Oral evidence in historical environmental impact assessment: soil conservation in Lesotho in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

The data presented in this study were collected to test whether oral methodologies could be used in an ‘historical environmental impact assessment’ of Lesotho's first national soil conservation program in the 1930s and 1940s. Parallels are drawn between the use of oral evidence in the discipline of history and in environmental studies. Elderly informants were found who not only remembered the environmental conditions in detail, but who also described the Basotho perception of the British administration, the impact of the soil conservation structures on agricultural land, and an indigenous monitoring and evaluation process. These data are presented in the format of an ‘historical environmental impact assessment’. It is concluded that there is a historical dimension to local environmental knowledge, that rural people are very capable of monitoring and evaluating technological interventions in the landscape, and that ‘historical environmental impact assessments’ provide a vehicle for presenting historical information in a context where its significance could be easily understood, and thus used by, planners and policy makers.