The political ecology of community based forest management in Suledo, Tanzania

Abstract

‘Participatory’ or ‘community based’ approaches to conservation and natural resource management have become increasingly popular over the last two decades. They have nowadays largely replaced, at least rhetorically, so called ‘exclusionary’ models. In Tanzania, this revision of ideas has led to a progressive new legal framework with an improved focus on devolution of authority and community rights. Consequently, Participatory Forest Management (PFM), of which Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) is one form, has spread rapidly throughout the country. This study applies a political ecology framework to the case of the Suledo forest community, one of the early examples of CBFM in Tanzania. Based on a variety of qualitative methods, it investigates participation, interests and power relations in and around Suledo, in order to be able to understand and explain the effects that CBFM has on the environment and the livelihoods of Suledo residents. Authority over Suledo has been exclusively devolved to the community; however, not all groups in Suledo are actively participating in the management of the forest. Many Suledo residents continue to lack a proper knowledge of CBFM, as transparency and accountability of forest management need to be improved. Findings suggest further that CBFM in Suledo had considerable positive effects on the condition of the forest and other environmental considerations. Concerning improved livelihoods and poverty reduction, however, the results are more ambiguous. CBFM in Suledo appears to have had the most favorable consequences for pastoralists. For other groups in Suledo it has clearly carried along significant restrictions, which resulted in negative livelihood impacts. Restrictions concern mainly access to land for agricultural activity. The thesis argues that these outcomes must be placed in the local context of a heterogeneous community, local institutions, politics, power relations, and social and ethnical group affiliations. Most prominently, the study indicates that the Masaai appear to be the most powerful group in the Suledo villages. They are seemingly able to steer and exert considerable control over governance issues, including an appropriation of many benefits of CBFM. These local realities are moreover embedded in larger networks of actors (e.g. the district and central government, donors) and their interests, as well as structures (e.g. legal framework, economic and political structures) which shape, support, contest, or even impede certain developments and thus determine the outcomes of CBFM in Suledo.