Society and Environment in Mätäkäl, Northwestern Ethiopia, 1880s to 1990s
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Date
2019-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This dissertation is an environmental history of Mätäkäl, a region located along Ethiopia’s
northwest, from the late 1880s to the early 1990s. The late 1880s forms an important
watershed in the environmental history of Mätäkäl since it witnessed a major
transformation in the demographic structure and environmental features of the region due
to the conjuncture of a major cattle epizootic, locust invasion and failure of the rains. These
ecological shocks were played out against the backdrop of major political disturbances and
local and regional and cross-border warfare that deepened the vulnerability of the
population to these disasters. The early 1990s, on the other hand, marked the end of a
decade of intensive projects of social and ecological engineering initiated by the Derg
socialist government that primariy consisted of the resettlement of tens of thousands of
agrarian populations from the southern and northern highlands in the lowlands of Mätäkäl
as well as its large-scale socialist agrarian projects that depended on the operation of large
state farms. The dissertation demonstrates that in the decades since the end of the Great
Famine in 1892 or so the populations of the region reconstituted the livestock and farming
economy of the region through trading and raiding. On the other hand, the populations of
lowland Matakal and especially the Gumuz and their environment suffered as a result of
the slave raids conducted against them to acquire agricultural labor for the highlands of
northern Ethiopia. Over the same period, the wildlife sector also witnessed depletion inconsequence of its integration into the global trade in ivory and other wildlife resources and
the transformation of the technology of hunting through the easier and widespread
acquisition of modern rifles. During the post-1940s period the tempo of environmental
change accelerated as a result of the expansion of plow agriculture in the forest zone where
livestock herding was extensively practiced as well as in the lowlands which had been the
site of mostly shifting agriculture based on the hoe. The dissertation argues that while in
the pre-revolution period the major agents of environmental change in Mätäkäl were selfsponsored
settlers who were encouraged by local officials to settle in the region, during the
post-revolution period the key actors of environmental change were the state and the
peasants it settled in the region under the large scale resettlement projects of the Derg
government.
Keywords: Environment, Society, Disease, Hunting, Agriculture, Resettlement
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Keywords
Environment, Society, Disease, Hunting, Agriculture, Resettlement