Overview
Trees are being lost at an alarming rate in northern Uganda. To an extent this is caused by the commercial charcoal industry, which the government is trying to control, but it is also driven by the domestic needs of the large family landholding groups that own most of the land. Focussing on the Acholi region, we aim to learn how these family groups, sometimes comprising hundreds of members, manage their natural resources, especially trees. We will investigate what practices might lead to sustainable consumption; and how communities may be inspired to adopt those practices, by understanding family governance patterns, potential influences, including public authorities, and popular culture. The project will use innovative methods, in particular collaborative autoethnography, to understand how the Acholi language and episteme shape how the problems and solutions are conceived by communities. Domestic use of trees in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the potential for the rural population to impact both their own needs for consumption, and conservation in the interests of biodiversity and climate change, are issues that have been little studied, and this project aims to address this, considering both academia and policy makers as well as our primary audience, the local communities that are the focus of our study. We will be disseminating our findings to communities through local artists and performers, linked to a targetted information campaign, which will in turn be evaluated for their impact and effectiveness.
The project is funded for two years under the British Academy ODA International Interdisciplinary Research Projects 2024:
Desired outcomes
Most rural land in Acholi, which has an area comparable to that of Rwanda and a population of about 1.5 million, is owned and occupied by large family groups of tens to hundreds of members. Tree cover is observably reducing on many of these landholdings, as well as in forest reserves and uncultivated areas. For rural Acholis, trees have always been essential for domestic purposes: firewood for cooking and brick-firing, timber for roofing and other construction, and more. Sometimes artisanal charcoal is produced for sale, to pay medical costs, school fees, or to buy food when crops fail. There has been some research on large-scale commercial charcoal production in the area, but little is known about governance in these landholding groups. How do these large families make decisions around their collectively owned land and resources? Are trees owned collectively or by individuals or households? Are there community-level concerns about environmental issues, including loss of trees? Do families try to manage natural resources sustainably? Who can influence this? Are there ways to encourage sustainable use of trees at a societal level?
This project seeks to answer these questions, in part using an innovative methodology deployed by researchers embedded in the communities under study, and which we believe can prove important in decolonising and reclaiming development agendas. We are using academic approaches to find effective solutions to an environmental problem that is endangering communities’ capacity to survive on the land, is reducing their resilience to climate change, is negatively impacting biodiversity, and is driving increased levels of poverty. Our primary audience is the communities concerned, though a further aim is to speak to academic and development policy audiences so that our approach may have a wider impact. Here we think our project will have implications not just for agendas on rural adaptation to climate change and biodiversity loss, but also for those concerned with decolonisation of the academy and greater equity in Global North research activities in the Global South.
Linked publications that have already been released:
The Acholi Land Lab began preliminary work under the CPAID Transition grant in 2022, and published an article on our experiences of using collaborative autoethnography as a method in 2024:
Francis Abonga, Jacky Atingo, Jacob Awachango, Akena Denis, Julian Hopwood, Ocitti James, Opiyo Dick Kinyera, Susan Lajul, Auma Lucky, and Joseph Okello. “Collaborative Autoethnography and Reclaiming an African Episteme: Investigating ‘Customary’ Ownership of Natural Resources.” African Studies Review, 2024, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.112
Team
The research team is made up of eleven members. Jacky Atingo and Susan Lajul are pursuing academic careers through PhD and master’s courses respectively, while supporting their families with research consultancies. Francis Abonga, who retired from professional football in 2012, has largely worked as a research broker since, but now is a manager with a commercial cocoa company. Ocitti James is a social worker who has worked extensively on research into former combatants with the Lord’s Resistance Army. Joseph Okello has worked with Gulu Disabled Peoples Union and over the past five years has worked on research projects on formal and informal justice, and also works part-time administering a small NGO. The other four partners are an engineer, Jacob Awachango, who has had a diverse career, including as a social worker; Akena Denis, a farmer who also has a role as a traditional leader and local government officer; and two community foresters, Auma Lucky and Opiyo Dick Kinyera, who is also an artist and designer. Lucky and Dick are founder members of a registered community-based organisation, the Sustainable Tree Growers Association (STGA), with which the project aims to partner on key elements of the programme. Sophie Komujuni is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Department at Mountains of the Moon University, having completed her PhD at Ghent University, Belgium, in 2019. Julian Hopwood, PI on the project, is a Research Fellow at London School of Economics, and also teaches at Gulu University; he finisihed his PhD in 2022, also at Ghent University.
Nine of us are founding members of the Acholi Land Lab (joined later by Jacky Atingo) and have been working together on customary ownership using collaborative autoethnography since 2022. Project members are able to reflect on the norms and behaviours of our families while interrogating issues of language and epistemology. The understanding we seek into the dynamics and politics of our families relies on our experience as ethnographers, identities as active members of Acholi landholding groups, mother tongue familiarity with the Acholi language and long experience of hermeneutical reflection on its epistemological and ontological relationship to English. Our familiarity with contemporary urban and rural Acholi cultural memes, tastes and fashions will help us produce relevant media for dissemination our learning and expanding community understanding and opportunities.