From Users to Custodians : Changing Relations between People and the State in Forest Management in Tanzania
Central control of forests takes management responsibility away from the communities most dependent on them, inevitably resulting in tensions. Like many African countries, Tanzania--which has forest or woodland cover over 30-40 percent of its land-...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/03/1047469/users-custodians-changing-relations-between-people-state-forest-management-tanzania http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19697 |
| Summary: | Central control of forests takes
management responsibility away from the communities most
dependent on them, inevitably resulting in tensions. Like
many African countries, Tanzania--which has forest or
woodland cover over 30-40 percent of its land--established
central forestry institutions at a time when there was
little need for active management and protection because
population pressures were low. But in the face of scarce
public resources and burgeoning demand from the growing
population for agricultural landand woodland products, there
has been growing recognition of the need to bring
individuals, local groups, and communities into the policy,
planning, and management process if woodlands are to remain
productive in the coming decades. Tanzania established its
first three community-owned and -managed forest reserves in
September 1994. Today, supported by substantive policy
reforms that largely grew out of the early experiences with
community-based management, more than 500 villages own and
manage forest reserves, and anoher 500 or so smaller social
units and individuals have recognized reserves. Joint
management by the state and the people is getting underway
in at least four government-owned forest reserves.The
authors describe the evolution of community-based forest and
woodland management in Tanzania and the underlying policy,
legal, and institutional framework. They draw together some
of the lessons from this experience and review emerging
issues. They find that the most successful initiatives
involving communities and individuals have been those that
moved away from a user-centric approach (like that often
used in South Asia) and toward an approach based on the idea
that communities can be most effective when they are fully
involved in all aspects of decisionmaking about management
and protection. This suggests that the government should
allow communities to become engaged as managers in their own
right, rather than as passive participants who merely agree
to the management parameters defined by the government. The
Tanzanian experience has shown that community-based forest
and woodland management can be an integral part of
initiatives that seek to improve governance over natural
resources by improving accountability and by democratizing
decisionmaking at the local level. |
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