Managing Africa's Tropical Dry Forests: a Review of Indigenous Methods

Dry__ » a review of indigenous methods Gill Shepherd 00009533 Overseas Development Institute ODI Agricultural Occasional Paper 14 Managing Africa's Tropical Dry Forests: a review of indigenous methods Gill Shepherd Overseas Development Institute A CIP Publication data record may be obtained from the British Library. ISBN 0-85003-139-7 (£/ Overseas Development Institute 1992 Published by the Overseas Development Institute, Regent's College, Inner Circle, Regent's Park, London NW1 4NS All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor stored electronically without the written permission of the publisher. Typeset in PostScript at the Overseas Development Institute Printed by the Russell Press Ltd, Nottingham Contents Preface 5 Part I 1 Introduction 7 2 Ownership of woodland 12 3 The creation of tenure through labour 16 4 Indigenous woodland management methods 16 5 Woodland management and the state 28 6 Woodland management and other change 30 7 Four woodland management projects: 33 Guesselbodi, Niger; Rawashda forest, Eastern Sudan; Bay Region, Somalia; Turkana rural development project, Kenya 8 Conclusions 36 Part II Bibliographic Summaries 41 Country Index 108 Annexes Characteristics of the Sahelian and Sudanian Zones 109 Supplementary French Bibliography 111 Preface A variety of sources were used for this work. For the ethnographic references, two major libraries had already been used in London for another Social Forestry literature review - that of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and that of the Royal Anthropological Institute at the Museum of Mankind, British Museum. Thirteen items from the material located for that study were relevant to this. Secondly, species, forestry and agriculture references - and the documents to go with them - were sought through two major databases: those of the CAB (Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux) and AGRIS, the FAO Forestry and Agriculture database. Librarians at the Science Library in London, the Oxford Forestry Institute library, and the Forestry library in Wageningen Netherlands were most helpful at this stage. Searches threw up large numbers of references of which most of the relevant ones were already in ODI. Nineteen new references were obtained from these databases. Most of the documentation came from the Social Forestry library at ODI, built up through the Social Forestry Network, whose members receive network papers and newsletters in return for sending copies of their own writing, or project documents from the projects on which they work. The fact is that management references of the kind sought are often to be found in the grey literature which ODI collects, rather than in the formally published sources which enter bibliographic databases. Seventy-nine of the references summarised here were already in this library. Three particular problems emerged from the searches; firstly, there are literally hundreds of species references for the chosen area which have nothing at all in them about either land tenure or indigenous management techniques; secondly, the ethnographic literature, while rich on tenurial arrangements, is poor on tree-species identification, and often on indigenous management as well; thirdly, it was unnerving, late in the survey period, to come upon Raison's work (1988) with its large francophone bibliography, and to discover how many of his references had not been thrown up by the supposedly multilingual databases already consulted. It is appended here to give it some circulation outside the francophone world, but the references within it could not by that stage be summarised or incorporated into the main work. This is a pity, but is unlikely to have materially affected the findings presented here. Finally, a word about the production of the summaries. First drafts were produced by the author with the assistance of Joe Watts, Althea Ifeka, and Daniel Blais, two foresters and two social scientists. In order for the material summarised to be as comparable as possible, the main author created a set of headings under which each summary was composed, so that 6 Managing Africa's Tropical Dry Forests the absence of information on particular topics could be noted as well as its presence, and comparative information on particular topics relatively easily collated. The aim was to make each entry 100 - 350 words depending on interest, with a longer entry for especially important items. Topics were as follows: 1. The physical conditions of the area concerned, such as rainfall and type of tree-cover. 2. Primary human economic activity, such as herding, maize cultivation, etc. 3. Tenure - including competing concepts such as those of the state and local bodies, or local groups and individuals. Information on common property resources comes in here. 4. The role of trees in the economic activities of the area, including more minor cash-generating activities such as charcoal making or the gathering of non-timber forest products such as gum, fruit or nuts. 5. The nature of management: practices, control measures, rule-making, and rule enforcing. 6. Adaptation to change - to worsening ecological givens, to changing government strategies, to new competing uses of the area. 7. Other, especially management proposals for the future. ( Or any other interesting material which does not fit into the above categories.) The final selection and editing of summaries, and the analysis made from them, was the work of the main author. The book was prepared for publication by Moira Reddick and Peter Gee. Part I 1. Introduction This occasional paper presents the results of an extensive literature search and analysis of indigenous forest management practices in dryland Africa. The impetus for the task came from several directions. Ever since the benchmark of the Eighth World Forestry Congress in 1978, a slow process of change in the thinking of forestry professionals has been going on. Where once their primary task was seen as the protection of forests and the maximisation of revenue for industry and the State, it has now become equally important to consider the dependence of rural people upon tree products and the effect upon them of forestry activities. Three factors lay behind the change. Firstly the oil price rises of the early 1970s made it clear that woodfuel was going to continue indefinitely to be the primary energy source of billions of rural people. Secondly it became apparent that the world's forests, which in earlier decades had been assumed to be an almost infinite resource, were rapidly disappearing, especially in drier areas. Thirdly, development thinking itself was increasingly concerned with the needs of the small producer. Tree-planting projects with farmers and villagers were initiated in many parts of the world, largely in response to these concerns. Often referred to as social or community forestry, many such projects made the establishment of village woodlots their first goal. Results have been very variable, however, particularly in Africa, which most concerns us here. It has gradually become clearer that rural people want to plant trees mainly on private, permanently owned land; and only where land in general is so short that there is no bushland or forest nearby from which tree-products may be taken without the trouble of growing them. In Africa in particular, these prerequisites currently rule out the likelihood of successful villager tree-planting projects in many areas, particularly the drier, less densely populated ones. Woodland and bushland, though dwindling, still cover millions of hectares and will continue to be used by the populations who live near them for most purposes for the foreseeable future. At the same time, plantations of exotic species have been less successful in dry areas than was expected. It is now clear (which it was not twenty years ago) that woodlots and plantations are unsuccessful in areas with less than 800mm of rainfall, except where trees can be irrigated (Lamprey 1986:125). 'Fast-growing' exotics grow scarcely faster under these 8 Managing Africa's Tropical Dry Forests conditions than the pre-existing vegetation and are outperformed by indigenous species in drought years. Managing woodland for fuelwood rather than establishing plantations becomes economic once plantation yields are below six cubic metres a hectare annually (Wormald 1984 6.3), a figure quickly reached if water is unavailable or plantations poorly managed. As a result, the low esteem in which bushland used to be held is giving way to the recognition that previous estimates of natural woodland productivity may have been too low (Jackson 1983:12) and that, even at low increment levels, there are millions of hectares to be exploited. Most indigenous arid zone trees and shrubs continue to grow even when browsed, burned and lopped, and more protection leads to much increased productivity. However, good rains for Sahelian tree-establish ment only occur every decade or two and woodlands tend to consist of large numbers of even-aged trees. If more young seedlings and saplings could be helped to survive until they were well-established, it has been estimated that such protection would be hundreds of times more effective in reafforesting drier areas than attempts to plant trees could ever be (Lamprey 1986:126). In the colonial period in Africa the simple low-cost management of large tracts of existing woodland was the main form of government forestry practised. (The main activities were boundary demarcation and boundary protection). After a thirty year hiatus from the 1950s to the 1980s, during which the raising of plantations for industrial uses took precedence, the pendulum has again swung back and natural woodland management has become the object of renewed interest, dry savanna woodland being a particular priority. However, much has changed since it was last tried. Africa's population has increased, while rainfall levels have decreased in the dry woodlands, intensifying competition for resources. Agriculture, for instance, has greatly expanded at the expense of pastoralism and woodland cover.

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