described by Hanne Svarstad, in Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania, which was extended to cover a greater area in 2005, communities were displaced by extending the conservancy without displaced communities having any guarantee of accruing benefits. However, the Kilimanjaro National Park is held up as a best practice model for other game farms and national parks, because they have undertaken ‘revenue sharing’ with displaced and surrounding communities.

 

Revenue sharing takes place through several ‘development projects’ like a project giving local communities goats; a calculation of how beneficial the goat project could be calculated that at the current rate of revenue sharing, it would take 17 years for every household to receive one goat. While development agencies and international conservation NGOs involved in the park call it a ‘triple win’ solution (winning for biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and poverty reduction), the main narrative of communities living around the park was one of exclusion, dissatisfaction with the lack of compensation for expropriation of previous commons, and lack of influence and consultation before land was expropriated.

 

The costs to local communities is more than 10 times higher than the benefits, so in this ‘best case’ scenario there is a marked lack of distributive justice. Despite donors and international NGO rhetoric being pro-people, there has been no effort to look for local solutions to environmental management, but only impositions from outside either from the state or from donors and conservation NGOs.

Limpopo: game theory

 

In the Greater Limpopo Conservancy, linking South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, Francis Massé explained how Mozambican communities are being forcibly removed from their land (albeit with some compensation), ostensibly in order to protect South African rhinos, but in practice to set up private game farms and game lodges for wealthy tourists in Mozambique.

 

This is argued to philanthropically benefit Mozambicans through the investment of private South African and other foreign countries in Mozambique, but the compensation paid to communities displaced by these processes nowhere nearly makes up for the loss of access to land (the main means by which they secure their livelihoods). Locals are also not even employed in these game farms, as once they have been displaced they are seen as colluding with rhino poachers by providing information about where the animals are, so it is seen as essential to exclude them from the land where they have lived for hundreds of generations.

 

The securitisation that typically goes along with the creation of conservation areas is escalated and extreme in the Greater Limpopo Conservancy as former apartheid security forces police the South African side of the border, and Mozambicans from far afield police the Mozambican side of the border. Displacing Mozambican citizens is argued to be the only strategy by which South African rhinos can feasibly be protected from Asian syndicates even though no poaching is taking place in Mozambique, and expanded conservancies are encouraged by conservation NGOs who argue such areas contribute to the green economy.

 

Exclusion in Indonesia

Outside Africa, for example in Indonesia, similar extractive processes are taking place, both in logging and mining industries. Peter Howson described how in international agency discourse the green economy is equated with ‘green growth’; he argued that this invites elite capture and makes exclusion almost inevitable, particularly when programmes such as REDD+ specifically sought private finance funding. He described exclusion as taking place on the level of regulation, force, markets and legitimation and suggested that ‘the uneven distribution of REDD+ benefits intersected with already existing intimate processes of exclusion’.

 

At the same time, however, Rini Astuti described how notions of indigeneity were being used to produce obedient conservation subjectivities among Bahaneis and on Bahanei forest land, where concessions were also being granted to mining companies. While Indonesia’s indigenous communities had disintegrated through Indonesia political processes, new processes of reclaiming indigeneity and reterritorialising Bahanei land were being supported by planning land use around carbon markets, thus resulting in a carbon marketisation of Bahanei land. By promising carbon payments through REDD+, indigenous REDD+ subjectivities were also be produced inscribing new sets of customary identities with new rules and new ideologies.

 

Financialising nature

In Costa Rica, Brett Matulis described how REDD+ programmes promoted by the World Bank are also leading to the financialisation of nature, by creating a direct link between ecosystem services “users” and “providers”, so that, for example, water users are taxed, but water polluters are not, and the biggest users receive more, improved ecosystem services, while the most needy receive poorer ecosystem services. These tariffs have mirrored existing inequalities in Costa Rica, perpetuating uneven conservation development because those most in need cannot afford to pay.

 

by Rebecca Pointer, Information and Communications Officer, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)

 

The Green Economy in the South conference ran from 8-10 July in Dodoma, Tanzania. This post first appeared on the Green Economy in the South conference blog.

Missionary discourses: can the green economy bring climate justice to the South?

Colonialism by Clapagaré on Flickr (cc-by-nc-sa-2.0)

The green economy has become one of the most powerful political and social agendas in the era of climate change. This week, researchers have met in Dodoma, Tanzania at the Green Economy in the South conference – the first meeting of its kind. Central to this green economy is the emergence of carbon market mechanisms as a form of green development for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

 

The carbon phenomenon has attracted a variety of multilateral and bilateral investments from the North to the South, with the premise that it represents a form of climate justice for the states and local communities who could participate in these schemes. But in academic and political debates on green economy, questions have been raised as to what extent these carbon schemes – as part of the green economy – represent realistic climate justice to climatically vulnerable farmers and pastoralists in the South.

 

Specific cases of carbon schemes in Ghana (Vision 2050 carbon project), Zimbabwe (Kariba REDD project) and Kenya (the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project) indicate that these schemes, in their designs, perpetuate a generic discourse around ‘ecological and social missionary’. In this discourse, projects claim to bring a new life to the ecosystem and livelihoods in the respective target localities that are now suffering the impacts of global change.

 

The Kariba carbon project in Zimbabwe, for instance, claims that it will alleviate poverty, help people have food, education and health and at the same time provide enormous ecological benefits in terms of reduced degradation and wildlife protection. Similar arguments were put forward by the Vision 2050 carbon project in Ghana, which expects to create livelihoods opportunities for different land owners in the forest transition zones; and the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project, which aims to achieve ecological and social ‘triple wins’.

Shifting the blame

In this missionary framing however, there seems to be a hidden shift in the blame game. Global problems of climate change are blamed more on local activities such as firewood collection, hunting or unsustainable subsistence agricultural practices in these landscapes. For example, the Vision 2050 project in Ghana claims that the loss of forest in the transition zone is due to peasants’ grazing activities –implicitly absolving from blame greater timber concessions and plantation companies that extracted large sections of the forest.

 

While carbon projects must find a justification for situating their work in certain localities in the South, they fail to capture the actual drivers of change. Instead, the schemes tend, largely, to pass on the burden and sense of guilt to the local communities – who then become co-opted as part of the solution and cast as beneficiaries of this new ecological and social missionary work from the North.

 

Hope and hype

On the ground, the new ‘carbon missionary’ discourse potentially creates hopes and hypes that may degenerate into more livelihood injustices and inequalities. For instance, the Zimbabwe case depicts a new wave of repositioning in which rich immigrants expect the Kariba REDD project to displace land ownership claims by indigenous locals – who have been blamed for forest degradation. Our Ghana case paints a picture of a failed mission in which the project was unable to meet its promises to the local people, who abandoned certain forest-based livelihood practices and took responsibility for planting trees along the forest transition zone.

 

Learning from potential

While the general examples here seem to point to the shortcomings of carbon schemes in achieving climate justice, it is important to note that these shortcomings do not apply to all carbon schemes in the South. Indeed some carbon schemes, for example the Kasigau Corridor REDD+ project in Kenya, have demonstrated the potential for these interventions to change lives and livelihoods.

 

Achieving this potential is only possible if projects take into account the history of land use, development processes and people’s aspirations in the target localities. In this era of green economy, therefore, packaging solutions under carbon is necessary but must be done with caution, historical cognition, and an eye on the global nature of climate change drivers and the local impacts of such actions. It is only through this the green economy debates and actions can realize climate justice for the South.

 

By Joanes Odiwuor Atela

 

Author’s note: For more details and insights on this topic look out for the forthcoming book Carbon conflicts and forest landscapes in Africa (Routledge, March 2015) by Ian Scoones and Melissa Leach (eds).

 

Joanes Atela is a former Early Career Fellow with Future Agricultures and a member of the STEPS Centre's project 'Political ecologies of carbon in Africa'.