Changes in the biotic environment caused by human land use are being observed all around the globe. Such transformations will have considerable consequences for the future of rural and urban populations in Africa. But what motivates African people to use the biodiversity available to them in specific, more or less sustainable ways? What bodies of knowledge guide farmers' decisions? What external forces, rules and norms drive or constrain them? And what cultural values do they attribute to nature? In this book Michael Propper investigates how the culture of the inhabitants of five villages in the central Kavango region of Namibia influences their thinking and actions relating to the surrounding dry forest savannah, an ecosystem that is coming under increasing pressure from anthropogenic overuse. The detailed case study, an ecological ethnography, offers a wealth of empirical proof for the cultural dimensions of human-environment interaction. It reflects findings in relation to ongoing discourses about the improvement of rural African livelihoods and poverty reduction, necessary institutional and political changes, and the participation and empowerment of local actors in environmental decision processes.