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Can Campfire Go Beyond Elephant
By Bruce Campbell, Neil Byron, Pauline Hobane, Elias Madzudzo, Frank Matose, Liz Wily

Large wildlife species, most notably elephant, form the key of the generally
successful CAMPFIRE programme. This initiative involves empowering local
communities to manage and benefit from their natural resources. We ask whether
schemes like CAMPFIRE can be applied to a broader spectrum of woodland
resources (such as wild fruits, grazing, thatching grass, wood etc)?

Problems in Applying CAMPFIRE to Woodland Resources Relate to:

A legal and policy framework which is not enabling to local management.
Weakened local institutional structures.
A high degree of differentiation with respect to woodland resource use
within communities.
Problems of defining resource user groups; and,
The potentially low market value of woodland products.

Legal and Policy Framework

There have been few moves to encourage local management of woodland
resources in Zimbabwe, which is not surprising considering the current legislative
framework. Many Acts govern woodland use and are not enabling to local
management and control.

Several legal statutes and policies that were passed during the colonial period
and retaining after independence have a negative impact on resource
management.
For instance, the major tenet of the Communal Lands Forest Produce Act is the
restrictions it places on use of forest products in communal areas, confining then
to ‘own use’ which provides disincentives for managing and utilizing woodlands
on a sustainable basis. The common weakness of these laws is the they do not
provide for local communities to regulate utilization of their woodland resources.

Local Institutional Structures

The history of local institutions for woodland management is marked with
confusion, alternating between empowerment and disempowerment of local
‘traditional’ structures, both pre- and post-independence. After independence
in 1980 resource control powers were given to state supported Village
Development Committees (VIDCOs). There are current moves to return some
degree of control
to traditional leaders. In many villages, there is conflict between the traditional
structures and the state-imposed structures, with a degree of confusion to who
controls resource use.

Community Differentiation

Researchers have shown wide differences among wealth groups in cash income
from woodland products and in subsistence use of woodland products, thus
indicating the highly differentiated nature of communities. The wealthy, with
wide access to cattle, enter into various relationships with the poor.The
patron-client relationships have negative implications on efforts to manage
communal resources, as attempts to assign rights over woodlands to poorer
groups of the community are difficult. Collective action by the poor is made near
impossible by these relationships, as the poor are highly dependent on
cattle-owning households.

User Group Definition and Social Differentiation

Use of woodland resources is not restricted to administrative boundaries,
either the state-defined ones (e.g VIDCOs) or traditional villages. In addition,
different sectors of the community have different interests in the woodlands
(e.g. the wealthier for grazing, the very poor for wild foods).The successful
management of common property resources is partly dependent on having
clearly-defined user groups with clearly defined resource areas, conditions which
are difficult to find in communal areas.

What is the Value of Woodland Resources?

From CAMPFIRE, it appears that benefits must be significant if a community is to go
to the trouble of establishing and enforcing rules about common property resource
use. In addition, the benefits must be greater than, or additional to, those that
would be obtained from a competing land use (e.g. cropland). Do woodlands, have
sufficient value to stimulate community based management regimes.

There is a wide range of goods marketed from woodlands in the region, but large
game have a much higher cash value than woodland products. In addition, the cash
benefits from campfire are relatively well distributed amongst community members,
while for woodland products, it is often the case that only a few households in the
community are marketing them, often the poorer households. Natural resource
income can be up to 20% of the household’s total cash income in the poorest fifth
of the population.

Woodlands also provide a wide range of subsistence products to rural households.
Partial valuation of the subsistence use of woodlands in two villages, each with
about 100 households, indicated values over $30 000 per year in each village
(1996 values). The woodlands are not only a source of material goods, they are also
central to the spiritual needs of the people, with specified trees and even blocks of
woodland being conserved by communities for cultural reasons. Local people also
give considerable value to the ecological services that woodlands provide.

The sum total of all marketed, subsistence and service values of village woodlands
may be substantial, though there have been few attempts to calculate this in detail.

The Way Forward – Taking CAMPFIRE Beyond Elephant

What then is the potential for taking CAMPFIRE beyond the mega-fauna? We
suggest one needs to consider institutional, economic and ecological factors when
answering this question. A range of supporting activities are required to develop
CAMPFIRE-type schemes, including policy reform, developing enabling legislation,
capacity building at the local level, and refined planning processes that support
community based management. The most important institutional changes that
are required relate to the local community itself, and the ways in which it
identifies and manages itself and is able to organize, regulate and sustain
woodland management, and resist pressures from other quarters (e.g. elites,
cash strapped Rural District Councils).

There are no local examples, at least for schemes lasting more than ten years,
that indicate that initiatives to hand back control to local people will result in
long-term substantial extraction. Furthermore, rural communities are
undergoing rapid social, economic and political change, as the development and
modernization process spreads and deepens. Even if effective and viable
woodland user-groups exist or can be put in place today, will they survive and
persist, particularly in the face of modernization forces.

We do not argue the handing control to local communities is a panacea that will
ensure the sustainable use of woodlands. There is strong evidence that it may
well be a crucial first step. However, much more needs to be known about the
institutional and commercial context in which users now find themselves, and
about the type of support (technical, economic, institutional or political) that will
increase the probability of sustainable management of the woodland.

This work was partially funded by the European Union Actions in Favour of Tropical
Forests in Developing Countries. For more information contact IES. Views expressed
in the IES Policy Briefs are those of the authors.

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