Managing the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa Policies, incentives and options
|
|  Yüklə 2.25 Mb.
|
1IntroductionThis case study critically analyses the devolution of management of forests and woodlands to different constituencies in Mozambique, with particular emphasis on how such processes relate to rural poverty alleviation. The shift in locus of control and power over resources is not peculiar to Mozambique. It is related to broader policy developments within the international arena, filtering down to the regional and national levels, with its main thrust being to alleviate poverty. For instance, Fabricius et al. (2004) refer to the developments within the region, and beyond, as a ‘movement’ in which states have given back to ‘communities’ authority to manage resources. They point out that this ‘movement’ has been driven by “democratization of resource management that was ushered in by international conventions around people and natural resources and the realization, by states, of the futility of managing resources without local people engagement”. 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. But the extent to which communities have gained real power and control over forest and woodland resources in the country has been limited by barriers in various sectors, including those dealing with land policy, governance and political economy. In general, the Mozambican devolution experience can be considered fragmented, largely reflecting a lack of inter-sectoral phasing and sequencing. For instance, whilst recent land policy reforms sought to extend secure land rights through the legitimation of customary ownership, such reforms have not been matched by appropriate changes in forest and wildlife laws, which at present do not accord rights that are as secure as those conferred through land laws. Rights to dispose of valuable forests, trees and wildlife are still retained by the line ministries and not held by the communities who own the land. This review aims to trace how these relationships are evolving. The Mozambique wildlife and forest policy is the main instrument through which the government is seeking to create space for local community participation in natural resource management. The policy centres on the principle of participation, enunciating that it is important that those who use and benefit more directly from resources participate in the management and planning processes. Local communities are in effect, targeted as the principal actors in the implementation of the policy. Although such policies have spawned a variety of people-centred natural resource management initiatives across a variety of natural resource sectors, most of the pioneering insights are emerging from the wildlife sector. The forestry sector has lagged behind the wildlife sector in relation to devolving authority of resource management to local people (Matose and Kepe, 2006). The objective of this paper is to assess the extent to which community-based management of miombo woodlands is contributing to poverty reduction. However, the attempt to achieve this objective was limited by the lack of evaluations of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programs. The documents available on some CBNRM projects are not detailed and comprehensive enough to provide useful information such as: the number of households existing in a particular community; social structures; livelihood activities; types of forestry resources and products and their use and market values; and how these resources impinge on the economic wellbeing of the communities. Neither was there baseline data on the basis of which the contribution of various community resource management initiatives could be evaluated. Although the Ministry of Agriculture has a sector specifically created to deal with CBNRM no comprehensive and systematic reports on the impact and current situation of the existing CBNRM initiatives throughout the country exist. Such a situation is a poor reflection on the sector, given the resources being devoted to CBNRM. The following questions guided the review:
This review focuses on three aspects that apply to the broader forest-poverty question. The first aspect is the legislative environment and the extent to which it enables CBNRM objectives and principles. Secondly, the report analyzes the disjunction between forest resource policies and land policy. Thirdly, the report considers the underlying tensions between the desires of state agencies to generate revenue from forest resources on land whilst also securing the subsistence values of the resources. Where possible, the analyses in this report are augmented by illustrative information emerging from reviews of five CBNRM projects that are currently underway in Mozambique, including: (a) the Chipange Chetu project in Niassa; (b) the Muchanaglane project in Sanhote, Nampula; (c) the Derre Morrumbala project in Zambézia; (d) the Pindanganga project in Manica; and, (e) the Ancuabe project in Cabo-Delgado (Table 1). The review of the progression of Mozambique’s move towards community based management is located in the wider debates around CBNRM, as proffered for example by Hulme and Murphree (2001). These authors make the case that there are different trajectories of conservation that have moved away from being state-centric. Where there is full transfer of rights then such a trajectory would be community-based – the state completely devolves resource management to some constellation of local society as ‘community’. The case studies that will be reviewed and discussed in this contribution are better characterised as partial community-based. The State has devolved management responsibility but without according local society full property rights over forests and wildlife, especially in cases where the resources have high values. Hulme and Murphree (2001) suggest that three ideas have come to dominate thinking about CBNRM. Firstly, there is the need to shift conservation away from being state-centric and to see rural Africans in a positive light rather than as degraders of the environment. Secondly, that conserved resources (biodiversity, species or habitats) should be viewed as natural resources to be exploited rather than merely preserved. Thirdly, markets need to play a more active role in providing incentives for conservation which would lead to resources being more highly valued. These authors suggest that they tried to assess the impact of the policy and institutional changes on the livelihoods of Africans who bore the brunt of ‘fortress conservation’ for many decades. They point out that their writing is seeking to shed light on the impact of policy and practice that attempts to ‘redistribute social and political power’ (Hulme and Murphree, 2001:5). The current review also attempts to assess how the Mozambican forestry scene has changed in shifting authority towards local communities. We argue that in order to understand why the state does not transfer ‘full property rights’ over natural resources it is necessary to understand broader governance trends at state level. The state has historically treated local society, especially rural populations, as subjects. Mamdani (1996) makes the point that the fusion of power and administrative justice are proving to be challenges for the post-colonial state to overcome to provide transparency and democracy. The central state was de-racialised and, largely democratised, but without dismantling the underlying despotic nature of its rural governance structure. Without further reform of the State, the rural populace remains under the grip of an autocratic tribal authority or ruling party officials. And – in the absence of democratisation – development and decentralisation has become a top-down agenda enforced on the people. Anstey (2004) alludes to this development in his analysis of CBNRM in northern Mozambique, by noting the problematic of centralised authority, elite-based decision making and highly bureaucratic administration within the State governance structure. One of the case studies Anstey (2004) reviewed is also included herein. The rest of the report is organised as follows. The next section provides the context for Mozambique’s miombo woodlands, and how communities manage and use forest resources. Section three then provides the policy and institutional contexts for the management of natural resources especially focusing on the impact of legal reforms in the land and wildlife sectors vis-à-vis the forestry sector. The main part of the report revolves around section four which provides detail about the performance of selected case studies of community-based management. In the final section, some conclusions are drawn and recommendations suggested. |