| In this Chapter: | |
| A. Systems of civil governance | |
| B. The origins of forest management | |
A. Systems of civil governance
1. Early days
There is a long history of settlement in the well-watered fertile areas between Lake Victoria and the western Rift Valley (Sutton 1990). The settlements thrived, cultivating several staple crops, including bananas. Specialist cattle keeping in the fine grassland areas balanced the varied agriculture, and oral traditions reveal much inter-movement around the lakes.
The Masaka to the Rakai Sango Bay area was at the southern extent of the Buganda Kingdom in the late 1800s. The largely banana-based Buganda culture came into contact with the Ankole-Bahima (Uganda) and Karagwe (Tanzania) pastoralists, and the Haya chiefdoms (Tanzania) as one traveled south and west (see Map 2). The Minziro chiefdom was known as Buganda-Kyaka, perhaps acknowledging the mixture of people inputs since Kyaka is a town on the Kagera River. The border area was in a state of flux and not a peaceful environment, as early German accounts of Bukoba illustrate: “Emin Pasha reached Bukoba on 19 October 1890, where local chief Mukotani complained of piratical raids by the Buganda. The Germans introduced measures to stop gun running across the Uganda border. Emin’s successor in Bukoba, Captain Langheld, in 1892 rescued women and children fleeing from civil wars in south Uganda.” By 1900 civil administration was widely established in Bukoba and across the border in Uganda. The road through Mtukula was in existence.
The Haya chiefdom ruled Minziro, and German colonialism maintained many elements of such local rule. The Bukoba area was part of a larger zone including the districts of what are now Rwanda and Burundi. The First World War ceded Rwanda-Burundi to the Belgians and what is now Tanzania to the British as Trust Territories. Bukoba was a district center under the Lake Province with a capital at Mwanza. There was a district forest officer at Bukoba from the early 1920s.
2. Uganda today
The Rakai district was formed in the 1970s during the Amin regime but was previously part of Masaka in the Buganda Region. The advent of the new government in 1986 brought in stronger district-level government with elected civil society management starting with the formation of Resistance Councils (RCs). These were established from the village level (RC1) through the parish (RC2), sub-county (RC3), county (RC4), and district (RC5) levels. The promulgation of the new constitution in 1995 changed the nomenclature to Local Councils (LCs), but the same administrative units were retained, with increased decentralized authority.
Uganda’s Environmental Management Statute of 1995 provided for Environmental Committees at LC1, LC3, and LC5 levels, with a specialist environmental officer assigned to the district. Uganda now has a strongly decentralized model of governance, although control of major forests continues to be vested in national authorities (a topic of continued grievance). The sub-county (LC3) is the lowest level of service delivery (i.e., there are extension officers); the parish and village (LC2 and LC1, respectively) levels deal with local community issues.
3. Tanzania today
Tanzania (total area: 945,000 km2) is divided into 22 regions, led by regional commissioners. Regions are divided into districts under the political leadership of district commissioners. The head of the Civil Service at the district level is the district executive director who works under the district council, which is composed of elected district councillors. The district is subdivided into divisions and each division is subdivided into wards administered by a ward executive secretary (Mtendaji Kata). The wards are composed of villages that have as a government employee a village executive secretary (Mtendaji wa Kijiji) who works with the guidance of the elected village government and chairman. The village executive officers are the local development agents, working with the strong support of the ward executive secretary.
In terms of resource management, districts and lower organs are required to set up environmental committees (unlike in Uganda, where the environmental law to give teeth to such committees has yet to be finalized). Village environmental committees, and under them resource user groups, are instrumental in resource management.
B. The origins of forest management
Prior to colonization, forests were used communally on an open-access basis, although privileges were extended—primarily to some forest products. Chieftanship had the right of gifting land—including land still covered in forest. Forest management in Uganda began with the British colonial government establishing the Forestry and Scientific Department in 1898, and in 1900 the first forest regulations prohibited logging without a license (except for “native domestic use”). Both German and British colonial administrations rapidly established systems of forest management including utilization [see Schnabel (1990) for Tanzania and Hamilton (1984) for Uganda]. The British administration in both countries set out the basis for forest management with an emphasis on establishing reserves—excluding local community use.
Forest policy in Uganda started in 1929, emphasizing environmental factors. Subsequent policies (in 1948, 1970, and 1988) oscillated between environmental benefits and production of goods for economic benefit. Formal gazettement and forest border demarcation started in 1932. Policy was backed with law through Forest Ordinances and later the Forest Act. The very outdated Forest Act of 1965 is still in force although new policies and laws are under active preparation. The current law has provided for central forest reserves, local forest reserves, and village forest reserves. (Sango Bay forests were always considered as central reserves.)
In Uganda the Minziro Forests were first exploited by the Public Works Department (PWD) and then leased to Sango Bay Estates in 1933, for timber extraction. In the 1950s the forests were reestablished as central forest reserves, under the administration of the Forest Department; Sango Bay Estates was still licensed to extract timber—specifically, podo. In the early 1960s a management plan was established, but with little information, and little comment on boundaries. Sango Bay Estates continued to log until the expulsion of Asians by the Idi Amin regime in the 1970s. The government then took over the logging, but the Tanzania border war subsequently stopped all efforts.
Both the Tanzania and Uganda sides of the forest provided a huge amount of timber, mainly podo. Early colonial ventures (first the British and later Asian companies) set up major sawmills with railway extraction systems. Later tables detail this activity in Uganda. The Tanzania sawmills fed timber to Bukoba and Mwanza. In Uganda much timber went by steamer out of a specially constructed pier in Sango Bay across Lake Victoria to Kisumu and on to Mombasa and Europe. Masaka and Kampala’s urban demands were met by second quality timber.
Timber trade and production policies in MSBF
There was one timber-producing belt in the Lake Victoria Zone between Bukoba and Entebbe: the low swampy ground fringing the lake, which had patches of thick forest. The exploitation of these forests was greatly accelerated during the period 1939–45 when large quantities of timber were needed for the armies in Africa and the Middle East (see Ford 1955). It is not known when the exploitation of the Sango Bay forests began, but by 1912–13 the Public Works Department of Uganda was operating in the Kaiso section of the Minziro Forests. PWD was given another 3,000 acres of Minziro in 1923. The department ceased operation in 1931. Its allowable annual extraction was 60,000 cu. feet (1,698m3) of Podocarpus gracilior (known commonly podo, which was the main economic constituent of these forests) and about the same quantity of other woods, for a period of 24 years (Republic of Uganda 1951). In 1919, the Chief Forestry Officer of Uganda reported an earlier survey of Minziro6 forest stating the availability of Podocarpus gracilior, of 3 ft. or greater in diameter, to be 3.5 million cu. ft. If this were true, then 60,000 cu. ft. extraction per year would take some 60 years. In 1940 the amount of podo cut was 144,449 “1/4 girth logs.” “This was 3 times as much as in 1939 and 18 times as much as in 1938,” illustrating the impact of war demand. “The podo was felled in the Minziro Crown forests where mature supplies are nearly exhausted, and regeneration will not be exploitable for many years,” said Conservator of Forests in the Annual Report for the Forest Department for the year 1940, published by the Government Printing Office in Entebbe. It’s worth noting that concern was raised as early as 60 years ago on the decline of podo.
In 1948, Sango Bay Estates Ltd. produced 2,291 cubic m. of sawn podo timber from its leasehold forest. Podo production in 1950 was 2,203 cu. m., valued at pounds sterling 6,901. Later off-takes are summarized in Figure 1. In 1957 an enumeration of the Sango Bay forest was started to ascertain the extent to which the podo was regenerating. Preliminary analysis of field data indicated that there was a fair quality of young podo regeneration in 1957. It is that regeneration, noted in 1957—the 15–20 cm. dbh. recruitment class—that is being harvested now.
The “1970 wars” coupled with the little resource left in overharvested timber stands led to the eventual demise of commercial logging. However, intense and nonregulated local pitsawing pressure, going after ever-smaller girth classes of podo, continued to deplete the forest. After cutting, smaller logs (c. 15 cm. dbh.) would be carried out of the forest so that there would be no evidence of pitsawing and camping in the forest.
In 1993, the Government of Uganda made a series of Cabinet-level administrative decisions about forest conservation and management. These included the decision to divide the closed forests into nature reserves, buffer zones, and logging zones; and the decision to ban, on a temporary basis, all timber harvesting, pending a detailed inventory of timber resources throughout the country. Prior to the ban, timber harvesting had been on the rise, with decreasing ability to regulate and control off-take. In the Rakai District there were several licensed timber dealers, each with four cross-cut saws. There was no legal tree limit; the only limitation was what a saw could cut in a month. The concept of a Department of Forestry hammer being used to mark legal trees stopped in the 1970s, and in theory there were no data on timber cut except when a movement permit was issued to a licensed dealer. Most demand was in Kampala, the booming capital. This deteriorating situation led to the ban, which was temporary. Budongo reopened logging in 1995, and Kalinzu in 1998. The Sango Bay Forest is still “closed.”
This ban had a limited effect, as there was little ability to police it. Local evidence suggests that the ban on legal timber in Uganda triggered more harvesting of trees on the Tanzania side of the Minziro-Sango Bay forests in order to meet the heightened demand for timber in Uganda. By 1997, the timber volumes in Tanzania had been overharvested to the extent that smaller diameters (as low as 15 cm. for podo) were being harvested. The pressure also resulted in Ugandan dealers moving illegally cut Ugandan timber (as head-loaded sawn planks or small logs) through the open borders into the Tanzanian forest. There it was “hammer stamped” and so became legal, and could be exported back to Uganda as legal timber, via border posts.
There was no corresponding ban or reciprocal action in Tanzania until 1998 when the Bukoba District Council, at the request of the Minziro village councils, undertook to halt timber harvesting until inventories were undertaken. The conservation and sustainable use awareness raised by the Cross-Borders Project village-level site planning process triggered this decision. The Bukoba District Council has managed the Minziro forest reserve on behalf of the central government since 1997, when the regional administration was reduced. The regional forest officer controlled the forest in the past, issuing felling licenses to all requests with no quota, logging coupe, or monitoring process. It was literally an “open license” affair. In both forests podo was the great majority of trees cut—Maesopsis was a distant second choice. Podo was increasingly seen as a high quality furniture wood, with a high market price.
In December 1999, the CBBP hosted the first cross-borders “Good Neighbours” meeting between district officials including district commissioners. Cross-Borders biodiversity management was on the agenda. The meetings brought together key sectors that are relevant to conservation and sustainable development on both sides of the border, including immigration, trade, revenue authority, livestock, agriculture, security systems, natural resources, and the environment. The meetings discussed, among other things, the need to control and regulate timber movement across the borders. While Ugandan officials acknowledged that much timber was moving from Tanzania into Uganda, they also noted that the timber was allowed to enter the country without restrictions. The meeting brought about a common understanding of regulating agencies across the borders, and steps to implementing collaborative moves to control movement of illegal timber. Tanzania clarified the timber export procedures, which had not been followed in practice. Results to date indicate a positive impact as the amount of timber transiting the border has decreased. Field patrols suggest that the number of illegal pitsaw sites has decreased significantly.
Tanzanian authorities at the district level have requested timber movement to Uganda to be temporarily restricted. Forestry management has approved a complete ban of pitsawing in the forests, pending the harmonization of logging policies and harvesting regimes. The establishment and strengthening of village environment committees (VECs) has brought the responsibility of controlling illegal pitsawing to the level of the communities. The VECs have been facilitated, and trained through various meetings to be the functional organ of the village to promote issues that link to environment conservation and sustainable development within the village and adjacent forest. These activities focus on the forest issues, village health, ex situ conservation and other related matters.
It is evident that the rural communities derived limited benefit out of the timber trade chain in the past—primarily through providing labor to saw and carry planks. Most timber logged was of limited legality and royalty payments to the district and central governments were minimal. In 1997, for example, CBBP planning staff saw on one day more stacked timber that was awaiting transport than had been declared for royalties over the past few years.
The Cross-Borders Biodiversity Project continues to facilitate dialogue on management issues between the two countries, by bringing together the district partners on both sides of the border to discuss and plan both timber harvesting and the long-term requirements of management of the forests. Stakeholders to changing circumstances include winners and losers. Losers include the timber dealers—an awareness meeting in Uganda brought together at least 30, all of whom with an agenda to reopen logging as soon as possible. This ban continues today in the Sango Bay forest. Increased project-supported patrolling in Sango Bay shows the continuation of illegal cutting. It also is important to note that the reduction of old trees reduces nest and feeding sites and has considerable knock-on impact on biodiversity. Regulation has therefore major implications for biodiversity as well as incomes for people and district authorities.
Forests in Tanzania are managed within several categories, bearing general similarity to the set-up in Uganda:
The Bukoba District has all four types of forest. The Minziro forest reserve is a central government forest reserve under the Forest and Beekeeping Division (FBD), in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism. Up to 1997 the forest was managed “in trust” for the government by the regional natural resources officer under the previous Regional Development Directorate. The managerial role of regional administrations ceased to exist from 1997, and was transferred to further-empowered district governments. Regional Development Directorate became a smaller advisory Regional Administrative Secretariat. The responsibility of managing the Minziro forest reserve (equipped with only two forest guards for enforcement) was given to the Bukoba District Council in 1998.
Like in Uganda, the Tanzanian forest sector is undergoing a process of institutional change, with central government divesting much activity to newly empowered agencies. The new (1998) National Forest Policy, the National Forest Programme, and the developing Forest Bill call for forest agencies to manage forest resources and forest sector programs on behalf of the central government. In general, greater powers of decentralization taking place in Tanzania suggest that the Bukoba District Council could become such a forest agency, once council members show the capacity to manage. Tanzania, again as in Uganda, is empowering local communities to have a greater role in managing forest resources through community and joint forest management mechanisms. Unfortunately neither the decentralization process nor the joint forest management mechanisms have moved sufficiently to allow full community participation in forest management.
C. Past transboundary activity 1898–1998
There was road traffic from Uganda to Tanzania through Mtukula from at least 1910, and lake-based traffic since before 1900, so there was formal and informal interaction in terms of administration, trade, and missionary processes. Local people themselves had informal interactions, largely through marriage, trade, and illegal trade—in many cases, smuggling. Cross-boundary meetings did take place—district commissioners and police officers organized security meetings and occasional revenue collection meetings. It is likely that cross-border issues such as Bahima pastoralist movements were discussed, as there were often disease problems prohibiting such movement (e.g., rinderpest, foot and mouth disease).
The establishment of the East African Common Services Organisation (EACSO) in 1948 with unified forest and agricultural research services may also have led to joint activity. (Note that botanical collection through the East African Herbarium was not cross-border. Early collections at Minziro were all by the Tanganyika silviculturalists (e.g., John Proctor in the 1950s and 1960s). Ugandan forest officers collected in Sango Bay.
Independence (1961 in Tanzania and 1962 in Uganda) was not to change the pattern of governmental interaction very much. Customs and Immigration agencies, in fact, increased their bureaucracy. However, EACSO grew eventually into the East African Community (EAC) with more interaction—among Posts, Railways and Harbours, Customs, Airways, and even Courts of Appeal.
Despite the presence of EAC, we have not been able to trace evidence of specific cross-border resource management. Utilization, however, did include Ugandan hunting companies being allocated hunt tourism blocks in Ibanda and further south to Biharamulo and Burigi Game Reserves. Moving from hunting to timber, did Minziro wood go to Uganda and on to Europe? A harder search of customs documents may show what happened. In any event, however, the growth of cross-border conflict with the first incursions to Uganda and subsequent invasions of Bukoba District (see Box 6) would have prevented all interaction from 1971 to 1985.
An earlier GEF biodiversity project (“Institutional Strengthening for the Conservation of East African Biodiversity 1992–96”) looked at issues of learning lessons on decentralization across the border. A group of Ugandan environmentalists visited Bukoba to look at Tanzania’s pattern of governance structures at the regional and district levels, followed by division, ward, and village levels. (Ugandans found it all too complex with excessive layers of bureaucracy—a view later shared by Tanzanians, who dismantled much of the regional layer and strengthened the districts). This was followed by a series of cross-border meetings that were conducted under the auspices of the district commissioners of the seven districts bordering Uganda and Tanzania. These meetings brought in various heads of government departments that have impact on biodiversity. They included politicians, and officials of veterinary, immigration, customs and trade, agriculture, natural resources, and environmental agencies. These brought common understanding of cross-border linkages and collaboration.
The Cross-Borders Project strengthened transboundary initiatives in the area. This started during project planning, in 1997, when a cross-borders meeting was held in Mtukula on the boundary. The Bukoba district council chairman—an elderly gentleman who had lived all his life in Bukoba—had never been to Uganda. It was like a school outing to him: “They are just like us,” he said. Other regional natural resource management projects have less direct input in transboundary issues. The World Bank–GEF “Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project” has components at the national level on both sides of the border (such as wetland productivity monitoring).
6. Note that the Ugandan authorities referred to the forest as Minziro Forest—certainly up to the Second World War.