“There is no original landscape. It is an invention”. And Guillaume Blanc projects an image of the Lion King onto a screen. The animal from behind, facing the vast savannah. From the outset, the environmental historian (1) unfolds the fantasized story of“an Africa that never existed, even if we are convinced of the contrary” – the lions, kings of places and the circle of life, the predatory and deadly hyenas around… The myth of African Eden. And we listen to it, fascinated, as alongside an unexpected Scheherazade, which promises “three stories”.
1) The birth of the first African parks
In front of the participants of the “Research and Creation” meetings, including Science and Future – Research is a partner, gathered in the beautiful setting of the Cloître Saint-Louis in Avignon (read the box below), the lecturer at Rennes 2 University, author of The invention of green colonialism (2) does not cut corners. “Stories have a story”he hammers and here is the first one.
First, in 1894, with the birth of the first African parks. While “Europe is immersed in its industrial revolution, the European romantics see in Africa the refuge of the wild life which is extinguished at home.” But what it reminds us above all are the “16 million humans who will be evicted, the hundreds of thousands of farmers…” Accused of degrading the forest! This is the myth, points out Guillaume Blanc. 19th century European botanists discovered “small villages surrounded by a forest belt with savanna between the villages”. And interpret this situation as that of a “lost ‘primeval’ forest”, following the damage caused by the villagers. New figures are born at the same time, such as that of the “good hunter” (white, endowed with a gun and a lot of courage) and that of the “bad hunter” (black, poacher and cruel, with bow and arrows). Safari, in Swahili, means journey… In the 20th century, by Karen Blixen (The African Farm) adapted to the cinema (Out of africa) to Romain Gary, passing by Ernest Hemingway, we see as in a dream the majestic elephants, the elegant giraffes and a whole bestiary of a nature to preserve. However, points out the environmental specialist, what botanists once said is quite simply the opposite of past reality: “The more Men there were, the more they fertilized the land and the more forests there were, which were generally created by him. Men adapted by creating forests through which to have firewood and construction.”
“Once upon a time…”
It is on the theme of “Tales, worlds and stories” that nearly thirty scientists, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, economists and artists exchanged this year for two days, during the 9th Research and Creation Meetings of the ANR (National Research Agency) and the Avignon Festival, July 11 and 12, 2022. To evoke both “Tales from 1001 nights: tell so as not to die”, by Carole Boidin, Paris Nanterre University, and to talk with Kirill Serebrennikov, by videoconference from Berlin for its implementation event scene of the “Black Monk”, or with Anne Théron for his Iphigénie, whose brand new text, in resonance with Euripides and Sophocles, has been skilfully – and provocatively – elaborated by Thiago Rodriguez, who will take over the direction of the festival after Olivier Py, also present at the Rencontres. An opportunity for dialogue “questioning the forms of fiction, how they tell of everyday life or magic, are inspired by myths and constantly transform them, cross cultures and eras and how these modify our sensibilities and our actions”underlines Catherine Courtet, scientific coordinator of the human and social sciences department of the ANR, who brought together the speakers, who came from the United States as well as from Switzerland, France and Italy.
2) “The Africanization of Nature Programs”
The second story is equally disturbing. Coinciding with decolonization, it is that of “the Africanization of nature programs”, where we find major players still very present today, such as Unesco, the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature, founded in 1948), Fauna&Flora (1903), WWF (1961)… international experts pursue the idea of an Edenic Africa against destructive Africans, according to Guillaume Blanc. As proof, says this particular connoisseur of East Africa, the evaluation in Ethiopia, carried out in 1961 in an ultra-rapid manner (“15 countries were examined in three months”), according to which the presence of forest fell “from 40% to 3% of the territory”. But today, “60 years later, it’s still that 3% figure” which appears in the various current documents, as it prevailed thirty years ago, brandished in particular by the former American vice-president Al Gore in his book planet earth emergency (3), recalls Guillaume Blanc.
3) “Rio Tinto”, “Exxon Mobil” et “Total”
For the third story narrated by the researcher, the one a little over a quarter of a century old, he projects on the screen an image where three logos are inscribed: “Rio Tinto”, “Exxon Mobil” and “Total”. , companies whose interests in Africa are immense (oil, gas, gold mines…) and which insist on the need for sustainable development, and can even organize visits to African natural parks to green their image. Next to them in this projection is a statement from Philippos, a resident of a park and threatened with eviction: “Nature is a resource. It’s what makes us live. But it’s also what makes us leave our resources, in the name of the resource. We have to fight for our resources, but now it’s is because we are told to leave our resources in the name of the resource that it bothers us”. In other words, for new resources to be exploited, “African park dwellers will continue to face daily violence and eviction.” Attention, writes Guillaume Blanc, “the criminalization of the African peasant (he destroys the forest everywhere) must not be replaced by his glorification (he protects the forest everywhere)”. But now we are aware of the myth of the African Eden and of our biases: the more nature disappears in the West, the more we fantasize about it in Africa.
(1) Associate researcher at the Alexandre Koyré Center and Les Afriques dans le Monde (LAM), junior member of the Institut universitaire de France – CornAfrique and Govenpro projects and coordinator of the PANSER project, funded by the ANR.
(2) To read: Green colonialism. To put an end to the myth of the African Edenpreface by François-Xavier Fauvelle, Flammarion, 2020, €21.90.
(3) To read: “The Plow and the Forest: Narratives of Deforestation in Ethiopia, 1840-1992by James McCann and Emergency planet earth, human spirit facing ecological crisisAl Gore, Pluriel editions, 1992.
–
