Managing the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa Policies, incentives and options
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2The institutional landscape2.1Developments in the international aid architectureThe past decade has seen considerable changes in the delivery of international development support with repercussions on how the policy reforms needed to reduce barriers to access and use of miombo by households can be delivered. Many of these changes stem from disappointment by the 1990s with technical assistance projects and the rather blunt instrument of aid conditionality (DFID 2003). Greater demands for aid efficiency improvements and greater country ownership led to calls for greater aid harmonisation and an increased demand for monitoring and accountability. New output, or result-oriented, modalities that relied on achievement of benchmarks to trigger further support, were developed (World Bank 2001a) and by 2005, a new agreement on aid harmonisation, alignment and ownership was reached called the “Paris Declaration” . The new aid architecture of harmonisation, HIPC relief and budgetary support now emphasises (DFID 2001):
However, for budgetary support to be effective it requires partnerships for the provision of untied budgetary resources and the use of predictable, transparent methods for external finance. It is not suited to all country situations, nor to every sector and so the international community still uses a number of aid instruments to complement each other, the balance depending on the level of earmarking; the state of financial management procedures; the entry point and level of interaction (State, line ministry, local government, NGO) (ODI 2006a, DFID 2003). This maintains flexibility of response related to need. 2.2National policy developments2.2.1Revised national policy instrumentsPolicy developments have evolved rapidly in the countries of Eastern and Southern Africa that comprise the miombo eco-region countries over the past decade. New forest policies and laws have been gazetted to replace outdated (even colonial) ones, new organisations have been formed, governments have changed, and the instruments of development support have evolved. Table 2 outlines the current status of a range of relevant variables in four miombo countries (Malawi Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia). The findings in these countries are indicative of broader changes in Southern Africa, influenced initially by the outcomes of the 1992 Rio Convention and the NFP processes, as well as peace and democratisation in the region, and more recently, by donor harmonisation and alignment to national processes in support of the MDGs. A key driver of the past five years has been the establishment of Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) processes The PRS is usually the overarching policy instrument for guiding poverty reduction. According to Evans (2006) a key achievement has been linking these national planning processes to budgets (through development of Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks – required for General Budget Support). This has had a variable effect on rural productive sectors such as forestry and forests which are multi-sectoral. Details in Table 2, drawn from country-led strategies or policies and statistical or other returns by countries shows the range of state actors in the forestry environment. In fact, actors include private sector companies, commercial estates, rural and urban communities, individuals as well as the government agencies – parks, forestry, land, livestock, agriculture, water resources management. The overlapping sectors and mandates add to the complexity with respect to the governance environment. Whilst PRS’s draw on participatory consultative processes and are cross-sectoral in scope (DFID 2001) they tend to focus on supply side interventions and delivery through the government budget, whereas growth in forestry and rural development also requires broader regulation and off budget enabling actions (World Bank 2005d). 2.2.2DecentralisationLinked in to the introduction of the PRS processes is decentralisation as a key mechanism for its implementation. The PRS processes in Southern Africa as elsewhere in Africa (Evans et al 2006), envisage increased government withdrawal from direct intervention in production and marketing activities, reflecting an increased expectation at a macro-economic level for growth led development where the private sector plays a stronger role. As part of this process, there have been various attempts at reforms in the Public Forest Sector in Southern African Countries: Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania nd Zambia have all designed plans to devolve services to lower spheres of government where they are often designed to be delivered in an integrated manner designed to improve accountability and improve service delivery. These have had a varied response and impact in the countries of the miombo (e.g. Cross & Kutengule 2001 and Kayambazinthu & Locke 2002 for Malawi; James, Mdoe & Mishili 2002 and Wily 2001 for Tanzania; Blaikie, 2003 for Botswana). There has often been resistance in national forestry institutions to initiatives that undermine their traditional sources of power (Box 2). This is complicated by the institutional space which is crowded with a number of public agencies often with overlapping mandates involved with forests and their stakeholders (communities, entrepreneurs etc). Evans et al (2006) found that this often results in conflicting policy and institutional mandates with respect to the role of state, leading to a lack of clear direction in terms of that role. Another problem may be the limited analysis of poverty dynamics in the forestry context (WB2005c). Although the forestry-poverty linkage is established (e.g. Chomitz et al 2007, Shackleton et al 2007), and even the link established between NFPs to PRSs in more recent cases (Geller & McConnell 2006), how aid and private sector finance contributes to, or creates, opportunities for people to exit poverty in a sustainable way, especially when a range of things may be needed simultaneously in a number of related sectors, is not articulated in the country-level processes. Referring to community miombo management in Malawi, Blaikie (2003) calls this ‘black-boxing’ as the benefits of community management are small scale dependent and as PRS and GBS processes work at the macro-scale they do not consider local conditionalities that reflect whether community management will
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