In light of the Aichi target to manage protected areas equitably by 2020, we ask how the conservation sector should define justice. We focus in particular on ‘recognition’, because it is the least well understood aspect of environmental justice, and yet highly relevant to conservation because of its concern with respect for local knowledge and cultures. In order to explore the meaning of recognition in the conservation context, we take four main steps. First, we identify four components of recognition to serve as our analytical framework: subjects of justice, the harms that constitute injustice, the mechanisms that produce injustices, and the responses to alleviate these. Secondly, we apply this framework to explore four traditions of thinking about recognition: Hegelian inter-subjectivity, critical theory, southern decolonial theory, and the capabilities approach. Thirdly, we provide three case studies of conservation conflicts highlighting how different theoretical perspectives are illustrated in the claims and practices of real world conservation struggles. Fourthly, we finish the paper by drawing out some key differences between traditions of thinking, but also important areas of convergence. The convergences provide a basis for concluding that conservation should look beyond a distributive model of justice to incorporate concerns for social recognition, including careful attention to ways to pursue equality of status for local conservation stakeholders. This will require reflection on working practices and looking at forms of intercultural engagement that, for example, respect alternative ways of relating to nature and biodiversity

We describe for the first time a current indigenous soil management system in West Africa, in which targeted waste deposition transforms highly weathered, nutrient‐ and carbon‐poor tropical soils into enduringly fertile, carbon‐rich black soils, hereafter “African Dark Earths” (AfDE). In comparisons between AfDE and adjacent soils (AS), AfDE store 200–300% more organic carbon and contain 2–26 times greater pyrogenic carbon (PyC). PyC persists much longer in soil as compared with other types of organic carbon, making it important for long‐term carbon storage and soil fertility. In contrast with the nutrient‐poor and strongly acidic (pH 4.3–5.3) AS, AfDE exhibit slightly acidic (pH 5.6–6.4) conditions ideal for plant growth, 1.4–3.6 times greater cation exchange capacity, and 1.3–2.2 and 5–270 times more plant‐available nitrogen and phosphorus, respectively. Anthropological investigations reveal that AfDE make a disproportionately large contribution (24%) to total farm household income despite its limited spatial extent. Radiocarbon (14C) aging of PyC indicates the recent development of these soils (115–692 years before present). AfDE provide a model for improving the fertility of highly degraded soils in an environmentally and socially appropriate way, in resource‐poor and food‐insecure regions of the world. The method is also “climate‐smart”, as these soils sequester carbon and enhance the climate‐change mitigation potential of carbon‐poor tropical soils.

More details/abstract: Biochar currently attracts technological and market optimism, promising multiple wins -for climate change, food security, bioenergy and health -not least for African farmers. This paper examines the political-economic and discursive processes constructing biochar as a novel green commodity, creating new alliances amongst scientists, businesses, venture capital firms and non-governmental organisations. Carbon market logics are not only threatening large-scale land grabs for biochar feedstocks but also other forms of resource, labour and ecological appropriation through driving research and development and shaping small-scale pilot projects. In these, soil carbon is 'chopped out' of its ecosystem and social contexts and revalued as exchangeable pieces of carbon nature. Farmers are hailed as green actors and market winners, provided they discipline their practices according to these new technical and market logics. These discourses contrast strongly with the farmers' existing conceptual and practical repertoires; a case study from Liberia illustrates how farmers already manipulate soil carbon in creating locally valued anthropogenic dark earths, but within diverse farming repertoires, ontologies of human-nature interrelationship and historical and political ecologies.

Many commentators highlight the fertility of Anthropogenic Dark Earths (ADE), emphasizing their potential for sustainable agriculture. Some scholars believe that terra mulata (the less fertile, more extensive form of ADE) was created by means of agricultural practices used by large settled populations of pre-Columbian farmers. But what was it that these Amerindian farmers were growing? Until recently, scholarly consensus held that manioc does not perform well on ADE. New research on the middle Madeira River is showing, however, that this consensus was premature. In this region, the most common crop in ADE fields is bitter manioc. Farmers there have various landraces of manioc that they believe yield particularly well on ADE, and logically plant more of these varieties on ADE. Aspects of the behaviour and perception of manioc cultivation among 52 farmers at the community of Barro Alto were measured quantitatively on four terra firme soil types (Terra Preta, Terra Mulata, Oxisols and Ultisols). These farmers plant different configurations of landraces in different soils, according to their perception of the suitability of particular landraces and their characteristics to certain soil types and successional processes. This, in turn, shapes selective pressures on these varieties, as new genetic material incorporated from volunteer seedlings is more likely to contain traits present in the most prevalent landrace(s) in each soil type. Owing to localized population pressure at Barro Alto, manioc is under more intensive cultivation systems, with shorter cropping periods (5-10 months) and shorter fallow periods (1-2 years). The outcome of these processes is different co-evolutionary dynamics on ADE as opposed to non-anthropogenic soils. Further anthropological study of manioc swiddening in one of the richest agricultural environments in Amazonia can fill a gap in the literature, thus opening an additional window on the pre-Columbian period.Keywords: Anthropogenic soils. Dark Earths. Agricultural Intensification. Manioc. Central Amazonia. Madeira River.Resumo: Muitos comentaristas realçam a fertilidade da Terra Preta de Índio (TPI), enfatizando seu potencial para uma agricultura sustentável. Alguns estudiosos acreditam que Terra Mulata (uma forma menos fértil, porém mais comum de TPI) foi criada por meio de práticas agrícolas usadas por grandes populações sedentárias na época pré-colombiana. Mas o que estes agricultores ameríndios cultivavam? Até recentemente, o consenso acadêmico era de que mandioca não se adaptava bem em TPI. Novas pesquisas no Médio Rio Madeira estão demostrando, porém, que este consenso era prematuro. Nesta região, a colheita mais comum em roças de TPI é mandioca amarga. Os agricultores têm diversas variedades crioulas (raças primitivas) de mandioca, que eles acreditam render especialmente bem em TPI e, logicamente, plantam mais destas variedades em TPI. Aspectos do comportamento e da percepção do cultivo de mandioca entre 52 agricultores da comunidade de Barro Alto foram observados quantita...

Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE), one of the best-known examples of anthropogenic (man-made) soils, are the result of Amerindian settlements in the pre-Columbian period. ADE are highly variable in terms of their size, shape, depth and physical and chemical make-up. Scholars tend to divide ADE into two categories: terra preta and terra mulata. The former are dark and highly fertile soils replete with ceramic shards, indicating former areas of habitation, while the latter are lighter in colour, less fertile, lacking pottery and thought to be old agricultural fields. While a scientific consensus on the origins of terra preta has existed for several decades, the origins of terra mulata remain enigmatic and contested. We argue that owing to the overlapping and constantly changing boundaries of agricultural and habitational areas, it is unlikely that there exist two clear soil fertility classes. This article examines the hypothesis that rather than two distinct anthrosol categories, ADE sites should exhibit a highly fertile 'core area' , which grades into more subtly modified soils, with a continuum of fertility between them. Using principal components analysis (PCA) and interpolations based on the geographic distribution of the soil samples, we show that ADE along the Middle Madeira, Brazilian Amazon are extremely diverse, but data support more of a gradient between areas of greater and lesser fertility rather than two distinct categories. We also assess local people's perceptions and classifications of anthropogenic and surrounding soils using ethnographic data. Rather than discarding the terra preta-terra mulata opposition however, we suggest abandoning only the idea that they are separate categories, and instead emphasise a continuum, the darker, bluff edge 'central' regions with abundant ceramics are consonant with published descriptions of terra preta, which grade into surrounding areas with lighter, less fertile soils that better fit terra mulata descriptions.

Shifting cultivation in the humid tropics is incredibly diverse, yet research tends to focus on one type: long-fallow shifting cultivation. While it is a typical adaptation to the highly-weathered nutrient-poor soils of the Amazonian terra firme, fertile environments in the region offer opportunities for agricultural intensification. We hypothesized that Amazonian people have developed divergent bitter manioc cultivation systems as adaptations to the properties of different soils. We compared bitter manioc cultivation in two nutrient-rich and two nutrient-poor soils, along the middle Madeira River in Central Amazonia. We interviewed 249 farmers in 6 localities, sampled their manioc fields, and carried out genetic analysis of bitter manioc landraces. While cultivation in the two richer soils at different localities was characterized by fast-maturing, low-starch manioc landraces, with shorter cropping periods and shorter fallows, the predominant manioc landraces in these soils were generally not genetically similar. Rather, predominant landraces in each of these two fertile soils have emerged from separate selective trajectories which produced landraces that converged for fast-maturing low-starch traits adapted to intensified swidden systems in fertile soils. This contrasts with the more extensive cultivation systems found in the two poorer soils at different localities, characterized by the prevalence of slow-maturing high-starch landraces, longer cropping periods and longer fallows, typical of previous studies. Farmers plant different assemblages of bitter manioc landraces in different soils and the most popular landraces were shown to exhibit significantly different yields when planted in different soils. Farmers have selected different sets of landraces with different perceived agronomic characteristics, along with different fallow lengths, as adaptations to the specific properties of each agroecological micro-environment. These findings open up new avenues for research and debate concerning the origins, evolution, history and contemporary cultivation of bitter manioc in Amazonia and beyond.

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While bitter manioc has been one of the most important staple crops in the central Amazon for thousands of years, there have been few studies of its cultivation in the fertile whitewater landscapes of this region. Anthropological research on bitter manioc cultivation in the Amazon has focused almost exclusively on long-fallow shifting cultivation in marginal upland areas of low soil fertility. This has contributed to the persistence of the oversimplified notion that because bitter manioc is well adapted to infertile upland soils; it cannot yield well in alluvial and/or fertile soils. I hypothesized that bitter manioc cultivation would be well adapted to the fertile soils of the whitewater landscapes of the central Amazon because of the centrality of this crop to subsistence in this region. In this article, I examine one such whitewater landscape, the middle Madeira River, Amazonas, Brazil, where smallholders cultivate bitter manioc on fertile Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) and floodplain soils, and on infertile Oxisols and Ultisols. In this region, cultivation on fertile soils tends to be short-cycled, characterised by short fallowing (0–6 years) and shorter cropping periods (5–12 months) with a predominance of low starch fast maturing “weak” landraces. By contrast, cultivation on infertile soils is normally long-cycled, characterised by longer fallows (>10 years) and longer cropping periods (1–3 years) with a predominance of high starch slow maturing “strong” landraces. This diversity in bitter manioc cultivation systems (landraces, fallow periods, soils) demonstrates that Amazonian farmers have adapted bitter manioc cultivation to the specific characteristics of the landscapes that they inhabit. I conclude that contrary to earlier claims, there are no ecological limitations on growing bitter manioc in fertile soils, and therefore the cultivation of this crop in floodplain and ADE soils would have been possible in the pre-Columbian period