Peter O'Hara

“Before discussing the 'relinking' of people and forests through community forestry, it is important to understand where the 'delinking' paradigm, superimposed onto Tanzania and elsewhere during colonial times originated. The separation of people and nature has deep-rooted conceptual origins, for example early Judeo-Christian texts explicitly framed humans as exceptional and separate from nature as opposed to many animist religions that placed humans within nature. The conceptual separation is particularly strong in Europe, as reflected in the origins of certain words, with the Latin word foestis originating from a meaning 'outside', as in a wild place outside human control.

Such 'wild places' later became the hunting reserves of elites in Europe in the form of exclusionary Royal Forests, 'commoners' were kept out. A few centuries later, during the period of Enlightenment and into industrialisation and urbanisation, livelihoods in countries like Britain are further delinked from nature, The division between [eople and nature has become so heavily engrained in modern industrialised society that 'wilderness' has attained a romantic idealisation.”
― Peter O'Hara, Reforesting Scotland 71, Spring/Summer 2025