Concerts and Global Agreements Won’t Solve Land Degradation

LAST weekend, the United Nations celebrated the end of its ‘International Year of Desertification’ with a pop concert in the desert featuring Jean-Michel Jarre.

But like Jarre’s music, the concept of desertification is rather passé. Indeed, it is time to lay the idea – and the policies predicated upon it – to rest.Africans are often painted as victims of Western policies – in need of saving through global agreements and other top-down approaches.In fact, most of the economic and environmental problems from which they suffer – such as land degradation – are actually unforeseen consequences of government mismanagement.As the experience of Tanzania shows, such problems are best resolved from the bottom up, by the people who know best.Protagonists of the idea of desertification claim that as rural populations expand, they over-farm and over-graze the land, converting woodlands and grasslands into denuded and increasingly unproductive landscapes.In sub-Saharan Africa, the combination of pressing socio-economic problems and a high proportion of arid and semi-arid lands has meant that desertification has become the standard explanation for a wide range of environmental changes and threats.While land degradation is a fundamental social and environmental challenge in Africa today, the problem is not quite as desertification proponents claim.People are not doomed to self-destruction just because they lack direction from central planners.Quite the opposite.In the fifty-seven years since Aubreville coined the term “desertification”, researchers have shown that many local communities around the world are fully capable of managing the land sustainably without top-down intervention.By contrast, when the state has imposed itself, often the results have been catastrophic.When faced with a collectively valuable but depletable resource, groups often make rules which impose shared limitations or regulations on use.Many African pastoralists, for example, own their pastures in common but have an array of mutually agreed rules about how and when to use these lands – they are not simply open and unregulated.By contrast, when groups of people destroy the resources they depend on, it is often because they lack the rights to regulate their local lands and environment.Without property rights, people lack the incentive to develop collective rules and regulations because they cannot enforce them.In Africa, the colonial era witnessed the transfer of most valuable resources, including land, from local ownership to government control.After independence, these policies were maintained, so rural communities remain dispossessed of their lands and important biological resources such as woodland and wildlife.An estimated 500 million rural Africans have weak or unclear land rights: often they are effectively squatters on public lands owned by governments.This insecurity of land tenure is a central force behind many modern tragedies of resource degradation and depletion.Africa’s environmental problems are thus intrinsically linked to the lack of rights that local communities and individuals have over the management, use and regulation of land they depend on.As a result, land tenure reform is now centrally placed on Africa’s economic and environmental policy agenda.Many countries have passed new laws and policies in the past decade and some, such as Tanzania and Uganda, have strengthened important aspects of customary and community land rights.Tanzania has been particularly progressive, providing for land rights to be held and exercised by rural communities, rather than requiring that all lands be divided up individually.This is important because the traditional collective ownership of forests and rangelands can only be supported when groups are able to formalise their rights legally.In Tanzania, this enables communities to secure ownership of forests, for example, through their locally elected village governments.Within the last ten years, land and forestry reforms have enabled over 1 100 villages to take responsibility for over two million hectares of forest as new community forest reserves.In one part of northwestern Tanzania, community-based forestry has led to the resurrection of traditional conservation practices and the rehabilitation of over 300 000 hectares of degraded land.As a result of this widespread restoration in an area formerly known as the Desert of Tanzania, communities are now able to harvest an array of valuable products from their woodlands, such as timber, fruits and medicinal plants.These are estimated to generate $14 in per capita monthly income for local forest users, in a region where the average individual cash expenditure is just over half as much.Such efforts are central to addressing rural poverty in the tropics, as well as biodiversity conservation.Recent estimates suggest that about 370 million hectares of forests in developing countries – about 22 per cent of the total forest in these countries – are owned and managed by local communities, an area equal to the amount of land set aside in public reserves.Unfortunately, reforms ostensibly intended to strengthen local rights to lands and resources are often too weak or poorly implemented.Central government bureaucrats have strong incentives to limit local rights and maintain control over valuable natural resources.But rural communities have the knowledge, the incentives, and the adaptability to solve many of Africa’s most pressing environmental problems – if only they were given the rights and opportunities to do so.* Fred Nelson has worked on conservation and rural development in east and southern Africa for over eight years.He is currently an independent researcher and consultant based in northern Tanzania.Indeed, it is time to lay the idea – and the policies predicated upon it – to rest.Africans are often painted as victims of Western policies – in need of saving through global agreements and other top-down approaches.In fact, most of the economic and environmental problems from which they suffer – such as land degradation – are actually unforeseen consequences of government mismanagement.As the experience of Tanzania shows, such problems are best resolved from the bottom up, by the people who know best.Protagonists of the idea of desertification claim that as rural populations expand, they over-farm and over-graze the land, converting woodlands and grasslands into denuded and increasingly unproductive landscapes.In sub-Saharan Africa, the combination of pressing socio-economic problems and a high proportion of arid and semi-arid lands has meant that desertification has become the standard explanation for a wide range of environmental changes and threats.While land degradation is a fundamental social and environmental challenge in Africa today, the problem is not quite as desertification proponents claim.People are not doomed to self-destruction just because they lack direction from central planners.Quite the opposite.In the fifty-seven years since Aubreville coined the term “desertification”, researchers have shown that many local communities around the world are fully capable of managing the land sustainably without top-down intervention.By contrast, when the state has imposed itself, often the results have been catastrophic.When faced with a collectively valuable but depletable resource, groups often make rules which impose shared limitations or regulations on use.Many African pastoralists, for example, own their pastures in common but have an array of mutually agreed rules about how and when to use these lands – they are not simply open and unregulated.By contrast, when groups of people destroy the resources they depend on, it is often because they lack the rights to regulate their local lands and environment.Without property rights, people lack the incentive to develop collective rules and regulations because they cannot enforce them.In Africa, the colonial era witnessed the transfer of most valuable resources, including land, from local ownership to government control.After independence, these policies were maintained, so rural communit
ies remain dispossessed of their lands and important biological resources such as woodland and wildlife.An estimated 500 million rural Africans have weak or unclear land rights: often they are effectively squatters on public lands owned by governments.This insecurity of land tenure is a central force behind many modern tragedies of resource degradation and depletion.Africa’s environmental problems are thus intrinsically linked to the lack of rights that local communities and individuals have over the management, use and regulation of land they depend on.As a result, land tenure reform is now centrally placed on Africa’s economic and environmental policy agenda.Many countries have passed new laws and policies in the past decade and some, such as Tanzania and Uganda, have strengthened important aspects of customary and community land rights.Tanzania has been particularly progressive, providing for land rights to be held and exercised by rural communities, rather than requiring that all lands be divided up individually.This is important because the traditional collective ownership of forests and rangelands can only be supported when groups are able to formalise their rights legally.In Tanzania, this enables communities to secure ownership of forests, for example, through their locally elected village governments.Within the last ten years, land and forestry reforms have enabled over 1 100 villages to take responsibility for over two million hectares of forest as new community forest reserves.In one part of northwestern Tanzania, community-based forestry has led to the resurrection of traditional conservation practices and the rehabilitation of over 300 000 hectares of degraded land.As a result of this widespread restoration in an area formerly known as the Desert of Tanzania, communities are now able to harvest an array of valuable products from their woodlands, such as timber, fruits and medicinal plants.These are estimated to generate $14 in per capita monthly income for local forest users, in a region where the average individual cash expenditure is just over half as much.Such efforts are central to addressing rural poverty in the tropics, as well as biodiversity conservation.Recent estimates suggest that about 370 million hectares of forests in developing countries – about 22 per cent of the total forest in these countries – are owned and managed by local communities, an area equal to the amount of land set aside in public reserves.Unfortunately, reforms ostensibly intended to strengthen local rights to lands and resources are often too weak or poorly implemented.Central government bureaucrats have strong incentives to limit local rights and maintain control over valuable natural resources.But rural communities have the knowledge, the incentives, and the adaptability to solve many of Africa’s most pressing environmental problems – if only they were given the rights and opportunities to do so. * Fred Nelson has worked on conservation and rural development in east and southern Africa for over eight years.He is currently an independent researcher and consultant based in northern Tanzania.