Rainforest Relations : Gender and Resource Use by the Mende of Gola, Sierra Leone

Centering on the Mende-speaking people living around the Gola forest reserves in Sierra Leone, Rainforest Relations shows how local communities and individuals in rainforest regions use and view forest resources amid international environmental scrutiny and changing socioeconomic conditions. Leach argues that if both the rainforests and their human inhabitants are to survive, conservation policies must refocus to address local interests in general and women's interests in particular.
Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in Mende communities, Leach details day-to-day interaction with the environment, examining labor and tenure arrangements, gathered products and their markets, hunting and fishing practices, and crop types. She focuses on different women's and men's experiences and their access to, use, and control of the land. She shows how links between local women and their environment depend on dynamic gender relations in agriculture, forest resource use, and social life. This gender study is placed in the context of both an overview of West African conservation agendas over the past century and an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of ecofeminism and other currently popular approaches to women and the environment.