| This dissertation is the study of one aspect of the chronic process of impoverishment of rural Rwanda, land degradation. It examines the societal origins of land degradation, its effects upon the population, and farmers' responses to it. The study draws on a variety of information including historical records, policy documents, published statistics, household-and field-level surveys, aerial photography interpretation and interviews with farmers and government officials.; The dissertation is grounded in the society-environment tradition in geography and derives its conceptual framework from Regional Political Ecology (RPE). RPE explores society-environment relations in terms of the temporal, diachronic interactions between societal and environmental processes. An understanding of the system requires analyses that reach beyond the level of the field or hill and examinations of the gradual and abrupt changes in the socio/cultural, economic and political structures that have impacted the farmer and the soil. The study addresses questions common to RPE research, including differential access to resources, the relationship between factors from the local to the international level and an explicit examination of the role of power and the state.; The dissertation approaches the study of land degradation in Gikongoro from the viewpoint of the farmer. Farmers view the contemporary processes of accelerated soil degradation from the perspective of a society that cultivated the same land for hundreds of years, and they have strong opinions concerning soil fertility maintenance. The reasons farmers provide for soil fertility decline relate to wider changes in society that reduced their access to resources and ability to practice the techniques necessary for soil fertility maintenance. Many of their responses to declining soil fertility relate to adjusting their agricultural system to new pressures on resources so they can again practice the old techniques. The continuing decline in food production and increasing poverty, however, has led to out-migration and changes in the family structure that lowered birth rates.; The research was conducted before the 1994 tragedy in Rwanda. The RPE approach adopted in the study provided insights into the building up of pressures that eventually led to the conflict. |
