Political and Equity Considerations in Woodland Management in Kanyati Communal Area, Zimbabwe

Abstract

"This paper seeks to elaborate the factors determining the inconsistencies related to non-application and/or differential application of rules and controls among community members in a recently settled area. In the case study area context it emerged that there is a de facto management strategy adopted at the household and community levels, in the former case to act as insurance against possible depletion of community resources arid 7-1 to supply products that otherwise would not be available; in the latter case to ensure continued supply of resources from the communal woodland resource. The management strategy incorporates cultural forms of control and a project-imposed management strategy which fixed the community/political boundaries and created community resource control institutions. Households' control over their resources is tight except during the dry season when domestic livestock are not herded during which time appropriate measures are taken to protect the trees. Cultural forms of control are undermined by the absence of 'traditional' authority, short term residence in the area and antipathy to 'traditional' forms of religion. Community resource control institutions are lax and discretionary in their application of unwritten, vague but commonly understood rules and regulations to inhabitants of their locality although they are effective against those perceived to be outsiders. The rules and regulations entail the need to seek permission from elected resource overseers and/or Video chairs, not to ring bark trees,not to cut trees near river banks, and not to cut fruit trees. The sanctions that can be elected are extra work at the schools or paddocks or woodlots, imposition of a fine, or in the case of recalcitrants, eviction from the area. In some settlement schemes control of outsiders is a pernicious problem linked to claims on access by the outsiders, resource overpopulation in adjacent communal areas and commoditization of the resources."