56. Jean, B. 1985. Secheresse et desertification au Mali. 2e partie: Perspectives. [Drought and desertification in Mali. Part 2: Perspectives.] Revue Forestiere Francaise 37(4):315-331, Chronique Internationale, Nancy, France. (In French.)
MALI The paper focuses on Mali as a whole. Rainfall deficits of 100 to 200 mm (average) and decreases in the water level of the Niger River of 50 to 60 cm have led to lower soil fertility, drying up of the forest cover, modification of the flora in the pasture lands and disappearance of wildlife species and erosion. Village forestry includes 250 to 300 ha of fuelwood plantations. The objective is to have individual families planting 10 trees per year around the houses.
57. Jelenic, N.E. and van Vegten, J.A. 1981. A pain in the neck: the firewood situation in south-western Kgatleng, Botswana. National Institute of Development and Cultural Research (NIR) Research Notes 5. University College of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana.
BOTSWANA The paper is concerned with southwestern Kgatleng, Botswana. Vegetation is a bushland-shrubland mosaic dominated by Acacia species and grass - a vegetation is derived from woodland dominated by Combretum and Digitaria by the burning, ploughing and grazing activities of man. Soil erosion is common, trees are often stunted and bush encroachment is serious. There is substantial labour migration, mainly of men, to Gaborone and South Africa. Most people live off communal land where they carry out mixed subsistence farming with crops and domestic animals.
The collection of domestic wood is carried out by women. The location of fuelwood collection is primarily governed by the sector of the village that the women live in: those from the east side of the village go only east to find wood. Children and old or sick women collect wood from nearer the village. Only dead wood is collected, and only from selected species, although these are becoming increasingly scarce. To discourage rule breaking within the groups that collect firewood, someone among them is selected for their law abiding qualities. Indigenous beliefs protect fruit trees, including Boscia species, which also produce shade and browse.
Between the two villages in the study, firewood supplies are much depleted and people now collect wood from outside their original sectors. Firewood collection rules are now not always adhered to by young people, and, during the last ten years, the distances walked to collect wood has doubled or tripled. The relatively high removal pressure induces a succession from Combretum spp., to thorn bush, to total denudation. There is also commercial firewood collection on this communal land. Boscia species are used for fuelwood, since they are now the only trees left at short distances from the village. The resource is becoming depleted because of over-grazing and the cutting of live trees for building materials and fuel.
58. Kenyatta, J. 1965. Facing Mount Kenya. Reprint edition. Random House, New York, USA.
KENYA The Kikuyu live on the east and south of Mount Kenya. They are settled agriculturalists and keep livestock. Land is inherited from father to son and every district has communal pastureland for livestock grazing. In addition to communal grazing arrangements, some public land is also preserved as sacred groves. These (often composed of Ficus natalensis) are usually on the tops of ridges and were the venue for meetings of clan elders and for communication with spirits and ancestors in the pre-Christian era. (They have in some cases thus become the present-day sites of churches and government buildings.)
59. Kerkhof, P. 1990a. Forest Land Use Project, Guesselbodi, Niger. Pp. 177 186, in Foley, G. and Barnard, G. (eds.). Agroforestry in Africa: a survey of project experience. Panos Institute, London, UK.
NIGER Rainfall in this area is about 500 mm per year, falling between May and September. The forest and nearby Niamey are on Niger's high plateau. The region of Guesselbodi forest is inhabited by Djerma farmers, and the semi-nomadic Fulani and Tuareg pass through with animals. The forest itself is uninhabited: it is a foret classee.
The forest is used for livestock grazing, honey and medicine collection, and contains important long-used livestock routes. It also supplies fuelwood for Niamey. It has declined 50 percent in 30 years. Only 3,000 of its 5,000 ha has any tree cover, and much of that is in poor shape. Various reforestation techniques have been tried, mulching and tillage being the most effective stimulants to improved growth.
Local people were initially uninterested in management and distrustful of the foresters. But their interest grew once the fuelwood cooperative was set up in 1987. It permitted the inhabitants of the nine local villages to harvest fuelwood and sell it to the cooperative, which in turn sold it to Niamey. Villagers could also cut and sell hay. In 1988, the latter earned about US$6,700.
The cooperative is still receiving a lot of project help and may not be financially or socially the best institution for local participation in forest management. Foresters show villagers which trees they may cut: (a) by marking trees to be preserved and (b) by handing out diameter-measuring tools which indicate the minimum size which may be cut. Villagers, however, still see the project as controlling the forest and their own role as obedient to the rules. Tuareg guards, with camels and armed with swords, guard 250 ha each and animals found in the area are impounded. Such a system has proved much cheaper than fencing, but still costs the project $130 a month for each guard.
Niamey, only 30 km away, has a population growth rate of 10 percent per year, with a current population of 700,000, 90 percent of whom rely upon fuelwood for biomass. The project is not commercially self-sustaining. Management costs cannot be met from the sale of woodfuel in Niamey, and the prospects for raising that price are negligible. Non-essential components of the project such as soil conservation and tree planting will have to be abandoned, reducing costs merely to guards' salaries in areas where regeneration is feasible. It is not clear whether such projects will ever be able to function without substantial financial inputs from outside.
60. Kerkhof, P. 1990b. Turkana Rural Development Project, Kenya. Pp. 161-170, in Foley, G. and Barnard, G. (eds.). Agroforestry in Africa: a survey of project experience. Panos Institute, London, UK.
KENYA The Turkana area of Kenya has an annual rainfall of 180-400 mm. The dominant species in the riverine forests are Acacia tortilis and A. eliator and, in the open rangelands, A. tortilis and Dobera glabra.
In recent years, drought and heavy animal losses have turned the Turkana, to some extent, into sedentary agriculturalists on the banks of the Turkwel River. The creation of a tarmac road from Nairobi into Turkana has also changed settlement patterns and exploitation of the environment.
Most of the area's rangeland is held communally by the Turkana, especially during the rainy season. During the dry season, much smaller household groups camp with their animals on their home bases (ekwar) which are segments of the riverine forest running along the banks of the river Turkwel. Apart from household management of their own ekwar, clan elders have always had a general responsibility for the open rangeland and its exploitation. It has been possible for the project to work with elders to ban charcoal export from the district and, in some areas, to manage the resource more elaborately. For instance, in the Loregum area, where the Acacia tortilis stocks were under intense pressure, new lopping rules restrict cutting to side branches, so that the dominant shoot can grow rapidly above goat browsing height. The result has been "spectacular regeneration of tens of thousands of young A. tortilis trees.
61. Kessler, J.J. 1990. Agroforestry in the Sahel and Sudan zones of West Africa. BOS Newsletter No. 20, 9(1):27-33.
REGIONAL An article which cautions against too naive an assumption that previous agroforestry systems in the southern Sahelian zones (300-600 mm) and the northern Sudanian zones (600-900 mm) offer exciting possibilities for the future. Even trees with taproots, such as Faidherbia albida, still also have numerous upper soil roots which compete with crops, and yields are only higher under these trees for the following reasons:
The farmer will tolerate widely spaced light shade if trees have useful products, but only if he is not too short of land, and only until he begins ox ploughing and/ or cash crop production.
62. Lai, C. and Khan, A. 1986. Mali as a case-study of forest policy in the Sahel: institutional constraints on social forestry. ODI Social Forestry Network Paper e. Overseas Development Institute, London, UK.
MALI encompasses a vegetation range which goes from dense Sudano-Guinean forest in the south to barren desert in the north.
In tandem with this, Mali's people range from agro-silviculture in the south (trees, cereals and cotton and groundnuts as cash crops), through agro-silvopastoralism, with sedentary mixed farming systems incorporating crops, trees and livestock, to transhumant herders in the north moving between wet and dry season pasture, and for whom browse forms at least a third of their animals' annual dietary requirements.
Deforestation began to be noticed in the Sahel as early as the 1930s: the result of cash cropping and wood demand for building and fuelling railroads. As a result, forest policy in francophone West Africa began to be formulated in an attempt to control deforestation by the creation of state forests. The reserves were created in lands regarded as empty, but which, in fact, were part of the range lands of pastoralists and the bush swidden-fallows of agriculturalists. Conflict over alienated lands helped shape the "punitive and deterrent aspects" of forest law and was not helped by the fact that a substantial proportion of forestry funds not raised from donors comes from permits and fines imposed on rural people by forestry staff.
So much has changed in the last 60 years that the devolution of forest management back again to rural people - unaccompanied, it would seem, by the political authority which once went with it - looks fraught with difficulties.
63. Legesse,A.1984. Boran-Gabra pastoralism in historical perspective. In Joss,P.J., Lynch, P.W. and Williams, O.B. (eds.). Rangelands: a resource under siege. Proceedings of the 2nd International Rangeland Congress. Adelaide, Australia.
KENYA The article describes the Gabra, a Cushitic language-speaking group living in semi-arid northeastern Kenya. There are prohibitions and restrictions on certain species such as Acacia tortilis. Trees in sacred groves may not be touched at all. (Referenced in Niamir 1990, annotation 69.)
64. Malcolm, D. W. 1953. Sukumaland: an African people and their country: a study of land use in Tanganyika. International African Institute, Oxford University Press, London, UK.
TANZANIA The Sukuma are settled agropastoralists, using grain as currency and cattle as capital. About half of the area is under cultivation and the rest under bushland, in which Acacia spp dominate in the eastern areas and Terminalia spp in the north west. The rainfall is about 750 mm per annum. The chief is the owner of land but he delegates right allocation to the village headman. Individual rights are limited to the period of effective occupation and lapse after the harvest of the annual crop; however, planted trees perpetuate the right to a return because of the labour expended.
When a village moves to a new site, the headman gives permission for bush to be cleared and allocates plots. Honey and beeswax are collected in the bush. The individual lays claim to them by the expenditure of labour, e.g. by driving in pegs to climb the tree. Indigenous trees are used for building poles, bark rope, wooden utensils, house wall uprights, string, baskets, tooth brushes and hafts for hoes. Access to the resource is limited by the residence of the user.
65. Manoukian, M. 1950. Akan and Ga-Adangme peoples of the Gold Coast. Ethnographic Survey of Africa, D. Forde (ed.). Western Africa, Part 1. International African Institute. Oxford University Press, London, UK.
GHANA The article focuses on some of the sedentary matrilineal agriculturalists of southern Ghana, who derive a cash crop income from trees. The lineage, as a whole owns, trees (such as oil palms) which are already growing on family land, with ownership being vested in the head of the lineage. Early in the century, family-owned land used in shifting cultivation was the general rule, with individual ownership very uncommon. However, the introduction of tree crops changed this. Land can come to be "individually owned" in four ways: (1) by a person clearing bush of forest land for the first time, (2) by a man planting economic trees (generally a cocoa farm), (3) by mortgage or purchase or (4) by inheritance.
66. Marchal, J.Y. 1983. Yatenga, nord Haute-Volta: la dynamique d'un espace rural soudano-sahdlien. [Yatenga, Northern Burkina Faso: the dynamics of a Sudano-Sahelian rural area.] ORSTOM, Travaux et Documents 167:170-175 Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre Mer, Paris, France.
BURKINA FASO This is a study of Tugu village in Burkina Faso, with its parkland. Mango trees are planted over 1.5 ha and are located along the outer edge of the "parkland" under study, which covers an area of 97 ha. Millet and sorghum are cultivated in association with Faidherbia albida (55% of "park" area), Balanites aegyptiaca (15%), Sclerocarya birrea (plum tree, 10%), Tamarindus indica (4%), Lannea macroptera (raisin tree, 3.5%), A. tortilis (14.2%), A. scorpioides (3%), Ficus gnaphalocarpa (fig tree, 14.2%) and six other species. These trees originate from natural regeneration and are maintained and protected from grazing even during the dry season. Also, Balanites and Mimosaceae are removed by local people and replaced with Butyrospermum parkii and Parkia biglobosa, even though these are at their ecological limits. Trans-humant Fulbe herders are only allowed to let their animals graze, while the farmers who are the tree owners do not hesitate to cut branches for their sheep and goats.
67. NAS. 1983. Traditional land use systems: energy flow and productivity in traditional Sahelian agricultural systems. Ch. 2, in Agroforestry in the West African Sahel. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington DC, USA.
REGIONAL The article discusses the Sahelian zone, with 200-750 mm of rainfall per year. The people of this area practise either:
Under silvopastoral systems, trees provide shade and browse for livestock (browse is essential for both its volume and its nutritional value), edible fruit and leaves, wood for construction and medicines.
Under agrosilvo-pastoral systems trees provide fencing and other construction material, fuel and medicines for people and livestock.
Under agro-silvicultural systems trees provide fruit, shade, fencing and fuelwood.
In some silvo-pastoral systems, trees are cut to stump level for various purposes (timber, fuel, browse) then left to recover for several years in a fallow period.
68. Netting, R. 1969. Marital relations in the Jos Plateau of Nigeria. American Anthropologist 71:1037-1045.
NIGERIA The Kofyar people live on the edge of the Jos Plateau in Northern Nigeria, a high area (1,200 m) of grassland and rocky outcrop. Rainfall averages 1,000-1,500 mm and the vegetation is sub-humid wooded savannah. Intensive hill agriculture on terraces is practised, with shifting agriculture on the plains. The Kofyar keep livestock, and the men hunt. Fuelwood, thatching, poles and raffia leaves are the main woodland produce. Women are forbidden to enter the sacred grove which belongs to each lineage.
69. Niamir, M. 1990. Herders' decision making in natural resource management in arid and semi-arid Africa. Community Forestry Note 4. FAO/SIDA Forests, Trees and People Programme. FAO, Rome, Italy.
REGIONAL The author notes that the most common form of tenure in these areas is through the area management mechanism of the tribe/clan/lineage/ household nesting degrees of ownership, relating to progressively more subdivided portions of the range. Trees are vital for forage, building materials, carpentry and carving and, to a lesser extent, fuelwood. She observes that, although there are numerous descriptions of the management of range, there are far fewer published details on the management of the tree itself, or on how products are harvested. What she has found are references to: the policing of how trees are lopped, prohibitions on the use of certain species for certain purposes, prohibitions on use at certain times of year or, in a few cases, ever. She also observes that pastoralists are far more careful of trees on their home range than they are when passing through the lands of others. Many of her sources note the collapse of pastoral management systems.
70. Norton, A. 1988. Participatory Forest Management in Ghana. Overseas Development Administration, London, UK (unpublished).
GHANA The article deals with southern Ghana and with sedentary bush swidden-fallow cultivators. Since the Local Government Ordinance of 1951, most southern Ghanaian chiefs hold the allodial title to land on behalf of the people. Hence, they hold rights to all "natural" land assets which are not the product of identifiable human labour, e.g. to mineral rights and trees (the idea about the "naturalness" of trees stems from the colonial period). This assignation of timber rights was an attempt to create a land-based revenue system to support the chiefly bureaucracy. This separation of tree and land tenure therefore militates, in the present day, against the successful combination of trees and crops on land; for chiefs turn over their rights to timber contractors in exchange for royalties, who are then entitled to fell any tree on farmers' properties. The timber merchants are exempt from paying damages for any crop injured in the felling, hence the farmers perceive the presence of trees among their crop as a threat. Land and tree tenure systems must be re-integrated if agroforestry projects are to be successful.
71. Norton, A. 1987. The socio-economic background to community forestry in the northern region of Ghana. ODA Community Forestry Project in the Northern Region of Ghana. ODI Library, London, UK (unpublished).
GHANA The area Norton is describing has a mean annual rainfall of 1,000-1,400 mm per year and is studded with compound farms and bush swidden-fallows. Ownership of certain species, mainly exotics, is invested in the person who plants or arranges the planting of the tree (there are local beliefs concerning the `dangers' of tree planting). The species include kapok, citrus, neem, guava, pawpaw and mango. However, if a farmer protects the regeneration of shea nut on his farm, this does not give him ownership rights over the trees. Neem is not subject to proprietorial rights in areas where it is common in the bush. It seems likely that proprietorial rights could be established over any species if it were planted and tended by an individual. However, this may be difficult with Parkia clappertonia, due to its strong association with the institution of the chieftaincy. The bush is considered to be a common resource to the members of a local community. Bush burning is sometimes practised, but the reasons for this activity are uncertain.
By custom, only dead wood is gathered for fuel but, as the resource is degraded around settlements, there is a greater temptation to cut live trees. There is a prohibition throughout the region on the cutting of Parkia clappertonia and Butyrospermum parkii (shea nut), although, in areas of acute shortage, this is ignored. One village had instituted an apparently effective ban on the cutting of shea nut for fuelwood and this had led to considerable regeneration of young trees around the village. There is acute shortage of constructional timber in some areas. Apart from fruit trees, the growing of neem (Azadirachta indica) to supply roofing poles is the only form of farmer-initiated tree planting activity to become widely established in the region over the last 20 years. Wildings are collected from areas where neem has become established.
Rights to natural regeneration of indigenous species depend on the type of area in which it occurs. In the "far bush", no ownership rights exist at all in trees or their products. In the "near bush", within the territory of a chief or community, the chief has the right to harvest all of the highly valued P. clappertonia trees. This is the only form of individual right in trees or their products that applies to naturally growing trees in bush land. In some areas, a man has full rights to the Parkia growing on his land, while in others the chief, or his agent, will harvest the fruit and give the farmer a proportion. Shea nut is a common resource for all community members in bush land. Disputes often arise concerning the rights over trees in fallow land.
72. Onochie, C.F.A. 1964. An experiment in controlled burning in the Sudan zone. Pp. 131-155, in Proceedings of the First Nigerian Forestry Conference. Kaduna, Nigeria.
NIGERIA Experiments were conducted in Anogeissus-Combretum forest (600900 mm of rainfall) on a variety of combinations of protection and burning regimes, to discover which gave the greatest mean annual increment (MAI), and which the greatest number of large stems per ha.
In order of success, the greatest MAi was obtained:
1. by early burning every fourth year and by fire protection the rest of the time,
2. by early burning and fire protection every other year,
3. by fire protection alone, and
4. by early or late burning annually.
In order to obtain a large number of large stems per ha (50 cm and over), protection without burning was the best regime, although some MAI was sacrificed this way.
73. Ostberg, W. 1988. We eat trees: tree planting and land rehabilitation in West Pokot District, Kenya: a baseline study. IRDC/SUAS Working Paper 82. International Rural Development Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, Uppsala, Sweden.
KENYA Study data on West Pokot (rainfall 875 mm) is used here. The people are agriculturalists who depend on livestock for security against drought. Sorghum and finger millet are the original crops with maize, pulses and beans becoming rapidly more important. Wild plants are picked during the rainy season as vegetables. There is clan management of grazing and farming land.
Both men and women emphasize the need for fodder species. Thatching grass is in shorter supply than firewood. Men have greater knowledge about trees useful for fencing, because they are responsible for animals. Tools and weapons are made from trees.
Fields are dug by hoe and fallowed for four years after three to five years of cultivation. Trees are maintained in the fields for dry season fodder and are not lopped by neighbours. Fodder trees are also saved close to the house to provide fodder for sick animals kept at home when the rest are elsewhere. Balanites aegyptiaca is considered to be the most useful. It produces fruits in the dry season and its leaves are used as vegetable relish. It can tolerate moderate lop ping. There are two types of fields: thorn fenced shamba with heavily lopped trees inside, and shamba with a living fence and moderately lopped trees. (These suggest regularly fallowed and permanently cultivated fields, respectively. - ed.) Ficus natalensis (simwoto) is considered sacred, its longevity and huge size encouraging people to see it as a symbol of the lineage. Thus the blessing: "Have branches and leaves like the simwoto tree." Ficus sycamorus is also valued and protected. A rising population and the shift towards agriculture are weakening the indigenous clan system and its authority, both increasing risk and strengthening the importance of the individual household.
74. Pelissier, P.1979. L' arbre dans les paysages agraires de l' Afrique noire. [The tree in the farmed countryside of Black Africa.] Pp. 37-42 in Le role des arbres au Sahel. Compte rendu du colloque tenu a Dakar (Senegal) du 5 au 10 novembre 1979. (In French.)
REGIONAL The article investigates trees in the agricultural crop in sub-Saharan Africa. Trees are integrated with agricultural crops in Africa. From the Senegal coast to the Red Sea, tree species such as Ziziphus jojoba, Balanites aegyptiaca, Tamarindus indica, Ficus and Albizia zygia are found in association with millet, sorghum, groundnuts and manioc. These "park types" include "residual parks" whereby certain tree species are left standing during the first clearing for agriculture. Cordyla pinnata stands in Saloum and Gambie are such an example.
In the Sudanese zone, tree species like Butyrospermum parkii and Parkia biglobosa have been protected for the fruit fat content. B. parkii was selectively conserved by people who did not raise livestock (and thus could not obtain animal fats). The presence of Elaeis guineensis is often linked to specific cultures, sometimes very large, as in Benin or in the ancient Old River States in Nigeria. E. guineensis naturally occurred in forest clearings which were used initially for cultivation. These "Elaeis parks" now occur around villages everywhere in Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria and Cameroon.
Borassus aethiopum is used in wine making and for its edible fruit and is found in homogeneous stands which likely originated from selective cutting. The leaves, fruit and bark of the Adansonia digitata are edible.
Another indigenous forest management system is that found on Mount Mandara where Khaya senegalensis has spread. A refined version of the system is that of the Ouldene tribe who have developed "forest parks" of 20 to 30 trees/ha with K. senegalensis, Ziziphus jojoba, Tamarindus indica and Acacia spp managed as domesticated plants. Also, in Serer country, sedentary farmers practising livestock raising and cereal agriculture have created Faidherbia albida "`parks". Within these "parks", F. albida homogeneity, population density and the importance of the herd increase at the same rate.
75. Pelissier, P. 1966. Les paysans du Senegal. [The peasants of Senegal.] Les civilisations agraires du Cayor a la Casamance 1966:252-273. (In French.)
SENEGAL The article describes the Serer region of Senegal, an area with an eight-month dry season but no water shortage because of the high groundwater table and the presence of small lakes and rivers during the rainy season. The inhabitants are sedentary herders and millet cultivators.
"Serer parkland" comprises bushland with Faidherbia albida (gao) present sometimes in pure stands and also on agricultural fields. Edible fruit from Detarium senegalense, Tamarindus indica and Faidherbia gnaphalocarpa are harvested. The fruit, sap, leaves and wood of Borassus aethiopum are very much in demand; it is the only palm tree which is used for wine making by the Serer. Adansonia digitata trees seeded around villages provide food (pulp from fruit, seeds, leaves) and possess medicinal value, while the bark is used for rope making. A few other fruit trees such as mango, papaya and Anacardium occidentale, are also present around villages. The Serer benefit greatly from the presence of regular stands of F. albida throughout their land. The trees, because their leaves fall during the rainy season, provide essential fodder to the livestock during the second half of the dry season, when climatic conditions are most rigorous. This is also the period when milk from the livestock is richest and butter most nutritious. These parks of F. albida allow for the maintenance of livestock herds at high density during the harsh dry season and provide effectively against wind erosion. In return, the livestock increase soil fertility.
F. albida has been an integral part of sedentarization in Sudanese Africa. The "forest parks" of F. albida have resulted from man's initiative through their herds of livestock which eat the trees' fruit and propagate the seeds at the end of the dry season. The Serer farmer then prunes the young trees down to man's height for their protection. Thus, the homogeneity and purity of a "forest park" of F. albida indicates ancient occupation of the land.
76. Perlov, D.C. 1984. Exploiting the forest: patterns and perceptions in highland Samburu. In Barnes, C. et al. (eds.). Wood, energy and households: perspectives on rural Kenya. Beijer Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, Sweden.
KENYA The part of the Samburu area studied here contains a hot, dry grassland and scrub plain supporting large numbers of animals, and cooler wetter higher land supporting fewer animals, more farming and a mix of evergreen bushland and hardwood species. The main lowland tree species found are Acacia nilotica, Croton dichagamus and A. gerardii. On the hills, Juniperus procera, Olea africana, Acokanthera friensiorum and Croton megalocarpus are found.
This paper focuses on the Samburu of one large group ranch, straddling two ecozones. Tenure was originally on clan and lineage lines, but nowadays the Kenyan Government has divided the range into group ranches for fixed sub-sets of relatives. The result has been greater sedentarization and ecological specialization. One sub-group lives close to montane forest and has few livestock, one spends most of the time out in the plain with livestock and one lives halfway between the two. The cultivators (usually pastoral dropouts) grow maize, beans, potatoes and squash, but the preferred activity is still livestock keeping and trading.
Trees are used for house and granary construction, for fuel, fodder, charcoal making, calabash cleaning (by smoking) and for medicines. There is a strong belief that it is wicked to cut green trees for fuel -because browse is so important for livestock in the dry season. There is no ownership of individual trees but labour creates ownership in the sense that fuelwood chopped and piled by one woman would never be appropriated by another. Samburu men believe that so long as the economic activity of the area is predominantly livestock herding the forest will take care of itself; they identify the causes of deforestation as sedentarization, agriculture and the consequent shrinking of pastoral lands.
Permits to cut charcoal are given by the local elders and the chief's office. They discourage non-local charcoal burners by refusing them permits and, if they are local Samburu, giving permits only for short periods to poor men in extremis. The same body administers fines to inhibit the exploitation of green trees within gazetted areas and within the group ranch forest reserve. The most sedentarized groups use the most fuelwood per week, and so far are making few adaptations to the fact.
77. Persson, J. 1986. Trees, plants and a rural community in the Southern Sudan. Unasylva 154(88):32-43.
SUDAN The village of Domeri, Western Equatoria Province, Sudan, is an area of savannah woodland with patches of thicker forest. The rivers flow only in the rainy season. The inhabitants, the Modo, are sedentary subsistence agriculturalists. They grow crops in fields and gardens around compounds and also fish and hunt game.
Although this article has very detailed information about the uses of trees in Domeri, the author argues that the trees are not actually managed, short of burning. off to increase the fertility of the soil for crop planting. Instead, people use trees as they need them with little thought about the future. The immediate needs of crops take priority.
78. Piot, J. 1980. Management and utilization methods for ligneous forages: natural stands and artificial plantations. Pp. 339-349, in le Houerou, H.N. (ed.). Browse in Africa: the current state of knowledge. International Livestock Centre for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
REGIONAL "The classical method is that of the Sahel herdsman who used his machete or hatchet to lop trees and shrubs at head height, preferably leaving the branches attached to the trunk, giving an umbrella like habit, wholly conducive to `roasting' and the death of the tree if fire occurs, which is still fortunately far from being the general case" (so the removal of dead branches in many natural woodlands would actually reduce the impact of bush fires on the resource - ed.) However these activities are predominantly found only in the Saharo-Sahelian zone where true nomadism is practised and rainfall is below 200 mm. In the Sahel proper, the need to protect crops from livestock means that hedges are used of thorny branches and the umbrella-shaped trees are less frequently seen.
79. Poschen-Eiche, P. 1987. The application of farming systems research to community forestry: a case study in the Hararge Highlands, Eastern Ethiopia. Tropical Agriculture 1. TRIOPS Verlag Tropical Scientific Books, Langen, Germany.
ETHIOPIA The area studied lies at an altitude of 1,800-2,500 m with rainfall of 700-1,000 mm per year. The area used to be covered by highland forest, with some mountain savannah, and tree cover predominantly composed of Podocarpus gracilorbelow 2,200 m and Juniperus procera above 2,200 m. Sorghum is the main crop - intercropped with maize and beans. Grain is used as food, with the leaves, thin stalks and thinnings used as livestock feed, and thick stalks and stubble used for fuel. Wheat and barley are grown at higher altitudes (above 2,500 m), and the most important livestock are cattle, goats, sheep and donkeys.
Amhara kings from north-central Ethiopia originally conquered and introduced the feudal system; 25-50 percent of the harvest was claimed by the landlord; tenancy was insecure, expulsion common. "Decisions about the use of trees and shrubs were the landlord's privilege." In 1975, the Public Ownership of Rural Lands was proclaimed. All rural lands were expropriated and private ownership and landlord-tenant relationships were abolished. Land was distributed to whosoever wanted to cultivate it and peasant associations were formed to administrate the process.
80. Postma, M. 1990. Land and tree tenure in the Wolof village M'borine, Senegal. Doctoral report for the Section of Forest Management, Department of Forestry, Agricultural University Wageningen, Netherlands.
SENEGAL The research took place in the groundnut basin of Senegal. The people cultivate peanuts and manioc for sale, and millet for subsistence. The wealthy own cattle, and the rest have goats, sheep and chickens. Land near the village is permanently cultivated, and land further out is alternately fallowed and off to increase the fertility of the soil for crop planting. Instead, people use trees as they need them with little thought about the future. The immediate needs of crops take priority.
78. Piot, J. 1980. Management and utilization methods for ligneous forages: natural stands and artificial plantations. Pp. 339-349, in le Houerou, H.N. (ed.). Browse in Africa: the current state of knowledge. International Livestock Centre for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
REGIONAL "The classical method is that of the Sahel herdsman who used his machete or hatchet to lop trees and shrubs at head height, preferably leaving the branches attached to the trunk, giving an umbrella like habit, wholly conducive to `roasting' and the death of the tree if fire occurs, which is still fortunately far from being the general case" (so the removal of dead branches in many natural woodlands would actually reduce the impact of bush fires on the resource - ed.) However these activities are predominantly found only in the Saharo-Sahelian zone where true nomadism is practised and rainfall is below 200 mm. In the Sahel proper, the need to protect crops from livestock means that hedges are used of thorny branches and the umbrella-shaped trees are less frequently seen.
79. Poschen-Eiche, P. 1987. The application of farming systems research to community forestry: a case study in the Hararge Highlands, Eastern Ethiopia. Tropical Agriculture 1. TRIOPS Verlag Tropical Scientific Books, Langen, Germany.
ETHIOPIA The area studied lies at an altitude of 1,800-2,500 m with rainfall of 700-1,000 mm per year. The area used to be covered by highland forest, with some mountain savannah, and tree cover predominantly composed of Podocarpus gracilorbelow 2,200 m and Juniperus procera above 2,200 m. Sorghum is the main crop - intercropped with maize and beans. Grain is used as food, with the leaves, thin stalks and thinnings used as livestock feed, and thick stalks and stubble used for fuel. Wheat and barley are grown at higher altitudes (above 2,500 m), and the most important livestock are cattle, goats, sheep and donkeys.
Amhara kings from north-central Ethiopia originally conquered and introduced the feudal system; 25-50 percent of the harvest was claimed by the landlord; tenancy was insecure, expulsion common. "Decisions about the use of trees and shrubs were the landlord's privilege." In 1975, the Public Ownership of Rural Lands was proclaimed. All rural lands were expropriated and private ownership and landlord-tenant relationships were abolished. Land was distributed to whosoever wanted to cultivate it and peasant associations were formed to administrate the process.
80. Postma, M. 1990. Land and tree tenure in the Wolof village M'borine, Senegal. Doctoral report for the Section of Forest Management, Department of Forestry, Agricultural University Wageningen, Netherlands.
SENEGAL The research took place in the groundnut basin of Senegal. The people cultivate peanuts and manioc for sale, and millet for subsistence. The wealthy own cattle, and the rest have goats, sheep and chickens. Land near the village is permanently cultivated, and land further out is alternately fallowed and grazed for three years and cultivated. The introduction of animal traction, and artificial fertilizers have greatly changed original swidden-fallowing practices. There are now too many residents for a return to older style fallowing, although fertilizers are again becoming harder to obtain. The only adaptation open is out migration.
Originally, the first to clear the land (by fire) was its owner. He, in turn, might grant "rights of the axe" to individuals who wanted to use some of the land. Such rights were strong and were heritable so long as the land was never left uncultivated for more than ten years. The Wolof monarchy followed customary land usage.
However, since 1964, all land has officially belonged to the state. The local Rural Council allotted land to the tillers they found in place at the time, and it is legally impossible to buy and sell land.
Husbands allocate land annually to their wives and dependent sons, but not necessarily the same piece each year. Wives may take minor products from their husbands' fields in the rainy season and, in the dry season, dead wood and shrubs from any part of the village's fields, as they may from the common area under swidden-fallow. Larger branches may only be taken from a field tree by the owner of that field, however, regardless of the season.
Indigenous tree management in the area follows the typical pattern of the farmed parkland described by Raison (1988), with a densely settled population felling many trees, but preserving F. albida, Balanites aegyptiaca and Adansonia digitata. Nowadays, however, a government licence must be obtained for the felling of construction timber, and such licences are never granted for the felling of planted trees, exotic trees or Faidherbia albida trees. Tree stocks have fallen to only about five trees per ha, partly as a result of this stifling of indigenous fallowing methods, and partly in response to the introduction of groundnuts as a short fallow cash crop. Unfortunately, tree protection cannot develop into tree planting here for two reasons. Firstly, annual land allocation practices deter individuals from planting trees. Secondly, government rules banning the felling of planted trees provide no incentive to plant.
81. Poulsen, G. 1985a. Trees on cropland: preserving an African heritage. Ceres 18(2):24-28.
CAMEROON The Maroua region of Cameroon, a lowland plain, is discussed. Annual rainfall is 800 mm per annum. The inhabitants are sedentary agriculturalists, producing sorghum and cotton.
The author describes a Cassia siamea shelterbelt project begun in the mid-1960s in response to donor-perceived increased desertification and population pressure. The project was carried out on farmland with the owners' permission. The project conceived of the trees solely as windbreaks, as anti-soil erosion devices and as a way of creating a less desiccating micro-climate by forming compact obstacles to air movement. This is why shelterbelts were selected, rather than a scatter mimicking indigenous practice.
A 30 m "wasteland" on either side of each belt of trees, where no crops grow, has been the result. The density of trees creates a hot airless zone within which plants perish, as no wind cooling of the ground takes place. It was observed, however, that crops could grow under single trees or clusters of trees. Thus the project was forced to recognize the rationality of indigenous forms of forest management/agroforestry and indigenous spatial arrangements.
82. Poulsen, G. 1985b. Halting the desert by means of forestry: does it make sense? Pp. 98-108, in Hjort, A. (ed.). Land Management and Survival. Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, Sweden.
REGIONAL The author focuses on the Sahelian zone with 200-600 mm annual rainfall, and inhabitants who both herd and cultivate. Trees are used for fuelwood, small timber, gum, fruit and browse for livestock, particularly during the crop season. Important species include Balanites aegyptiaca, Faidherbia albida, Acacia senegal and Butyrospermum parkii. In the past, Sahelians operated a classic bush swidden-fallow system, with land cropped for approximately five years, then left fallow for 16-20 years. Trees regenerated naturally on swidden-fallow land. There is no information given on resource management at the individual/household level.
The author argues that fallowing worked well 30 years ago, but has broken down as over-cultivation and over-grazing have taken place in response to population increases and fuelwood and fodder shortages. He implies that there is now no resource management as short-term considerations have taken over from longterm ones.
83. Poulsen, G. 1983. Using Farm Trees for fuelwood. Unasylva 35 (141):26-29.
KENYA The paper describes farming practices on the slopes of Mount Kenya, where the inhabitants are sedentary permanent cultivators of coffee, maize and cowpeas, rearing small livestock. Grevillea robusta is the dominant farm tree in the region, exploited primarily for its timber products in the following ways:
G. robusta is chosen because its deep root system does not compete with the shallow root systems of crops, and it is planted to form single lines with 2-4 m between stems, spread across fields.
Mt. Kenya farmers have an established pruning system where the trees are heavily pruned once the canopy causes shade, excess water consumption and other features detrimental to crop survival. The pruning rotation takes place at two- to three-year intervals, and the system may continue for 30-50 years. The trees are kept until they reach a certain diameter, then sold. This variant of pollarding aims at long-term conservation of the production base as well as shorter-term household provision.
84. Raison, J.P.1988. Les `Pays' en Afrique: etat des connaissances et perspectives de recherches. [African `parklands': the state of knowledge and perspectives from research.] Document de Travail, Centre d'etudes africaines. EHESS, Paris, France. (In French.)
REGIONAL This report investigates the parklands of Africa's Sahelian and Sudanian zones, where the inhabitants practise both agriculture and livestock raising, the latter diminishing where there are labour shortages. In these zones, settlements use a variety of constantly evolving "parklands", placed in concentric rings around the village. There is a pattern from centre to periphery, from culture to nature, as follows:
Butyrospermum parkii (Vitellaria paradoxa or karite), Parkia biglobosa (nere) and Ficus platyphylla.
In the concentric ring model described for the Bwa Bobo Oule, Burkina Faso, by Savonnet (1959), for instance, the village site ring is ka, the F. albida ring is wa and the bush swidden-fallow is ma.
Trees are used in these areas for small timber, firewood, fodder, medicines, relishes and dietary supplements including oils, alcohol (from palms) and famine foods. Income-generating opportunities include the trading of shea nut butter (Butyrospermum parkii), gum arabic (Acacia senegal) and charcoal. Small timber is important not only for building, but also for furniture making and the carving of domestic utensils. Forage is vital. Leaves are far more nutritious than grass in most of the Sudanian and Sahelian belt, and the most important fodder trees are: Acacia tortilis, A. senegal, A. seyal, Balanites aegyptiaca, Bauhinia rufescens, Boscia augustifolia and Maerua crassifolia.
Although there is no mention of whether, or how, these systems are defended against encroachment by other villages, management of each type of parkland by villagers is exceptionally clearly described in this document, based as it is on another highly specialized literature search.
Parklands without a dominant tree species. These formations indicate a densely settled population which has had to sacrifice specialized parkland because of other constraints. For instance, the Mafa of Mandara, Cameroon, who live on terraced hillsides, have to avoid shading crops on their narrow terraces and consequently have been forced to abandon all of the large oilbearing species, such as Butyrospermum parkii, Diospiros mespiliformis and Marcinia afzelii. On the other hand, Ficus spp. are common, especially F. gnaphalocarpa and F. dicranostyla, as leafy vegetables, and Faidherbia albida is also common. Trees have taken on special roles here as sources of small timber for the carving and construction of household items and as devices to help stop soil erosion. The author also notes a shift from management of the stand to management of the tree itself. Trees are pollarded and side branches are removed in order to arrive at a sophisticated compromise between the needs for wood, soil conservation, forage and avoiding the shading of annual crops. Far too little knowledge of this single tree management was found in the wide range of references he consulted.
The dynamics of parklands and their situation today. The construction of parkland is often the work of centuries and the clustering of trees today can be informative about management practices of the past. Inside the concentric rings of present-day parkland, one sometimes finds dense, asymmetrically placed clusters of trees, selected on completely different principles. Sometimes these hint at previous settlements, and sometimes at sacred groves containing clusters of Balanites aegyptiaca, Ziziphus mauritianus and Celtis integrifolia. The Bissa of Burkina, for instance, would, until the colonial period, practise agriculture in a fine F. albida parkland around large, densely settled villages. Then, because of violent conquest and the introduction of forced labour, they dispersed to much smaller settlements in the bush.
Areas in which concentric cultivation patterns are noted, however, do seem to be fragile once population densities rise. If they cannot be abandoned because of overall population densities, they degrade. In any case, the trees have lost some of their importance. Oil-bearing trees are being replaced in the diet by groundnut, sesame and cotton-seed oil, and palm oil is far easier to extract than shea nut butter. There also seems to be less effort to plant famine trees such as the Ficus spp. and Borassus aethiopum, although it is not clear why. The tendency is for the fallowing system to shrink to the point where it is replaced by a crop rotation of alternating millet and groundnuts. Present day land registration arrangements naturally encourage individuals to try to earmark permanent plots for themselves of the largest possible extent.
There is an excellent bibliography of published articles and unpublished "grey literature" on francophone African-farmed parkland areas. The author also writes about "Guinean oil-palm parkland" but the section has not been included here.
85. Riesman, P. 1984. The Fulani in a development context: the relevance of cultural traditions for coping with change and crisis. Pp.171-191, in Scott, E.P. (ed.). Life before the drought. Allen and Unwin, Boston, USA.
NIGER The article describes the resource management practices of the nomadic and semi-sedentary Fulani, living along the left bank of the Niger River. The Fulani would police the bush to prevent unauthorized cutting of branches to feed goats. They would also put out bush fires and, once the fire was under control, punish the individual(s) who had started it with a fine: the provision of a feast for the men who had put out the fire and identified the perpetrator(s).
86. Roberts. A., et al. n.d. The Malete law of family relations, land and succession to property. Government Printer, Gaborone, Botswana.
BOTSWANA Trees situated on land which has been allotted for residential or agricultural purposes belong to the holder. Others must ask his permission before taking firewood or fruit from trees on his allocated land. He may cut them down or harvest their fruits, except in the following cases: (1) no shade tree in a residential area may be cut down except with the chiefs permission, (2) no living tree may be cut for firewood and (3) from the start of the ploughing season to the end of harvest, some species may not be cut at all, and others may only be cut at certain limited times. Disobedience, it was believed, would cause hail to fall on the crops.
87. ben Salem, B. and van Nao, T. 1981. Fuelwood production in traditional farming systems. Unasylva 33(131):13-18.
SUDAN and SENEGAL The paper discusses two systems. The Sudan case focuses on the provinces of Kordofan, Darfur, the Blue Nile and Kassala. The inhabitants with whom the study is concerned are subsistence farmers practising bush swidden-fallow. There, Acacia senegal and Balanites aegyptiaca constitute the main tree cover, with Acacia senegal tapped for gum and also used for fodder and fuelwood. In this system, crops are grown and gum produced in rotation. The stages of the cycle are as follows:
Acacia senegal is cleared, Balanites aegyptiaca is left and the land is cropped with Pennisetum typhoideum and Sorghum vulgare (cereals) for four to ten years,
The second example is the Western Senegal semi-arid savannah. Here annual rainfall is 300-900 mm, and the population density is between 80-100/sq km. Tree cover is mainly Faidherbia albida and Prosopis spp. Trees are used to maintain soil fertility and moisture, the limiting factors in crop production. Trees also used for fodder and fuelwood. Faidherbia albida is used to improve millet production, 100 trees/ha maintaining indefinitely the cropland's nutrient requirements. There is no information on rules of management.
88. Schapera, I. 1943. Native land in the Bechuana Protectorate. Lovedale Press, Cape Town, South Africa.
BOTSWANA Trees and bushes are common property within the tribal territory, used for building, fencing, fuelwood and fruit, except where another man is already cultivating. Fruiting trees and bushes in the wild may be used by anyone, but cultivated fruit trees in a homestead may not. Trees in a village, even those inside a man's homestead, may not be cut without the permission of the chief. These trees are used for shade and to provide lavatory shelter for the old and sick, who cannot go into the hills.
Certain tree species (dubbed "female trees") might not be cut during the agricultural growing season, the taboo applying even to the uprooting of tree stumps at this time: it was feared that the rain might turn to hail and damage the crops if the taboos were not obeyed. The chief would proclaim "closed" and "open" seasons, and would reopen the cutting season himself at the same time insisting that the first branches cut by ordinary people be used to repair a community institution - the cattle pound attached to the kgotla (the village meeting ground) - before any cutting for individual needs took place.
89. Seif el Din, A.G. 1980. Agroforestry practices in the dry regions. In Proceedings of the Kenya National Seminar on Agroforestry. International Council on Agroforestry Research, Nairobi, Kenya.
NIGER and SUDAN Arid lands have prolonged dry seasons of 8-10 months, low and unreliable summer rainfall of 200-600 mm annually and high daytime temperatures often exceeding 40° C. Evaporation may be 20 mm per day during the hottest months. Drought years occur frequently, but irregularly. The people of these regions practise livestock husbandry and crop cultivation carried out by swidden-fallowing. Two examples of these systems are given:
Useful trees include Adansonia digitata for food, rope fibre, fruit and water storage in the hollow trunks; Borassus aethiopum for baskets, thatch and timber; Faidherbia albida for fodder; Parkia biglobosa for edible fruit and shade; Parinari macrophylla, Sclerocarya birrea and Anacardium occidentale for fruit and nuts; Balanites aegyptiaca for fruit, fuel, shade, tools and utensils.
The above trees, and other species, are also important in their capacity to regenerate soil quality for crop production.
Each farmer bases his choice of crops to be interplanted on his prognosis of what is likely to happen climatically in the next few weeks. The elders keep an unwritten calendar divided into 28 periods, each lasting approximately 13 days and closely related to atmospheric and astronomic conditions. Land management techniques are incorporated into this system. The author argues that ecological degradation is a result of factors outside farmers' control - including population growth - rather than some flaw in their system of resource management.
90. Seif el Din, A.G. 1987. Gum Hashab and land tenure in Western Sudan. Pp.217224, in Raintree, J.B. (ed.). Land, Trees and Tenure. International Council on Agroforestry Research, Nairobi, Kenya.
SUDAN The writer addresses western Sudan, Kordofan Province, an area of sandy soils and plentiful Acacia senegal, with cultivators growing groundnuts, sesame, hibiscus, melon seed, dura, and grazing cattle and sheep.
He argues that land tenure became an issue when the gum trade began to flourish in the late 19th century. Tenure rules were laid down by tribal leaders, whereby group members could own land for cultivation and gum collection, as well as collect gum from the communal lands. From 1899 onwards, the government has intervened in these land tenure rules, laying claim to ultimate land ownership and classing tribal cultivators as long-term tenants and lease holders. The local land tenure system, which villagers regard as the legitimate one, maintains that the individual has the right to gum from trees growing on currently fallow land or he or she has already cultivated. But during the early part of this century, the government repeatedly described the system as one of communal rather than individual tenure, where individuals had usufruct rights only.
More recently, tribal lands have been divided into village holdings in order that:
cultivation and gum collection is restricted to people domiciled in a particular village,
However, the human and animal population explosion has disrupted the bush swidden-fallow system through over-cultivation and over-grazing and has challenged existing land tenure institutions. People have been forced, partly by climatic changes, to move to the central gum belt as the northern areas have become unworkable.
The author's solution is to suggest that land tenure rules should be changed so that the government can enforce legislation protecting the environment in the long term. Under the present communal ownership, he argues, individuals exploit the land without regard for its long-term well being.
91. Sene, E.H.M. 1985. La participation des populations au developpement forestier au Senegal. [Popular participation in forest development in Senegal.] Report to FAO, January 1985, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Dakar, Senegal. (In French.)
SENEGAL The author gives a series of examples of the vital importance of trees in Senegal. Tree species such as Detarium, Parinari, Cordyla africana and Cola cordifolia are protected for their edible fruit, and Bauhinia spp and Sterculia setigera for gum and fibre production. Leaves from Combretum micranthum are used in the making of a drink (quinquelibas) and other Combretaceae for fuelwood production. Young Borassus aethiopum trees (between 15 and 20 years old) are used for wine making.
Agriculture in the Serer region is based on Faidherbia albida and its multiple uses, including soil fertilization and fodder. But other species have also been promoted on private land: the Serer farmer walks around his field seeding B. aethiopum nuts to mark important occasions, such as at the birth of a child, and there have been examples of B. aethiopum being deliberately propagated by farmers in other parts of the country as well; farmers have maintained Elaeis guineensis in the Casamance area; Adansonia digitata groves are likely to have originated from human action; and villagers have practised the propagation by the cutting of certain species, such as Erythrina senegalensis, Lannea acida, Ficus spp and Lonchocarpus spp.
The indigenous forest management practices of local populations are decreasing as forestry has come to mean nothing but forest reserves and village forestry schemes; and while regular harvesting of palms and other species for multiple uses is practised, little maintenance is now taking place apart from nut seeding. Ironically, local people were originally the instigators of the interrelated patterns of forest and agriculture in the countryside, but, except for parts of the extreme east and south of the country, these agroforestry practices have been lost as government has become more involved.
92. Sene, E.H.M. 1979. L'organisation fonciere dans la zone aride du Senegal et la gestion des ressources forestieres. [Land classification in the arid zone of Senegal, and the management of forest resources.] Pp. 15-18, in Le role des arbres au Sahel, Compte rendu du colloque tenu a Dakar (Senegal) du 5 au 10 novembre 1979. Dakar, Senegal. (In French.)
SENEGAL The establishment of a forest reserve classification during colonial times had an important impact on the local population, who were most antagonistic towards this new classification system which restricted their right to utilize soil and forest resources. In some areas, trees located on farmland, such as F. albida and Cordyla pinnata, become a common property resource in the dry season, and may be freely pruned for fodder and utilized by herders. On the other hand, in the Casamance or Cayor areas, Borassus aethiopum trees belong permanently to the farmer who cultivates the land.
93. Shepherd, G. 1989a. The reality of the commons: answering Hardin from Somalia. Development Policy Review 7(1):51-63.
SOMALIA The Bay region of Somalia lies about 300 km inland from Mogadishu the capital. The area is semi-arid, receiving 300-500 mm rainfall per year. The people of the region are agropastoralists, herding camels, cattle and goats and producing sorghum. Trees are vital: it is impossible to live in the area without animals, and tree browse sustains goats and camels entirely, and cattle for much of the year. Trees also supply housing materials, fuel, agricultural and herding equipment, domestic utensils, human and animal medicines, and furniture.
Until 1960, clan membership (which gave both kinship and territorial identity) defined land rights and dictated the duty to defend lineage (sub-clan) land against outsiders. Private plots existed alongside common grazing lands, communal annually repaired dry season rainwater reservoirs and remoter open access areas. In 1960, clan land rights were abolished, and both common property resources and open access land were lumped together as state land. Thereafter, nearly all previous attempts at management by area and by membership of a fixed group came to an end.
Currently, Bay groups still request permission to use each others' grazing areas as if the earlier system were in place, but have no right to ban outsiders, such as charcoal burners, from access to "their" resources. Much of their outrage over the felling of trees for charcoal is because their own management priorities are for living trees. Senior adults discourage excessive tree lopping for goat fodder and sorghum pit linings, and taught herd boys to spread risk and off-take by using a wide variety of tree species for animal fodder, so that a sequence could be used throughout the season; different categories of animals were taken different distances from the home base so that (for instance) species eaten by cattle unable to walk far would not be used up by camels which can travel to far more distant sites.
The proposals from villagers for their own renewed involvement in bushland management in their area were as follows:
First, that a tract of bushland on the edge of the farmland be set aside for each village, from which they would have exclusive access to poles for house building. Village chiefs or committees would arrange the protection of the reserve, determine who could cut poles and when and establish open and closed grazing seasons.
(This annotation also includes information from Bird and Shepherd 1989, annotation 17.)
94. Shepherd, G. 1989b. An evaluation of the Village Afforestation Project, Mwanza, Western Tanzania. Report to ODI for IIZ, Vienna, Austria (unpublished).
TANZANIA The Sukuma live in a rolling landscape in which, originally, they lived in scattered homesteads around low stone outcrops and grazed their animals seasonally in the valleys between these hills, or among the trees on their crests. Rainfall is about 750 mm per year. They are agro-pastoralists who are having to place increasing reliance on agriculture as population densities rise. Originally, land rights came through tribal membership and through residence. Fields were privately owned in the growing season and reverted to CPRs unless trees were planted there, in which case they remained private property.
Sukuma rules for land use designated each hill - and the tree cover on it - as the exclusive common property of those who lived around it, while specific valleys were similarly used by an identifiable and fixed number of local households for their cattle. Even today, some group rules for resource use have survived, beyond and outside the rather different communal ideals of the sate. In some areas, for instance, there are organized bans on cutting valley grass for thatch until it has all reached a certain height. Local leaders set a date upon which everyone from the local area may go in and cut.
During the Uj amaa period, the Sukuma had to leave their dispersed homesteads and cluster in villages. This created unforeseen problems, one of which was more concentrated fuelwood gathering in limited areas; and another was the lost control and management of now remote hilltops, common land and in-field tree resources. Now unprotected, these areas fell prey to urban charcoal burners.
95. Shepherd, G. 1986. Forest policies, forest politics. ODI Social Forestry Network Papers 3a. Overseas Development Institute, London, UK.
GENERAL Customary tenure is flexible, administered by local leaders regarded as legitimate and has a certain degree of discretion. Nationally imposed tenure systems are homogeneous throughout the country regardless of rainfall and land use system, are fixed at one moment in time and adapt very slowly to longer-term change. A local relatively sensitive political authority is exchanged for remote, locally ignorant government.
Customary tenure states that:
those who live nearest to natural resources have stronger rights to it than outsiders,
Modem state tenure has been able to recognize the acts of land clearance, and planting, as acts which fit with European ideas of land title. But tree usufruct and tree preservation activities practised communally have been far more invisible to them, and it has followed that those who use an existing forest resource, rather than planting it or clearing it, will have weak rights. Thus the weak position today of forest dwellers. The state, also, not surprisingly, finds it difficult to concede that the strongest forest rights belong to those who live nearest.
The paper highlights the present day competition over land use which is inherent in forest problems. Conflicts over the role of trees - and hence their management - occur between local subsistence needs and state revenue demand, between rural and urban demand and between the poor and the rich.
Once forests are under pressure, what roles must they satisfy? Dwindling forests mean that not all the functions the forest previously served can continue. What changes must be made and what can continue? Management strategies are likely to need radical revision, but the more powerful party - the state - is likely to try to maintain state functions for the forest and cancel local use rights, though this can never work.
One solution is to allow local people to strengthen their rights in a way understood by modern state tenure systems - by planting, by land leases and by increasing political rights over the area they administer.
96. Shepherd, G., et al. 1985. A study of energy utilisation and requirements in the rural sector of Botswana. Consultancy report prepared with Energy Resources Ltd. and International Forest Science Consultancy for ODA/UK and MMRWA/ Botswana. (Report and Appendices in 2 vols.) Overseas Development Administration, London, UK, and the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Water Affairs, Gabarone, Botswana.
BOTSWANA The study took place in eastern Botswana, an area with a semi-arid to sub-humid climate. The Tswana grow maize and beans and practise livestock rearing. The village, its chief and the village parliament (kgotla) are important institutions. Trees are used primarily for fuelwood and for house and cattle kraal construction. The kgotlas and household compounds are also constructed of tree trunks set upright, in imitation of cattle kraals.
Officially, all land which is not privately and permanently farmed belongs to the state. However, it has been customary for particular sub-tribes within Botswana to regard local resources as their own CPRs, and to be allowed to do so. Tswana villages are permanently sited, surrounded by a grazing zone, an outer ring of bushland and ultimately, some km away, by farmland. A village's lands can be up to 12 km away, and major cattle rearing areas even further. It was discovered that concentric circles of fuelwood ownership, each with differing rules, surround the village.
As the fuelwood shortage has become more acute, women have tended to be freed from the task of collecting wood because it is too far away. Boys take over the job, or, if a husband has transport, he will collect the wood, or villagers will buy from other villagers with transport. Commercialization is reducing the willingness to help elderly relatives or neighbours by collecting for them.
97. Sin, A., El Sammani, M.E. and El Sammani, M.O. 1987. Community perception and participation, prospects in management of forests in marginal lands of Sudan: a case study of Rawashda and Wad Kabu forests, Gedaref, Eastern Region. Geojournal 15(4):399-411.
SUDAN The authors address the settled areas around Rawashda and Wad Kabu forests in the northern Sudan (for which the Fuelwood Development for Energy in Sudan Project is formulating management plans). The main land use systems are extensive mechanized farming and intensive peasant farming and nomadism. Most people practise a combination of agriculture and livestock raising, the diversity of activities being determined by the resource base. Trees are used for charcoal and fuelwood for household, commercial and industrial use, for construction timbers and as browse for livestock. The two forests in the study area are regarded by some villagers as common property of great value, by some as government property to be used in accordance with government regulations and by others as tribal land appropriated by the government. This affects their plans for forest maintenance.
The authors were investigating the willingness of villagers to participate in revised forest management under government supervision. People are willing to plant in unused land, and will accept any revision of land use if it will secure more land from mechanized farming. But they are unwilling to give part of their own land for forest expansion, mistrusting their neighbours and the government's intentions, and are also prevented from doing so by the small size of their holdings. Thus, proposals for village woodlots were met with suspicion, and the fear that the government wishes to lay claim to villager's land through the Forest Department.
98. Skinner, J. 1988. Towards better woodland management in Sahelian Mali. ODI Social Forestry Network Papers 6a. Overseas Development Institute, London, UK.
MALI The author analyses material from the inner Niger delta (rainfall 300-450 mm per year). The flood plain is an important grazing area, increasingly under pressure recently as rainfall has become less. Fishermen, cattle and goat herders use the area, with the fishermen also growing rice and other crops.
While the plain is in flood, it is divided into fixed fishing grounds used by locally resident fisher groups. When the plain dries out and grass grows, local Peul (Fulani) herders, under their three lineage heads (dioros), divide the area into grazing grounds first delimited in the 19th century. The three dioros also control the allocation of parts of the area to rice-growers and to goat herders who bring their animals to graze from up to 160 km away. The Peul use the rangelands; goat herders lop branches from trees to feed to their stock. Visiting fishermen (but not local fishermen, who consider the practice destructive) cut tree-branches and throw them into the river in the dry season to make fish shelters where fish are likely to be caught. Fishermen do not control herders nor vice-versa.
Over-arching all these management practices is the fact that the Mali government nationalized all land in 1960, and that the forestry staff, who now administer the area, are unlikely to be locals. The nearest forestry agent lives 20 km away and only visits sporadically. When he comes, he observes lopped trees and, since the individual culprit can rarely be found, imposes group fines on the goat herders. Such fines appear, to the goat herders, to be arbitrary and they cut as they choose and pay when they have to.
Proposals include creating an area committee with representatives of the fishermen, pastoralists and goat herders and registering the woodland in the name of the local village. It will then be possible to register a fixed number of goat herds (currently 20) who will have first-comer rights to the wood and, it is hoped, help to exclude others in future. The dioros are the key to the successful running of the proposed Village Committee and the Foret Villageoise, and are reckoned to be the only people who could make it work.
99. Sollart, K.M. 1986. Traditional tree management and conservation methods in the Sahel. BOS Document 4. Wageningen, Netherlands.
REGIONAL In the Sahel, rainfall varies between 100 and 600 mm per year, and the ground cover comprises, among other species, Acacia senegal, F. albida, Panicum turgidum, Cyperus conglomeratus, Echinochlea colona, Maercia crassifolia and Balanites aegyptiaca. Soils are fairly arid in the north, but, as one moves south, ferruginous soils on sands and clay-loam soils are found. Nomads in the north and settled farmers in the south are united in the middle by a transitional belt involving both stock raising and farming. In all systems, trees are an important component of the production base. According to this author, however, farmers are more experienced tree managers than herders are.
In much of the Sahel, tree and land ownership is distinct, which leads to conflict if the landowner regards the presence of trees as an inhibiting factor in the development of his or her crop. Thus long-term investment in planting trees is often limited to those with secure title to the land involved.
Nevertheless, tree use is vital. Shea nuts are needed for cooking oil; bark is woven and dyed; and trees produce fuelwood, fruit and fibres, medicines and construction materials. Trees offer a fallback resource in times of drought, and tree exudates (latex, resin, gum) are important. In many agro-silvo-pastoral systems, Acacia senegal seedlings are protected. In several settled farming communities, planting of trees has long been practised (e.g. the gum arabic tree swidden-fallow system). Likewise, indigenous plantations of fuelwood and fruit trees, such as Adansonia digitata gardens, may be found in much of the Sahel. Trees are planted for shade, fencing or religious reasons (on graves and tombs). Pruning, as a systematic management method, is rarely found. Where it is, the trees are usually heavily lopped in order to provide browse. Fire is also used for management purposes.
Local taboos on certain species and activities may be deeply rooted beliefs, based on historical observation and an understanding of the local ecosystem. In the case of Faidherbia albida, lopping is prohibited or regulated and the tree is described in proverbs and sayings as the protector of farm fields and soils. In Burkina Faso, however, there are also taboos placed on the practice of planting trees, which are connected to perceived threats to the socio-economic system. Resource management strategies have deteriorated during the post-colonial period. Among nomads and cultivators, land designated as common property has become seriously depleted as individuals and/or tribes have competitively over-exploited common lands, instead of applying regulatory and conservational measures.
100. Stiles, D. and Kassam, A. 1986. An ethno-botanical study of Gabra plant use, Marsabit District, Kenya. Journal of the East Africa Natural History Society and National Museum 76(191):1-23.
KENYA The authors report on work in semi-arid north eastern Kenya, where the Gabra, a Cushitic language speaking group, live in sparse scrub savannah. Here, individual highly valued species, such as Salvadora persica (used for chew sticks/toothbrushes), may not be cut for more mundane purposes such as fuelwood. For certain species, too, there are closed and open seasons for cutting. (Referenced in Niamir 1990, annotation 69.)
101. Swift, J. and Purata, S.E. 1988. Forestry and food security in the pastoral economies of northern tropical Africa. Background paper presented at the FAO Expert Consultation on Forestry and Food Production/Security, Bangalore, India, February 1988. FAO, Rome, Italy.
MALI The Kel Adwar, a group of Tuareg in northeastern Mali, live in the transition zone between the Sahel and the Sahara, where rainfall is unpredictable and variable. Their main activity is pastoralism, usually with a combination of camels, cattle, sheep and goats. All animals are individually owned, but land and water rights are much less clear.
Each clan is historically associated with a particular wadi or group of wadis, but within each clan pasture is a common resource. Households using part of a wadi can prevent others from cutting down trees there, although they cannot prevent others from allowing their animals to browse on the trees.
The reduction in gathering of bush produce by the Tuareg has been attributed to the emancipation of slaves who used to perform these tasks, to the drought and to the increase in population density.
102. Thomson, J.T. 1985. Local environmental management practices and orientations for rural forestry in Mali's Fifth Region. A report prepared for USAID/Mali. U.S. Agency for International Development, Bamako, Mali (unpublished).
MALI Foresters were trained from 1935 to implement the forestry code and nothing else. The author of this study went looking for indigenous management practices in Mali's Fifth Region; he studied 14 communities - all engaged in varying combinations in farming and herding. All applied management and conservation practices of various kinds. In the majority of cases, however, promising results could not be expected from the villages managing certain of their own natural resources, without further work on their institutional capability. The most interesting for the current study were the following:
103. Thomson, J.T. 1983. Deforestation and desertification in Twentieth Century arid Sahelian Africa. A paper prepared for the conference The World Economy and World Forests in the Twentieth Century. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA (unpublished).
REGIONAL In the past, group control allowed fallowing without land being lost. Present-day tenure rules, on the other hand, tend to allocate land to the tiller and to re-allocate untilled land elsewhere. The result is that people become wary of fallowing their land for fear of losing it, and tree cover is lost. All trees, even those on farms, now belong (officially) to the state forestry service rather than to the owners of fallows. Increasingly, they are claimed by the farmers on whose land they are to be found, but it is now their fuel, rather than their soil amelioration qualities, which is valued.
Labour migration from the Sahel has encouraged extensification of agricultural techniques, for despite population growth, more men and young people have left the area forever. Farmers are now trying to cultivate the most land they can in the least time, at the very beginning of the rainy season. The orderly management of land practised by the extended family in the past is collapsing, long duration swidden-fallowing is coming to an end and more and more marginal lands are farmed, with accompanying destruction of bush areas. Each household head now tries to maximize his options by sowing over as wide and varied an area as possible with the result that older practices such as manuring, intensive sowing and weeding, planned fallowing and water conservation, have all been replaced by quick easy farming. Soil fertility is declining, while health measures continue to push up population growth.
104. Thomson, J.T. 1980. Peasant perceptions of problems and possibilities for local-level management of trees in Niger and Upper Volta. A paper prepared for the meeting of the African Studies Association, October 1980. Philadelphia, USA (unpublished).
NIGER and BURKINA FASO The author compares an area of Burkina Faso with a sub-Sahelian climate and rainfall of 600-650 mm per year, with the Mirriah, Zinder area of Niger, which has a Sahelian climate and rainfall of 450600 mm per year.
In Burkina Faso, sorghum and millet are grown with rice and maize. Some animals are kept, and there are orchards in valley bottoms. In Niger, sorghum and millet is grown, a wide variety of animals are kept, including donkeys and horses, and nomads come through the area annually.
In Burkina Faso, the people have scarcely ever had dealings with the Forestry Department. They saw trees on commons, such as Tamarindus indica, Parkia biglobosa, Faidherbia albida or Adansonia digitata, as communally owned, and saw planted trees or trees regenerating on privately owned land as belonging to the planter or landowner. In Niger, where the main natural vegetation was Acacia spp, rights to some species had been defined by the forest service. Villagers see low value species as their own common property and valuable species as the property of the foresters. The same goes for the trees in village woodlots. Trees are important for fuel, fodder and poles in both areas. In Niger, there is a real shortage and both poles and fuel are sold in local markets.
In Burkina Faso, where contact with the Forestry Department has been characterized by benign neglect, villagers are interested in tree planting. They feel able to make their own decisions about whether to plant communally or individually and are capable of working out their own management strategies. In Niger, where rules about tree ownership are already riddled with tension because of the way in which the Forestry Code is put into practice by foresters, the prospects for any tree planting, and especially any communal tree planting, are virtually zero. Neither they, nor the authorities, have the power to enforce mechanisms for tree management.
105. Thomson, J.T., Feeny, D.H. and Oakerson, R.J. 1986. Institutional dynamics: the evolution and dissolution of common property resource management. Pp. 391-424, in Common Property Resource Management. National Research Council/ BOSTID. National Academy Press, Washington DC, USA.
NIGER Only the case of Zinder, Niger, in the arid West African Sahel is used from this article, an area of shifting cultivation. From 1884-1935, there were local CPRs near villages, more general CPRs further away and a nationwide commons for the tree Faidherbia albida. From 1935-1974 legal state protection was extended to 14 additional species and was to some extent enforced. From 1974 to 1984, CPRs failed, village woodlots as communal assets failed to replace them satisfactorily and farmers began to claim private rights to the trees found on their farm land.
Tree management intensified as the population increased. To start with, only a few tree species were treated as private property, with Faidherbia albida the preserve of the sultans. All other species were available to everyone. After 1935, with the colonial government's Forestry Code established, local management was curtailed and national level rules substituted for them. The other main external changes which have had an impact on the situation have been population growth and enlarging markets.
106. du Toit, R.F., Campbell, B.M., Haney, R.A. and Dore, D. 1984. Wood usage and tree-planting in Zimbabwe's communal lands: a baseline survey of knowledge, attitudes and practices. A report to the Zimbabwe Forestry Commission and the World Bank, Washington DC, USA (unpublished).
ZIMBABWE A study of the miombo woodlands on Zimbabwe's communal lands, where livelihoods are based upon maize cultivation and some cattle keeping. In deforested areas, hilltops and riverine valley bottoms are now the last sites from which wood for fuel, space heating and poles can be gathered.
Communal lands (ex-colonial native reserves) are lands outside the high quality ex-white areas where large farms exist. They are over-densely settled, and whatever management practices for woodlands in the areas may once have obtained, these have long ago died out, as the trees have disappeared under an open access regime. Formally, such lands are "owned" by various tribal land authorities, but there is nowadays de facto acceptance that arable land is heritable. The majority of households have planted trees for fruit, and some have planted pole trees. Since shortages of poles are now strongly felt, there have begun to be strong incentives to plant privately.
107. Vink A.T. (ed.). 1986. Proceedings of the consultative seminar on integrated forest management, with special reference to Rawashda and Wad Kabo forest reserves, Eastern Region, Sudan. A paper from the Fuelwood Development for Energy in the Sudan Project. Government of the Sudan, Government of the farming, the major crops being beans, peas, maize and sorghum. Bananas and coffee are also grown.
A survey showed that 95 percent of respondents have planted trees on their farms, having collected and sown seed themselves, obtained seedlings from other farms or let trees regenerate naturally. For some species (e.g. Eucalyptus spp., Cyprus spp. and Grevillea robusta), people have most often obtained them from communal nurseries. Three quarters of the survey respondents have left indigenous trees on their farms. One-third have Erythrina abyssinica. Other species commonly left include Vernonia amygdalina, Acacia sieberiana, Rhizinus spp. and Ficus spp. The Vernonia amygdalina is used for medicine and firewood, the Rhizinus spp. for firewood and crop (banana) supports and the other species are used primarily for firewood, construction and tool use. Most species are left in the fields for utilitarian reasons; interviewees were reluctant to discuss whether any species were sacred or taboo. In the older, more densely populated sectors of the commune, there are few indigenous trees remaining, these having been removed to put more land under cultivation or for firewood.
109. World Bank. 1985. Desertification in the Sahelian and Sudanian Zone of West Africa. The World Bank, Washington DC, USA.
REGIONAL This report focusses on the Sahelian-Sudanian zones of the Sahel.
There are three main land use systems:
Tenure rules in these systems are as follows:
In none of the systems has deliberate planting of trees constituted a significant part of indigenous resource management, as most areas initially enjoyed a surplus of natural forest cover. However, selective cutting and management of the regeneration of natural forest cover often produced stands of preferred tree/ shrub species in the fields; and, in the bush, certain species were also favoured. Trees were protected as much for their "social" and household uses (i.e. gum, honey, medicines) as for their utility in providing browse, timber and the recycling of nutrients; so a deliberate policy of enrichment has taken place. Rules regarding proper use were enforced by kin group heads.
Monetarization and involvement in the wider political economy undermined the authority of the original kin group structure, while at the same time changing the emphasis on subsistence to cash cropping and the sending of remittances. These changes in kin group cohesion and patriarchal authority were concomitant with an increasingly unregulated exploitation of land, and have gradually supplanted indigenous practices of soil, pasture, tree and water conservation. Unfortunately, these changes occurred during the abnormally wet period of 1950-1965, so that the initial effect of resource management changes were cushioned and masked by good rains. The 1968-73 drought exposed the breakdown in original kin structures and their careful resource management practices.
Increasingly, centralized political authority has challenged the capability of local decision making bodies to manage their environment; government legislation becomes necessary for the smallest changes to established practices and new initiatives, thereby dissuading groups from organizing. Urban-biased economic policies are also isolated by the World Bank as bearing responsibility for further extensive agricultural production and the shortening of fallow periods, because of low producer prices. Likewise, the failure to update stumpage fees in real terms since independence, in order to bring them more into line with the cost of planting trees, has promoted destruction of the natural forest cover with no corresponding investment in replanting.
110. WRI. 1987. Elements of success: sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. Pp. 221-238, in World Resources. World Resources Institute, Washington DC, USA.
REGIONAL The article deals with sub-Saharan Africa. It notes the problems of its soils: of low fertility, derived from ancient weathered rocks, highly leached, low in nutrients, and with a low clay content. Such soils are highly susceptible to erosion once the vegetation cover is removed. Shifting cultivation has been an important adaptation to these constraints, but it depends for success on abundant land.
Colonial and independent governments nationalized much natural forest, excluding people from exercising their original rights. This change in tenure encourages people to poach from and exploit it in response to exclusion. The author suggests that long-standing usufruct rights be restored in order to restore, in turn, the indigenous strategies of resource management. Forests must become common property, to be managed for the common good.
Recent development projects in Niger and Nigeria have initiated systems of windbreaks and alley farming, respectively, both of which have been successful. These agroforestry projects have changed the indigenous resource management rationale, whereby the ecological benefits of trees for the soil accrue to crops only after the trees have been cleared. Instead, in the alley cropping system, where food crops are grown between regularly pruned hedgerows of fast growing nitrogen-fixing trees, a variety of benefits accrue while the trees continue their growth and are seasonally pruned.
111. Wormald, T.J. 1984. The management of the natural forests in the arid and semiarid zones of East and Southern Africa. A report to ODA, Overseas Development Administration, London, UK (unpublished).
REGIONAL There are two types of forest in this large area:
1. the northern Somali-Maasai Acacia-Commiphora deciduous bushland, sparse, except by rivers, and with sparse grass cover; and
2. the southern Miombo (Brachystegia spp. ), with a vigorous grass layer.
In both areas, large tracts of forest have been preserved by the presence of tsetse fly. Yields are low - perhaps 0.3 cu m/ha per year. There is a natural cycle of degradation and renewal as a response to irregular rainfall. In the northern woodlands, animal herding is the chief economic activity, with some agriculture; in the southern woodlands, agriculture is the main activity of a more sedentary population, with some animal raising.
Unfarmed land in both areas has been held in the past under communal lineage or clan arrangements, but has often been transformed into state land in the last three to four decades, with a resulting reduction in local interest in sustainable management: clear-cut tenure being an absolute prerequisite for good local management. Trees are vital in both areas for browse, fuelwood, building materials, fibres and soil fertility, with honey and charcoal important for income generation. In addition, the Acacia- Commiphora woodlands are important for a variety of gums, exudates, relishes, dietary supplements and medicines.
The woodlands have been maintained and kept open by human intervention over a long period. Grazing keeps the balance between annual and perennial grasses, and between grassland and bush and is instrumental in reducing inopportune fires. Fire is also used as a management tool, particularly in the miombo areas, but harm can be caused in more fragile situations. There is now much more non-cyclical degradation to be seen, resulting from excessive clearing: for cultivation as population density rises; for mechanized agricultural schemes, such as those of Sudan; and as a result of large-scale population movements of refugees in Northeastern Africa. Animal herds are also crowded into smaller graze and browse areas as a result of large scale clearing for agriculture.
The author makes certain management proposals: since plantations are respected, it might be possible in some areas to protect forest by planting plantations around it; it is important to spread off-take over as wide an area as possible and to diversify the intended returns from the forest. Good extension systems are needed, based on understanding of the social and economic problems, as well as the ecological ones, and making sure that villagers have an economic stake in good management.
The report contains an excellent bibliography.
