The Sunday Mail
The coexistence of people with the environment has happened successfully with wildlife in Zimbabwe through Campfire.
The growing elephant population is now fueling human-wildlife conflicts in areas such as Tsholotsho, Hwange and Binga – Pictures: Believe Nyakudjara
During the course of this week I was confronted by some smarty pants questioning why the Zhuwao Brief wrote about elephants considering that I chair the board of the Forestry Commission.
His argument was simply that, as Zimbabweans, we have too much of a tendency to critique the areas that other people are involved in without critically analysing our own areas of responsibility.
He was right.
I should deal with the issue of tree and forest resources in Zimbabwe.
The Zhuwao Brief will address the issue of Zimbabwe’s tree and forest resources within the context of the current series of “Dialogues for an Empowered Society and a Growing Economy”.
The issue of Zimbabwe’s tree and forest resources will be ventilated according to a theme that the Zhuwao Brief borrows from the first paragraph of the Zim-Asset foreword by President Mugabe; namely that Zim-Asset “will be largely propelled by the judicious exploitation of the country’s abundant human and natural resources”.
The matter at hand is to propel Zim-Asset through judicious exploitation of Zimbabwe’s abundant human and natural resources.
This article focuses on the juxtaposition of Zimbabwe’s human and natural resources with specific focus on trees and forest resources.
How can trees and forests contribute to Zim-Asset? Where can trees and forests fit into the Zhuwao Brief’s current series of “Dialogues for an Empowered Society and a Growing Economy”?
We will start by borrowing from last week’s article on sustainable management of elephants. The success story of sustainably managing Zimbabwe’s elephants and wildlife is firmly located within the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (Campfire).
But before the Campfire story is told, it is necessary to contextualise the current situation of Zimbabwe’s tree and forest resources.
State of tree and forest resources
There is a view that as Zimbabweans, we are over-exploiting the nation’s tree and forest resources despite having a record of sustainably managing our wildlife resources.
The Forestry Commission submits there is unsustainable exploitation of our tree and forest resources, resulting in deforestation at the rate of more than 300 000 hectares per year.
Although the Forestry Commission continues with tree planting activities, the average rate of planting ten million trees per annum is woefully inadequate in light of the over-exploitation.
Zimbabwe’s tree and forest resources are also threatened by human settlement encroachment on both the plantations and the legislatively protected gazetted natural indigenous woodlands and forests.
The net depletion of Zimbabwe’s tree and forest resources can also be partly attributed to the growth of small holder flue cured tobacco production which has increased the demand for wood fuel.
This is made worse by the power shortages that require wood fuel to compensate for the inadequate supply of electricity.
People and communities live near and within tree and forest resources. There is a relationship between society and the tree and forest resources. There is need for people to co-exist with the environment.
The coexistence of people with the environment has happened successfully with wildlife in Zimbabwe through Campfire.
Consequently, this article seeks to understand why the success stories of Campfire are not resulting in the sustainable management of Zimbabwe’s tree and forestry resources.
Success of Campfire
The then Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management started Campfire after it became apparent that wildlife was being displaced by agriculture in privately-owned large-scale commercial farming areas and State-owned communal areas.
Research indicated that wildlife had both an economic and ecological comparative advantage compared to agriculture in Zimbabwe’s semi-arid range lands.
The process of changing land use from agriculture to wildlife involved two steps: devolving wildlife management to farmers, and scaling up the value and price of wildlife.
There was widespread expansion in the populations of wildlife and wildlife enterprises as a result.
Campfire provided a different perspective to natural resource management.
Communally-owned natural resources could be subjected to exclusion as opposed to being openly and freely accessible. This led to the realisation of value.
Consequently, Campfire can be viewed as social innovation in economic institutions to improve valuation, pricing and marketing distortions of wildlife.
Campfire’s success transferred issues of wildlife resource conservation from the exclusive realm of biology to the arena of socio-economics with the key issues being valuation systems, pricing theory, marketing strategy, institutional systems, political economy and natural resources management and governance.
Zimbabwe’s conservation biologists recognised and accepted that wildlife conservation was an output of socio-economic processes.
As such, they didn’t restrict or monopolise conservation to the biological field. Can the same be said for the way in which foresters view management and conservation of the country’s tree and forest resources?
Cash Value
There are several other principles that have guided the notion of Campfire as a social innovation.
Campfire is premised on an assumption that the institutional arrangements guiding resource use and allocation are dysfunctional in that they do not enable rational economic behaviour.
Rational economic behaviour requires that a person recognises that they must sustainably manage a resource if they are to continue deriving benefits from it.
Unfortunately, colonialism alienated people from their resources such that when Independence came, Zimbabweans viewed access to natural resources as a Christmas party. This was exacerbated by population increases against a backdrop of resources becoming critically low: Exploitation became unsustainable and massive conservation problems ensured.
Campfire’s emergence ensured wildlife and other resources would have cash value and benefits would go to the communities residing near the resource.
In this way, Campfire warranted that there were strong incentives to invest in growing the wildlife resources and ensuring that they were not overexploited.
These issues depended on high value and local management of the resource.
Campfire was premised on the Zimbabwean cultural notion which recognises that God-given natural resources are communal.
The notion of Campfire is deeply embedded in Zimbabwean culture. This institutional component of Campfire resonates with the norms, values and beliefs of the communities.
The notion of community norms, values and beliefs dovetailed perfectly with the shift of devolving management from central government to local government and communities.
This resulted in development of new institutions and institutional arrangements. Compliance to conservation rules was therefore enforced at the community level.
The Campfire concept was developed from a multi-disciplinary perspective with ecologists accepting that the issue of wildlife conservation was not just biological but required social scientists, social workers, economists and administrators.
Campfire was developed to operate according to twelve principles, and had a five stage implementation process.
Taking Campfire to trees, forests
Campfire has demonstrated that the redefinition of responsibilities and rights, and the devolution of management authority for natural resources is well-defined and advanced for wildlife in Zimbabwe.
Local communities are actively involved in managing wildlife resources, generation of value, and distribution of benefits.
Several fora have hailed Campfire as a success and it has been an example for many countries which have developed similar revenue-sharing schemes.
There are many observers who consider the Campfire concept and principles as applicable to sustainable management of tree and forest resources in general.
They submit that this model can be applied to a wide range of tree and forest resources.
They, however, argue that more knowledge is required about the institutional and commercial context of the users of tree and forest resources, as well as the type of technical, economic, institutional and political support required to ensure the Campfire concept can be appropriately deployed.
They submit that problems in applying Campfire to tree and forest resources relate to legal and policy frameworks that are not enabling to local management as well as inappropriate institutional structures.
Furthermore; there is a high degree of differentiation with respect to tree and forest resource use within communities. This is couple with the problems of defining the various tree and forest resources user groups.
It is proposed that, in identifying circumstances where Campfire may be applied successfully to tree and forest resources, there is need for economic, sociological, and ecological circumstances to be considered.
However, the elephant in the room for the application of the Campfire concept to the tree and forest resources is the perception of the low relative market value of tree and forest resources and their products.
The Zhuwao Brief will discuss the issue of value next time. #1980SoFarSoGood. Icho!
Patrick Zhuwao is chair of the Zhuwao Institute, an economics, development and research think tank focused on integrating socio-political dimensions into business and economic decision making, particularly strategic planning. He can be reached at [email protected]
