Chapter V. Analysis of Current and Future TBNRM Processes in the Minziro-Sango Bay Forests—Do They Have Value?

A. The socioeconomic context

This case study is about the single TBNRMA of the Minziro-Sango Bay Forests, both of which are central government reserves. Reserve policy has historically (for almost 100 years) and nearly completely excluded people from resource management and legal utilization of forest-based resources. This exclusion makes it less easy for us to consider the socioeconomic implications of TBNRM, as most such activity would have been illegal in the reserve context. Until the new Forest Acts are approved, the legality of people’s use of forest reserve products remains unclear. However, some generalized statements can be made. TBNRMAs are of two types:

• The larger formal protected areas such as parks and reserves, where people are excluded; and
• The community-based natural resource management area. These again may have several categories:
  • The large generalized communal area, typified by cross-border pastoralist usages; and
  • The smaller community based natural resource management area, which may occur on its own—or be part of a larger TBNRMA. An example would be the tourism-based group ranch/wildlife management areas around Amboseli, such as Longido in the Kilimanjaro Heartland (see the companion case study in this volume).

This MSBF case study is based on the protected area concept, with the PAs being forest reserves. In this case, communities were peripheral to resource management processes, and PA resources were peripheral to mainstream rural development. Consequently there is no socioeconomic information to discuss. However, the MSBF site does have elements of the community resource linkage; in pastoralist communities this linkage is illegal and transboundary in some cases. There also is potential for this community scenario in linking communities and natural resource management within the framework of transboundary ecotourism.

General points can be made:

• The MSBF area was at the border tension zone of major ethnic groups (Buganda, Ankole, Karagwe, and Haya) and along the border dividing major cultural groups (pastoralist versus banana culture cultivators) (see Map 3). The area was one of conflict as communities were expanding and retreating.
• Once the forests were gazetted, people were legally excluded, and presumably their only benefits were through wage employment in the sawmill and sugar estate processes.
• The settled agricultural/rural communities had little beyond forest resource–based transboundary interaction.
• The pastoralist Bahima populations had a seasonal cross-border movement, and used the grassland areas around the forest. Fires and forest edge degradation led to conservation conflict.
• The 1970–80 border war between Tanzania and Uganda greatly reduced cross-border interaction and such interaction has only been slowly rebuilt as trust and acceptance have increased.
• TBNRM processes are now project based, although the project philosophy is to facilitate local institutions to interact, not replace such institutions. TBNRM processes are increasingly at the village level.
• As people increasingly become involved in resource management, i.e., through joint or community forest management processes, they will automatically be engaged in TBNRM—as the resource is a transboundary one. This is already happening as the fuelwood ban in Tanzania has led to many people collecting fuelwood from Ugandan forests.

B. The political context

The Regional Overview in this volume stresses the importance of the political process in ensuring successful TBNRM activity. This has been an extremely important part of CBBP. The project and its partners have engaged in the policy process that provides an enabling environment for forest conservation—both nationally and in a transboundary context. Indeed this forms a major part of the project’s objectives.

The Cross-Borders Project has involved political leadership at all stages of preparation and implementation. Major milestones on the way were the “project launches” at national and district levels. The launches were media presentations of the project’s goals and ambitions, with opening statements by ministerial and district leadership. Traditional displays—(including forest products) and dancing led to extensive television coverage. Political commitments were made by project-implementing authorities, by leaders, and by communities. Coverage was in vernacular as well as in national languages. Launches required considerable preparation in terms of raising awareness. All of this has led to a great feeling of local ownership of the project. Launches at the Sango Bay and Minziro sites involved cross-border presence. To cement cooperation senior leaders chair project steering committees at site levels and national levels. Communities are members of these committees. Village governments and consequently village politics are important parts of rural decision making. The project has fostered activity at the village level and within village constituent groups such as women. (This latter aspect is partly helped by the fact that project field staff in both Tanzania and Uganda are women.)

Politics is more than meetings—it is the outputs that count. CBBP has been involved with district decision-making processes, and in cooperative processes in both sites. For example in the Rakai district CBBP hosts monthly meetings of the donor-NGO-government partnerships in the natural resource sector. District by-laws and land-use policy guidelines are important targets for the project.

Politicians approve policies, and CBBP has been involved in policy analysis process and putting this before decision makers. Policies are increasingly supportive of conservation and especially community involvement in conservation. Politicians are dependent, however, on popular support and can only support conservation when it is seen to lead to local (voter-level) gains. Where there is no “win-win” situation political support often dwindles. Gains for people in the MSBF area will be access to sustainable use of timber. That depends on a management plan process and accelerated Joint Forest Management (JFM) and Community Forest Management (CFM) agreements. These require inputs from both national and district/local activities. The need for CBBP intervention is clear.

Finally regional politics are important—with the EAC playing a pivotal role. The project and EAC have a two-way relationship—the project works through the EAC to further regional cooperation. The EAC promotes the project as an example of cooperation in the field of natural resource management.

C. The conservation context

Several conservation issues emerge from this case study. Below we look at the overall state of forest biodiversity conservation in each country, at the specific state of Minziro-Sango Bay Forest Reserves and environs, and include an analysis of value-added to conservation through a TBNRM Approach.

1. National forest conservation issues

It is widely acknowledged that forest conservation in Uganda was at an all-time low in the early 1990s. The cabinet demanded reform (leading to the logging ban, the decision to create nature reserves, need for improved royalty collection, and so on). New policies, new laws to allow policy to be implemented, and new forest programs with new conservation and strategy processes are still being developed. Some of these measures are not easy to put in place, owing to the changing decision to decentralize and then re-centralize forest reserves. Some change, however, is taking place. There is a fully functional Community Forestry Unit in the Uganda Forest Department (UFD) headquarters and CFM is high on the agenda. Forestry as a sector is changing, with a process replacing the civil service department with a more autonomous Forest Authority.⁷ Note that Minziro is borrowing the skills of the Ugandan CFM Unit, as such skills are less available in Tanzania and Minziro is much closer to Kampala than to Dar es Salaam.

Tanzania is undergoing similar forest reforms, but more slowly and internally⁸—looking at changing into a Forest Agency with greater financial and operational freedom. Field situations, however, have been as bad as in Uganda, hindered by uncertain and fractured mandates and responsibilities for forest management in Tanzania. Two consultants for the Cross-Borders Project highlighted some of these discrepancies based on district and regional and national overlapping mandates for forestry. Tanzania’s new National Forest Policy (adopted in 1998) does set a strong agenda for biodiversity conservation and for people’s participation in such conservation and sustainable use. However, the new law and programs are still to be finalized, and preliminary versions are much weaker with regard to protecting biodiversity than the parent policy.

Both countries are moving in the same direction—placing greater focus on management planning, on biodiversity conservation, on people’s participation, and on broad governance and partnership. Both countries have some support from donors (such as GEF’s Cross-Borders Project) to help with program implementation. However, both countries have still got this difficult problem of balancing conservation (maintaining forest cover) and development (converting natural habitat to productive areas—e.g., agriculture). The ongoing debate over degazetting 3000 ha of Sese Islands natural forest for oil palms is a case in point in Uganda.

2. Minziro-Sango Bay Forest conservation issues

Overall the conservation status of Minziro and Sango Bay Forest Reserves has not been high in the past; this is due to both lack of capacity and lack of political will to manage the reserves more effectively for the benefit of both biodiversity and local community livelihoods. It is only the remoteness of the reserves, with relatively low human population densities around forest edges, that have allowed forests to survive as well as they did. Note that past overuse of podo timber led to internal degradation, but now gaps are filled and there is some regeneration. But as populations grow and resource and land pressures continue to increase, “forest health” will deteriorate even more—unless adequate management regimes are put in place. Resource use strategies have been little more than open access in the past. Now there are logging bans in place, pending the creation of better oversight and regulatory systems. However, as policing the ban is still difficult, and some illegal logging continues, an adequate conservation threshold has still to be reached. In the meantime, biodiversity is still being lost.

Conservation processes for MSBF see local communities as playing an increasing part in both seeking sustainable utilization and in protecting the resource itself. Both countries are moving toward empowering communities around MSBF, through Joint Forest Management and Community Forest Management techniques. However, final guidelines and criteria are still being developed at national levels (i.e., the enabling environment is not yet ready to allow this to happen). Local people themselves have stated their set of values from the forest, and they expect the JFM/CFM process to lead to a point where they can realize those values. Values include timber (podo once again being preferred), fish, basketry inputs, and so on. Management must seek ways to achieve this win-win solution, allowing access to resources in utilization blocks and limited access to core conservation zones.

The General Management Plan (GMP) is seen as a final product spelling out detailed management inputs and responsibilities for all partners—including JFM/CFM agreements. The GMP would include national work programs as well as TBNRM processes and related work program. CBBP has worked to develop agreements that GMPs are more than forest reserve documents. GMPs will address the totality of the forest-people interface, and therefore need to have inputs and agreements from rural community systems—e.g., at sub-district and district levels.

Finally, TBNRM has a goal of sustainable biodiversity conservation. From a GEF project perspective, these resources have considerable global as well as local resource significance. To what extent does Forest Reserve status provide long-term protection to such global biodiversity resources? Forest reserves can easily be degazetted at the ministerial level. CBBP is exploring for both Minziro and Sango Bay Reserves the possibility of upgrading the core zones to Nature Reserve status and thus giving them greater stability.

3. Determining whether there is added value in transboundary conservation

In the final analysis, has the TBNRM process adopted by CBBP helped in biodiversity conservation?

Both Uganda and Tanzania agree on the major symptoms of conservation breakdown and the root causes that allow this degradation to continue (see the Annex). Both countries agree on the pattern of intervention required to overcome those symptoms, and to address root causes. The Problem Analysis Tree in the Annex contains statements that are common to both countries (i.e., need for capacity building to address conservation), and also statements of threats that can be cross-border (such as fires and logging pressure). There is synergy in addressing common problems jointly with sharing skills and experiences. There also is an essential need to collaborate to overcome cross-border threats. Countries do share experiences as do districts, sub-district organizations, and people themselves. CBBP has seen this happen—with cook stoves, with biodiversity survey techniques, with sharing agricultural support ideas among villagers. CBBP is currently using Ugandan expertise in CFM to kick-start the process in Tanzania. Competition is a reality, countries like to know who is leading, and who is following. Our impression for the past three years is that leadership changes from country to country depending on the issue and the time.

Looking at all this evidence, we can firmly state that there is benefit and synergy at conservation levels through a TBNRM process.

7. This process takes place outside mainstream forestry, and is largely donor driven (in this case, Department for International Development—DFID), to the considerable concern of many foresters and district authorities. While there are many good changes being planned, Centre-District relations are still complex.

8. Part of this change process is funded by a World Bank International Development Association (IDA) credit and a GEF grant.