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Browsing Reports by Subject "Community Based forest management"

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    The Kilosa district REDD+ pilot project, Tanzania. a socio-economic baseline study
    (The International Institute for Environment and Development (UK), 2013) Kajembe, George C.; Silayo, Dos Santos A.; Mwakalobo, Adam B.S.; Mutabazi, Khamaldin
    Tanzania has decided to embark upon a national REDD programme to meet its obligations of managing its forests sustainably while responding to poverty reduction initiatives. As part of the REDD Readiness phase, nine pilot projects are being carried out in different areas of the country to draw lessons to assist in structuring a successful REDD+ in the future. The social and economic data of the costs and benefits of deforestation, forest degradation and emissions avoidance captured by this research programme will help in the development of the REDD+ policy and framework. This study was conducted in Kilosa District where the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), in collaboration with Tanzania Community Forest Conservation Network (MJUMITA), are implementing one of the pilots. The pilot aims to rehabilitate extensively threatened open access forests (on what is termed ‘general land’) by preparing proper land-use plans and setting Participatory Forestry Management (PFM) models in villages where this approach has never been practised. Five villages, three from the 16 villages in the designated pilot area and two villages that were chosen as controls, were selected for this study. Sixty questionnaires were administered in each village, and focus group discussions and resource person interviews conducted in each village to supplement information collected through the surveys. Results showed that more than 80 per cent of people in Kilosa depend on agriculture and forestbased resources for their livelihoods. Uses of the forest include harvesting wood for charcoal, firewood and timber, as well as a variety of non timber forest products (NTFPs). Unsustainable extraction contributes to degradation of forests in the area. As is the case in many areas in Tanzania, fuelwood is a major source of energy for cooking in the study villages with about 86 per cent of it being collected from forests around the household landscapes. Results further showed that although REDD+ is a new initiative in this area, 75 per cent of the people are aware of what REDD+ entails although they have contradictory perceptions of the ability of these initiatives to curb forest degradation. Results also showed that nearly the same proportion have an understanding of the role of forests in mitigating climate change, which indicates that the pilots’ awareness campaigns had a positive effect. Despite this achievement, however, 92 per cent of the people have not changed their attitudes regarding forest use. The analysis of the REDD architecture and payment mechanisms showed that both the government and the piloting NGOs are in favour of integrating Participatory Forestry Management (PFM) models – Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) on village land and Joint Forest Management (JFM) on state land – into REDD+. Such an approach avoids the establishment of parallel structures in natural resource management that would imply high transaction costs. But little has been achieved with respect to land-use planning and the introduction of PFM. The process of preparing and approving land-use plans is very time consuming and resource intensive. As a result, it has delayed the introduction of PFM models in many pilot villages. On the other hand, the national REDD pilot NGOs have not yet decided on the forms of compensation or payments in return for reducing deforestation in the area – this is the case for all pilot projects in the country. The study found that people were positive about a range of different compensation possibilities, including direct payments. People also considered the issue to be ‘business-as-usual’, however, similar to the attempts to implement many other conservation programmes that have ended up offering few incentives to communities. The issue will be further explored through follow-up exercises involving choice experiments. Executive summary 2 REDD+ Country Reports The study team learnt that carbon tenure is not clear in Tanzanian policy, including a lack of clarity over whether rights to carbon revenues will follow rights governing forests. However, it is assumed that forests under Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) are likely to offer better opportunities for community-level compensation under REDD, leading to the NGOs responsible for implementing the projects in the pilot area excluding state-owned forests. This approach can be considered destructive to state forests as these might then experience more encroachment and utilisation as a result of leakage. Therefore it is important that protected areas of different status, for example, nature reserves (national parks) and game reserves should be included under the National REDD+ framework. Preliminary analysis showed that compensating communities should be ‘result-based performance’ and that ‘result’ should be the amount of carbon. This observation was in line with the overriding concept of payments under REDD+, which are expected to be made only for changes that would not otherwise have taken place. This concept of ‘additionality’ is at the core of the REDD+ discussion and the development of international and national frameworks of REDD+ throughout the world. This mechanism is challenged, however, because many forest lands are left outside the project area, creating leakage possibilities. ‘Result-based’ also denies opportunities to communities with forests of high biodiversity value but low carbon value, which is the case for most Miombo forests, creating a serious challenge for the implementation of REDD+. Therefore funding REDD+ to enable practice-based compensation would probably be the most viable option.