THE DYNAMICS OF SOIL FERTILITY CHANGE - HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSFORMATION FROM ZIMBABWE

Soil fertility is currently highlighted as a major issue for African a gricultural development. But embedded within policy statements are a s eries of underlying assumptions and methodological commitments. This p aper questions these, arguing that an historical approach to understan ding the dynamics of soil fertility change offers important insights o f relevance to development policy and planning. Work on environmental change in southern Zimbabwe emphasizes how issues of non-linear dynami cs, spatial heterogeneity and the role of contingent events in precipi tating change are important in understanding the nature of soils and t heir management. Transformation of soils is seen to be the result of a complex interaction of factors, mediated by a variety of social, econ omic and political institutions over time. Such insights suggest a mor e embedded, context-specific, adaptive and learning approach to interv ention, which rejects simplistic, aggregated assessments of people-res ource relationships, but instead takes uncertainty, complexity and the potential for non-linear change seriously.