La teoría de la regulación

The ideas, policies and practices regarding the conquest, occupation and admi- nistration of colonial empires are major factors in understanding environmental change. Perceptions of non-Western environments which involve a set of issues that Grove labeled ‘green imperialism’ can be distinguished from Crosby’s ‘biological imperialism’ because Grove highlights human agency (i.e., Culture) and ideas while Crosby emphasizes biological agency with humans as the unintentional vectors (i.e., Nature’s agency).1

Colonial conservation and development priorities and projects shaped the non-Western environment physically and conceptually – often in very dramatic ways. Hunting and gathering forest products, for example, were redefined as poaching when colonial administrators created game and forest reserves.2

Moreover, as demonstrated in the previous chapter, the insecurity that marked colonial conquest and the draconian punishment meted out to maintain colonial law and order caused population redistributions through flight or migration, which in turn had dramatic environmental consequences. In north-central Na- mibia, colonial officials increasingly enforced external and internal colonial

1 _{Crosby, The Columbian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism; Grove, Green Impe-}

rialism.

2 _{See, for example, Grove, Green Imperialism; Anderson and Grove, Conservation in}

Africa; MacKenzie, Imperialism and the Natural World and The Empire of Nature. See also Guha, The Unquiet Woods, and Peluso, Rich Forests.

borders to limit the movement of subjects, animals and goods between different territories and within territories. A policy that had an even greater impact than proclaiming game reserves in the area, however, was the move to limit the mobility of cattle into and outside of Ovamboland in the name of disease con- trol.3

A political ecology focus builds on the premise that actions relating to the environment ultimately are dominated or inspired by political and power con- siderations. Alternatively, political ecology highlights power as a means to at- tain an environmental objective. In practice, political ecology often highlights politics and power struggles and relegates environmental dynamics to the back- ground. The green imperialism theory emphasizes that environmentalism was created overseas, in the process of empire building, and in interaction with and often dependency on non-Western environmental ideas and practices, rather than being an exclusive product created in the halls of power, offices or labs in the West.

The political ecology framework not only sheds light on power struggles be- tween the colonizer and the colonized, but also on the policies and measures that in turn resulted from power struggles within the ‘colonial’ and ‘colonized’ categories. Officials at different levels and in different departments, admini- strators, scientists, missionaries, settlers, local headmen, Christians of various denominations and non-Christians were often at odds, sometimes motivated by personal rivalries between individuals. This chapter focuses on power struggles that either indirectly affected the environment or were fought over particular environmental resources.

The idea of a post-World War II second colonial conquest of Africa is useful here.4 _{The first colonial conquest was the turn of the nineteenth century military}

and political conquest that established control over the peoples of empire in order to harness their labor. But effective exploitation and development required harnessing Nature’s resources as well, especially when officials became con- cerned about rapid population growth and a limited natural resource base. Diseases and droughts were a further limitation on the efficient use of natural resources. The second, post-World War II conquest of Africa (and Asia) was in effect a scientific conquest of Nature (i.e., Nature as the physical environment). After the first conquest the colonial rulers established new borders affecting environmental use and management (intercolonial borders, Native Reserves, conservation areas) and introduced conservation measures to limit hunting immediately upon conquest. In many areas, the violence of the initial conquest

3 _{See chapter 6.}

4 _{The term “second colonial conquest” was coined by Lonsdale, see Lonsdale, “East}

displaced populations and livestock was lost to the conquerors as spoils of war. Because Africans were regarded as part of Nature, conquering African peoples would provide colonial administrations with the means to subjugate Wild Africa.

But in general, before World War II the main colonial policy that shaped environmental dynamics was indirect, that is, territorial control was exercised by instituting political and conservation boundaries and disease cordons, and by confining people and animals to reserves. In pre-1940s Ovamboland, the colonial administration also sometimes directly and purposely interfered in how its inhabitants used the environment, although with limited impact. Conserva- tion measures prohibited hunting in the newly established game reserves (resulting in the Etosha Park) and proscribed the hunting of ‘royal game’ such as elephants and lions. Overall, in pre-World War II Ovamboland, colonial governance not only was marked by indirect political rule but also by an indirect colonial stewardship of Ovamboland’s Nature.

Indirect environmental rule frustrated colonial officials because Africans persisted in what officials regarded as their inefficient and wasteful use of Nature’s bounty. After World War II, colonial states directly tackled the African environment, causing a second round of struggles that had as its main objective to conquer Africa’s Nature, harnessing its wild resources to subsidize colonial rule and economic development.

In Ovamboland, the two conquests left clear imprints on the landscape. Military and political conquest was enormously destructive. The high levels of sustained violence in the northern floodplain left entire areas depopulated, while thousands fled into the middle floodplain wilderness where within a generation, refugees created a new humanized environment, Ovamboland’s Oukwanyama district. The history of the delimitation of the border between the Portuguese colony of Angola (including the northern floodplain and the old Oukwanyama) and the South African colony Namibia (then known as South West Africa and legally a mandate from the League of Nations) demonstrates the extent to which grand political strategy made in the imperial capitals was written onto the land. The border was disputed and moved over time, leading to further displacements, and causing the creation of yet new village environments deeper in the wilder- ness.

Science offered both a tool and legitimization to conquer Nature in Ovambo- land directly and to domesticate its environment. Especially during World War II, the state demonstrated its strength in carrying out planned and top-down resource allocation. Extending political control over Ovamboland’s environ- mental resources led not only to struggles between colonizers and colonized, but also to competition within the ranks of both groups. Rifts and alliances were fluid. To appreciate the full complexity of how power struggles shaped the

environmental dynamics and the other way around, it is necessary to different- iate the processes of change. Various struggles acted upon one another at different times but without being fully integrated, leading to multiple, fleeting outcomes as the relationships and roles of subjects and objects of the power struggles shifted. When Harold Eedes took over as the Native Commissioner for Ovamboland in 1947, he spearheaded the second colonial conquest: the con- quest of Ovamboland’s Nature. His predecessor C.H.L. Hahn had earned his laurels in the first, military and political conquest of Ovamboland, which, unlike the rest of Namibia, had never been occupied by the Germans. Eedes, seeking to distinguish himself from his personal rival Hahn, presented himself as the con- summate modernizer by deploying science, scientific knowledge and scientists to conquer Ovamboland’s natural (cattle) disease environment. In the 1920s, Eedes had been Hahn’s second-in-command and the Assistant Native Commis- sioner for Ovamboland stationed at the border with Angola in Oshikango, Oukwa- nyama district. The two clashed openly in 1929 and 1930 about the severity of the famine conditions in Oukwanyama. Eedes argued that Oukwanyama required immediate famine aid. Hahn had Eedes removed from Ovamboland as a result of this dispute, but to Hahn’s chagrin, Eedes was promoted to the rank of Native Commissioner of the smaller Okavango Native Territory east of Ovamboland.5

Eedes was also the last of a generation of colonial officials whose qualifica- tions were based on personal and empirical inductive knowledge – i.e. based on his experience with the Ovambo (like Hahn) – whereas post-World War II experts claimed expertise derived from a scientific deductive knowledge base. Yet until his retirement in 1953, Eedes quite successfully harnessed the scienti- fically trained veterinary and agricultural experts that were seconded to his staff to serve his own agenda.