The statements above describe the existence of widespread and devastating environmental degradation in arid north-west Namibia, where I am currently conducting fieldwork. They could, however, have been taken from any number of academic papers and consultancy reports expressing the majority view that a situation of pending 'desertification' through overuse of natural resources threatens dryland environments throughout the world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. One would expect some fairly conclusive evidence to provide the basis for such confident assertions. In fact, the above statements concerning the Namibian context are supported by no data whatsoever. Elsewhere, this negative perception of drylands exists even when various production indices for local economic systems demonstrate that productivity has been at least maintained, if not improved, over the time period in question (see, for example, Homewood, 1993, for an analysis of livestock productivity indices in Baringo, Kenya, an area repeatedly referred to as 'the agricultural slums of Kenya').