"Everyone is becoming a forester": From state monopoly to participatory forest management in Sao Hill Forest, Tanzania, c.1990-2015

Hezron R Kangalawe,Sandra Swart

doi:10.17159/2309-8392/2021/v66n2a4

Abstract

In 2000, Sao Hill Forest, the biggest state-owned plantation in Tanzania, was forced to adopt "community forest management" - a paradigm usually adopted in protecting only natural forests. We hope to contribute to the scholarship on forest management by using this unusual case study - taken from plantation forests. Research on community or participatory forest management has focused on natural forests - but plantations offer different issues to consider. We argue that the state was compelled to adopt, but also adapt to the model of community management in order to fit a neo-liberal donor context while, on a practical level, protecting it from local environmental hazards. To contextualise this historical case-study, we explain why Sao Hill stagnated and then examine the survival strategies adopted by the managers at the plantation. We then explore the relationship of the forest project with the surrounding communities, highlighting different local and vernacular responses to what came to be understood as "community forest management". We use this case study to examine this idiographic application of community resource management, in order to demonstrate the real-world use of environmental history in informing current policy decisions.

Highlights

Participatory forest management has attracted a robust and largely favourable scholarship within forest sustainability studies because it is deemed to improve both forests and the livelihoods of the surrounding communities.1 The participatory or community management model has generated debate over its challenges, such as state or local corruption, or its viability for generating profit at village level.2 Communitybased Resource Management (CBRM) has paradigmatically challenged the “tragedy of the commons” narrative, propagated from 1968 by Garrett Hardin’s contention that whenever people are allowed free access to a natural resource, they compete in plundering it or allow its degradation, until the resource is exhausted
We analyse the specific form that “participatory forest management” took in the Tanzanian plantation forests. This has not been addressed previously by the key historians of forestry such as Thaddeus Sunseri6 and Brett Bennett.7. It is within this context of protecting forests and improving livelihoods of the surrounding communities that we explore a singular case study, which showcases the practical use of environmental history in informing policy decisions
This study focuses on plantation forests, whereas conventionally research on community forest management has concentrated on natural forests – but, as we will show, plantations offer different issues to consider like local employment, impacting on the relationship between plantation managers and communities

Summary

Introduction

Participatory forest management has attracted a robust and largely favourable scholarship within forest sustainability studies because it is deemed to improve both forests and the livelihoods of the surrounding communities. The participatory or community management model has generated debate over its challenges, such as state or local corruption, or its viability for generating profit at village level. Communitybased Resource Management (CBRM) has paradigmatically challenged the “tragedy of the commons” narrative, propagated from 1968 by Garrett Hardin’s contention that whenever people are allowed free access to a natural resource, they compete in plundering it or allow its degradation, until the resource is exhausted. Kangalawe and Swart – From state monopoly to participatory forest management it is estimated that it contributes US $ 2.2 billion per year to the economy of Tanzania, which is equivalent to 20% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).23 In this context, Sao Hill is an important historiographical case study in the environmental history of Tanzania because it demonstrates state intervention on large-scale – economically (as noted above) and literally (135, 903 hectares) – the land was customarily owned by villagers. The villages received road maintenance, school buildings and medical dispensaries, while the Sao Hill received community help in protecting the forest from fire, land encroachment and wood poachers These measures came at a time when the Ministry of Natural Resources admitted that the plantation forests lacked funds from the state or international donors to manage the plantation, let alone increase its productivity..

IV 5 Villages

Findings

Conclusion