News June 2001 June 2001 Newsletter
The Institute
was very active in the last quarter. Two AFSA Trainig Workshops on Scientific Writing and Agroforestry Adoption, Training of Trainers, were conducted.
A project on
Community Access to Water, Grazing and Woodland resources in Communal
Lands, Resettlement Areas and Small-Scale Commercial Farming areas will
commence in August and is being funded by the International Development
Research Centre. This is a
follow-up of the Values of Trees Project, and will see further ties
between the Universities of Zimbabwe and Alberta.
Micro-Catchment
Management and Common Property Resources Project (1999-2001)
A DFID-funded
(UK) multidisciplinary project on integrated management of common property
resources in semi-arid micro-catchment settings is being carried out in
south-central Zimbabwe. It is a collaborative research/development initiative housed
within the Institute of Environmental Studies, and involving several other
institutions including CARE Zimbabwe, ITDG, Institute of Hydrology (UK)
and the Department of Research and Specialist Services.
The research
objectives of the project include: identifying
a range of technical, institutional and other options for the management
of micro-catchments; evaluating the impacts of the options on various
biophysical, economic and institutional variables that have implications
on the micro-catchments, and interactions among them; and, evaluating the
poverty alleviation and environmental management tradeoffs of the various
options. The development
objective include providing policy makers, extension staff and communities
with the tools with which to make sound management decisions, and
promoting the implementation of such decisions.
Accomplishments
of the past year include: completion
of baseline institutional overviews, the basis on which capacity
evaluation and strengthening for common property resource management have
been initiated; completion of a review of the scope for scaling up the
project into broader contexts and baseline surveys, which have facilitated
biophysical and hydrological monitoring – key steps towards
quantification of biophysical linkages amongst catchments components;
setting up of an integrated decision support system (model) for testing
implications of various management options on poverty alleviation and
environmental mangement; and, initiation of several soil and water
conservation options and socio-economic characterization as key steps
towards understanding water resource-livelihood linkages. More information on the project can be found on the project
website: www.uz.ac.zw/ies/mcm
Wood-Carving
Industry Aids Zimbabwe’s Poor, but Raises Environmental Concerns
Nowadays, a
visitor to Zimbabwe traveling on many of the tourist routes will see
informal markets where wooden and stone sculptures are sold. There has been a surge in the number of tourists in the country
with a subsequent increase in the number of wooden stone sculpture
outlets. The heavy tourism is
likely to continue, and this will provide the badly needed income from the
sales of wood carvings. The
wood-carving industry however, needs to resolve some thorny environmental
and policy issues which research by CIFOR and other participating
institutions are addressing.
Joint research
by the Institute of Environmental Studies, CIFOR, the German Institute of
Forestry and Forest products and the World Wide Fund for Nature is aimed
at understanding the role of wood carving within local livelihoods and its
impact on the resource. Through such research it is hoped that policy
contradictions can be resolved, so as to balance local economic needs and
long term sustainability of the resource.
Lessons may be
available from experiences in Kenya and other countries where traditional
wood carvers have made sculptures for tourists. To meet their continuing need for raw material, Kenyan carvers have
switched to different tree species that can be grown much more quickly and
have begun growing these species themselves.
Some of the
research has addressed the competition between wood carvers and the
Zimbabwe Government for access to the targeted species (some of the
species are important in the commercial furniture industry). Researchers have analysed the relative value of trees for different
uses of the wood and concluded that using the trees as a source of wood
for carvings would result in considerably more value – five times more
value per volume of wood – that the value associated with selling the
timber rights.
The research project, which has been underway since 1996, also points to the need for authorities to formally recognise the wood-carving industry instead of regarding it as an informal (an illegal) sector. Establishing a body that represents all the people who participate in wood-carving and trade along the tourist corridors would strengthen negotiations to devise ways of enhancing product quality, improving market infrastructure and assuring a fair distribution of income [Wil de Jong(CIFOR)
