Social and Economical Aspects of Miombo Woodland Management in Southern Africa: Options and Opportunities for ResearchPeter A. Dewees |
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Local management of miombo resources: an introductionWhat is management anyway? There has been a tendency to suggest that woodland resources are generally left unmanaged. If the criteria of most conventional woodland management specialists were to be followed, this would probably be correct. We take a broader view, however, of what consists of `management.' (See also FAO 1985.) The most active forms of management of course involve adherence to a woodland management plan with fairly well-defined silvicultural objectives. Less active forms of management might involve the protection of naturally regenerating seedlings, rotational or selective harvesting of timber, grazing management, and so on. In its broadest sense, the simple act of collecting wild fruit is a form of management, in that something of value has been extracted from a woodland area and the productive cycle has been disrupted from what it would otherwise have been. Whether wild fruit collection is part of an intentional woodland management regime is for the most part peripheral to the impacts of its extraction. In terms of economic output, this type of management is far more productive than the type of management which relies on silvicultural prescription. The outcome is often that miombo woodlands become heavily modified in terms of species distribution, structure, and canopy cover, and bear little resemblance to the closed, undisturbed woodlands favored by foresters, wildlife experts, and conservationists. Participation and the commons Whether or not local people are able to manage woodland resources is dependent in part on rights of use and access. Land tenure is of central importance in this discussion. Most farming families in southern Africa live on land which is communally-owned or which is otherwise subject to customary controls. While home plots may be cultivated in a way which suggests de facto privatization, large areas of grazing lands (which are principally woodlands) remain under common control. The effectiveness of these controls, as well as conflicts between contemporary and customary land laws and institutions, are the subject of continuing research. In many instances, common controls fail effectively to function, and open access regimes more accurately characterize woodland management even though there may be a well established legal basis for common property management. Woodlands in some areas are proving to be victims of the `myth of the commons.' In the face of shrinking publicly-funded budgets for sectors which do not yield immediate financial and economic returns (such as for forestry and natural resource management institutions), governments are seeking to `return' control over woodland resources to the communities most dependent on them. In many instances, there is a presupposition that earlier community controls over woodland use existed and were effective, when this may not have been the case. In other cases, governments may give customary authorities control over natural resources which far exceeds their capacity for management. In others still, it may mean transferring control over resources to a local elite who may use woodlands principally for immediate political or economic gain. Finding equitable mechanisms for devolving natural resource management through processes of local institutional change should become a central feature of woodland management research. Such research should consider issues with regard to land and tree tenure, rights of use and access, gender issues, as well as `resource sharing' initiatives which seek to grant rural people rights of use and access to state-owned forest lands. Perhaps surprisingly, this type of research has received relatively little priority. In the absence of a better understanding of how institutional processes work, and how policy and legislation can be better framed to encourage these processes, it will be a considerable challenge for many rural communities with devolved natural resource management responsibilities to meet the high expectations of governments and donors, which have been partly engendered by the new rhetoric of 'local participatory management.' Indeed, there is a need for a more substantive view of human impacts on woodlands, the place of local institutions in woodland management, and the potential for truly participatory management. A study of local environmental management in Guinea suggested
They concluded that local priorities are based in encouraging and maintaining balances between a diversity of vegetation types and that
In contrast, common property management regimes are characterized by the right of a group to exclude others outside of the group from using a resource. This may include mechanisms and penalties for ensuring compliance to rules agreed upon by the group. Fairhead and Leach argue that effective environmental management in Guinea is far less proactive, and dependent more on individual action rather than on the actions of a larger community. Nonetheless, some form of more responsible management over natural resources, with enforceable mechanisms for control over access and use, must surely be preferable to past systems of management. Concession policies and forest legislation in earlier periods led to the widespread degradation of large areas of miombo woodlands throughout southern Africa to meet the demands of mining and timber interests. Management for what? Benefits, private and public. Woodlands in southern Africa produce benefits for farmers living on customary or communal lands which fall into four categories:
Many of these benefits are also available to urban dwellers through the marketplace. Particularly in resource-constrained economies, when farming households balance the benefits from different land-uses (which might involve tree or woodland management), they consider only private benefits, such as those described above. Individual households seldom perceive the immediate value of public benefits (local, regional, or global) to their own farming system, and so these have little impact on most household decision-making processes. Public benefits are of greater relevance to the community, but even so, seldom figure significantly in defining strategies for woodland management. Woodland and tree benefits more generally comprise a range of direct and indirect private and public benefits, including
The focus of much of this discussion is on the impact of private benefits on local management decisions. These private benefits principally affect decision making amongst households and groups of households with common rights to woodland resources. With few exceptions, there has been very little work carried out on the extent of household or community-based woodland management strategies in southern Africa. For policy and planning purposes, an understanding of where, how, and why households have used woodlands and woodland products in their productive strategies is essential. Valuation studies and research into household allocation processes are all critical for developing this understanding. A closely related set of research themes has to do with the operation of markets for products from woodlands. These markets are quite different from markets for agricultural commodities because of the limited range of policy instruments which can be used to influence how they operate. Agricultural commodity markets, in contrast, can be manipulated by pricing policies, subsidies, credit regimes, input supply, labor legislation, and so on. Arguably, many of these policies are geared toward increasing the supply of agricultural commodities. Policies toward forest products, however, are typically geared toward limiting supplies. Control regimes, licensing, traffic checkpoints, roadblocks and increased royalty collection from users of woodland products have all featured prominently in the approaches undertaken by governments to limit woodland exploitation. These approaches are largely based on the assumption that the commercial harvesting of woodland products damages woodlands. While this is certainly true for particular types of extractive processes (such as woodland clearance to meet the demands of woodfuel markets), the harvesting of many extractive products poses little threat. Local management of woodland resources would be more promising if markets operated in a way which encouraged (rather than discouraged) their sustainable use. Forest-based enterprises have been shown to be particularly important primary enterprises for many households. Strategic research should be developed which focuses on the nature and operation of woodland product markets, small-scale forest or woodland-based enterprises, and how financial benefits from woodland management can accrue to woodland managers. Looking at the long term We have argued that much miombo woodland in southern Africa has been heavily modified by intensive use. Longer term studies of land-use change in southern Africa have suggested that, even amongst the most intact of woodlands, there is very little unmodified miombo anywhere. In Malawi, for instance, heavily modified miombo accounts for over 95 percent of existing woodland cover (Hardcastle 1993). Mature miombo woodland in the Tabora region of Tanzania is mostly regenerated. Lawton (1982) reports that the area was well cultivated in the 1860s. The area was later evacuated due to an outbreak of sleeping sickness in the early 1900s. Formerly cultivated areas of Zimbabwe, depopulated during the early 19th century because of the Ngoni invasions, eventually regenerated into extensive areas of miombo (Lawton 1982). There are few studies of these significant land-use changes, and in most miombo literature, they only bear passing mention. Among the more profound impacts on woodland cover in southern Africa were the result of Colonial natural resource legislation as well as land-use planning and administration interventions. Most legislation reflected the prevailing view that African areas had to be heavily regulated, while voluntary controls were encouraged in European farming areas. Land use planning initiatives were largely coercive, for instance, involving the consolidation of villages in `lines', and the delineation of grazing and arable areas on the basis of calculated carrying capacity. Land-use planning initiatives and natural resource legislation had significant impacts on woodland cover. While the assumption is often made that these approaches have been abandoned, they continue to shape and influence patterns of land and resource use and policies and legislation throughout the region. Because of this, research into the local management of woodland areas must consider longer term dimensions of land-use change, reflecting the historical development of legislation and policies vis-a-vis the pre-colonial, colonial, and independent periods. Demands for agricultural land have been and will likely continue to be the most significant factor influencing the extent to which woodlands are managed in ways which contribute to the stability of farming systems. Planning for agricultural expansion must then have the dual objectives of increasing the area under cultivation in a way which reflects the critical role of woodlands in farming systems. The transformation of woodlands must be guided by the rate at which productivity in newly cultivated areas can be maintained, rather than by a simple desire to expand the area under cultivation. Agricultural productivity in newly cleared areas of woodland is likely to fall precipitously unless either large areas of woodlands are retained which can provide a range of low-cost inputs into farming systems, or unless capital intensive fertility inputs, fuel supplies, fodder resources, and food are otherwise provided. Common themes In summary, then, there are a number of common themes which have influenced and shaped local-level miombo woodland management and use throughout southern Africa. These include:
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