Promoting (anti‐)social forestry in northern Nigeria?

Across Nigeria, there exists a need for a comprehensive inventory of natural resources, including forestry resources, and for the identification and promotion of ecologically sound development practice. This is of particular relevance in the drylands of the extreme north which depend overwhelmingly on biomass energy, and where the dominant form of land use change is the expansion of agriculture into woodland, shrubland and grassland. Here, vast expanses of land are reportedly affected by processes of degradation culminating in ‘desertification’. In order to facilitate both the formulation of an energy policy and the design of a long‐term strategy which accorded proper priority to environmental protection and conservation within this agro‐ecological region, Silviconsult Ltd., an international consultancy firm, was contracted to conduct a detailed study of its fuelwood demand and supply situation. This article assesses those aspects of Silviconsult's policy, programme and project recommendations which are based on the widespread current preference within natural resources management (NRM) circles for increasing interaction between the State, private sector and local communities. In particular, it focuses on recommended initiatives which are premised on the existence or creation of an enabling legal/tenure/ institutional framework founded on notions of, decentralised, or participatory, forestry resource management. The main aim is to emphasise that in their failure to problematise notions such as ‘community, and participation’, these recommendations contribute (possibly inadvertently) to safeguarding the hegemony of dominant forestry discourses and practices, even while they employ a language evocative of reformist intent and suffused with more than a hint of subversiveness.