EXILE, CAMPS, AND CAMELS Recovery and adaptation of subsistence practices and ethnobiological knowledge among Sahrawi refugees GABRIELE VOLPATO Exile, Camps, and Camels: Recovery and Adaptation of Subsistence Practices and Ethnobiological Knowledge among Sahrawi Refugees Gabriele Volpato Thesis committee Promotor Prof. Dr P. Howard Professor of Gender Studies in Agriculture, Wageningen University Honorary Professor in Biocultural Diversity and Ethnobiology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, UK Other members Prof. Dr J.W.M. van Dijk, Wageningen University Dr B.J. Jansen, Wageningen University Dr R. Puri, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Prof. Dr C. Horst, The Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway This research was conducted under the auspices of the CERES Graduate School Exile, Camps, and Camels: Recovery and Adaptation of Subsistence Practices and Ethnobiological Knowledge among Sahrawi Refugees Gabriele Volpato Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor at Wageningen University by the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof. Dr M.J. Kropff, in the presence of the Thesis Committee appointed by the Academic Board to be defended in public on Monday 20 October 2014 at 11 a.m. in the Aula. Gabriele Volpato Exile, Camps, and Camels: Recovery and Adaptation of Subsistence Practices and Ethnobiological Knowledge among Sahrawi Refugees, 274 pages. PhD thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen, NL (2014) With references, with summaries in Dutch and English ISBN 978-94-6257-081-8 To my mother Abstract Volpato, G. (2014). Exile, Camps, and Camels: Recovery and Adaptation of Subsistence Practices and Ethnobiological Knowledge among Sahrawi Refugees. PhD Thesis, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. With summaries in English and Dutch, 274 pp. The study of how people adapt to social and environmental change is central to current theoretical understandings of human-nature relationships. There are recurrent cases in human history in which entire populations have been uprooted from the environments in which they live, and where it becomes exceedingly difficult for them to maintain their ways of life including their modes of subsistence, social and ecological relations, knowledge, and culture. The ways in which such people exercise their collective and individual agency to recover and adapt their relations with nature and with each other must be addressed as the planet rapidly changes, given current prognoses about the emergence of environmental refugee populations on a massive scale. Refugees who have been forced to live in camps for long periods present important case studies of human agency and adaptation. Refugee camps are places where people must engage with whatever limited resources are available, and where people confront major complex problems when attempting to establish new relations with their camp environments and maintain or revive relations with their homelands. If they succeed, they can partly free themselves from dependence on food aid and take their lives back into their own hands. In spite of the intuitive importance of refugees’ subsistence practices, refugee studies have paid little attention to this process of recovery, which has also been overlooked in the disciplines of ethnobiology and human ecology. This study was informed by the disciplines of human ecology and ethnobiology, integrating both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods drawn from anthropology, biology, and ecology. The research also incorporated insights from refugee studies, which focus on the causes and consequences of forced migration but which generally lack reference to relations between refugees and their natural environments. The study aimed to understand Sahrawi refugees’ agency directed toward the recovery and adaptation of traditional subsistence and other related material and cultural practices, especially related to camel husbandry, medicinal plants, and wild foods (mushrooms). Within this, it sought to comprehend changes in the ecological and social relations associated with these practices, including access to, procurement and commodification of subsistence resources, as well as cultural change, including the loss, transmission, and revitalization of traditional knowledge, and the significance of camels and of other desert resources for refugees’ cultural and political identity. Five case studies were selected to analyse Sahrawi refugees’ recovery and adaptation of traditional practices in the desert environment: a study of camel husbandry, an ethnobiological study of traditional medicinal remedies and cosmetics, an ethnomedicinal study of the conceptualization of illness and change in related health beliefs, an ethnobotanical and cultural domain study of camel forage 6 plants, and an ethnomycological and commodity study of desert truffles. Data were collected in the Sahrawi refugee camps and in the liberated territories of Western Sahara. Instruments used included surveys, interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, the ‘walk-in-the-woods’ approach, free-listings, and ethnobiological voucher specimen collection. Data analysis methods included descriptive statistics, qualitative analysis, botanical and zoological identification, and cultural consensus and multidimensional scaling analysis. Results show that Sahrawi refugees have re-engaged in a variety of pre- exile subsistence practices by both using and transforming the desert’s biotic resources for their material and cultural values and to generate income. The conditions that permit this include access to cash and means of subsistence apart from food aid, physical mobility, personal safety, and access to the former homeland (the liberated territories) or neighbouring countries with similar environments (northern Mauritania), ethnobiological knowledge, and social networks. Renewed access to part of the former homeland was key to this process in that the procurement of subsistence products largely depends on access to the land where these products are found and where traditional knowledge can be applied. Recovery was informed by the past, when livestock and the desert’s natural resources constituted the material and cultural basis of Sahrawi’s lives, and by Sahrawi’s cultural and behavioural adaptations to desert conditions, as evident, for example, in food norms and health beliefs. With the material and political changes arising from the Ceasefire Agreement of 1991, many refugees pursued this recovery as a path toward food security and livelihood diversification, conditioned by the lack of alternative livelihood pathways in the camps and the desert environment. However, a further finding is that this recovery was accompanied by fundamental changes in social, ecological, and cultural relations around these practices and resources, especially with respect to modes of access to the desert territory, the commodification of desert subsistence resources, dormancy and revitalization of ethnobiological knowledge, and the renegotiation of cultural and political identity around the desert and its resources. Taken together, the case study results indicate that, far from being passive recipients of food aid, Sahrawi refugees struggle collectively and individually to improve their lives and their future prospects within the constraints and opportunities presented by the camps. These results are significant both in terms of our understanding of refugees’ individual and collective agency toward cultural and economic recovery, and of dispossessed pastoralists’ struggles to rebuild herds and livestock husbandry. From an ethnobiological perspective, this study advances our knowledge of how refugees procure subsistence products and how procurement patterns and networks change with displacement and migration. As well, it contributes to the growing body of research about ethnobiological knowledge change in such contexts. Finally, it contributes to the literature addressing the cultural significance of traditional subsistence products, as well as the associated knowledge, skills, and practices associated with these products that serve as vehicles of refugees’ shared heritage and cultural identity. All of the above is important 7 for comprehending the broader cultural, social, and economic processes that occur in refugee camps, as well as the role of food aid and international relief interventions within these processes, and can serve to formulate better means to address refugees’ problems and support their autochthonous initiatives. Keywords: Agency; Human Ecology; Ethnobiology; Refugees; Sahrawi; Western Sahara; Forced Displacement; Subsistence Practices; Ethnobiological Knowledge; Cultural Revitalization 8 Preface This thesis discusses how and why Sahrawi refugees who live in camps in western Algeria recovered their pre-exile subsistence strategies and associated knowledge after dispossession, war, and forced displacement. I hope that this study will bring increased attention to exiled Sahrawi refugees and their struggles, and that it will convey the importance of studying autochthonous initiatives of refugees living in camps in order to develop and implement policy interventions that help them in this struggle. It all began in 2003, when I first travelled to the refugee camps of Tindouf under the auspices of the Italian NGO Africa 70 to carry out research on refugees’ use of medicinal plants. At the time, I knew little about the Sahrawi, or about nomads, refugees, or camels. When Africa 70 first