University of Sussex = username $REMOTE_ASSR = IP address Fri, 18 Mar 2016 11:59:28 = Date & Time Environment and History 1 (1995): 55-91 © 1995 The White Horse Press, Cambridge, UK. Reading Forest History Backwards: The Interaction of Policy and Local Land Use in Guinea’s Forest-Savanna Mosaic, 1893-1993. JAMES FAIRHEAD* AND MELISSA LEACH† *School of Oriental and African Studies University of London †Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex SUMMARY Sophisticated local agricultural and forest management techniques have under- lain the creation and maintenance of the main landscape features in Kissidougou Prefecture of Guinea’s forest-savanna transition zone. Social anthropological, oral historical, archival and aerial photographic evidence shows how over long periods, peri-village forest islands have been created from savannas, productive rice swamps from inland valleys, and productive upland soil and vegetation conditions from unimproved herbaceous savanna. From 1893, colonial policy was based on reading the region’s environmental history backwards, assuming forest islands to be relics of a once-extensive dense humid forest cover which local agriculture and fire-setting had destroyed. Archival evidence shows how the deductions of botanists, agronomists and foresters, coupled with the assump- tions of administrators and other visitors, mutually reinforced each other to create and sustain a vision of degradation so pervasive that it still underlies modern environmental policy. The paper examines how colonial and post- colonial policies conceived within this vision have interacted with local land use. Given varying administrative capabilities, it considers the extent to which changes in local practices have been conditioned by policy as opposed to other social, economic, political or ecological changes, and the extent to which environmental changes have fortuitously coincided with policy objectives. INTRODUCTION 1 Modern Kissidougou Prefecture in the ‘forest region’ of Guinea (figure 1) is typically described as part of West Africa’s forest-savanna mosaic, lying between the Guinea savanna zone to the north and the tropical humid forest zone