What Is Human/Environment Interaction

One of the central tenants of geography is the active, historically contingent interaction between the natural environment (topography, climate, vegetation, natural resources) and human society

Topography, climate, vegetation, and natural resources are basic tools necessary for human society. These factors, individually or collectively, impact the formation and articulation of modes of economic production, distribution, and consumption, modes of social and political organization, and in certain conditions, cultural beliefs and expressions. Examples of environmental impact on societal structure are legion in Africa. Most early civilizations in Africa (for example, Egypt), developed along major rivers (as is the case in other regions of the world). The great West African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai became powerful because of their control over the trans-Saharan salt and gold trade. Colonial cities were spatially located to facilitate the exploitation of natural resources (for example, "copperbelt" cities of the Congo and Zambia). The "favorable" climate and resources of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa made them attractive targets for European settler populations, who created a peculiar and particularly offensive type of colonialism.

However, it is also most important that the students understand that the human-environmental interaction is not a one-way affair. Human history is the story of human use and exploitation of natural resources, such as land, water, mineral, flora, fauna. In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, individuals and societies have used the environment in ways that have changed the face of the natural environment through cultivation, grazing, erosion, mining, the construction of building, villages, cities, and roads, and countless forms of pollution. In the country case studies, we will revisit this dynamic by investigating both sustainable and environmentally harmful practices.