Forest-dependent communities in Tanzania are amongst the poorest in the world. Remote, isolated, poor transport – jobs are hard to find. Instead, people earn their living primarily from the land and its resources.
The African blackwood tree is harvested and the wood is used locally for making ornamental carvings or exported to be made into musical instruments.
The problem is that the forest doesn’t belong to the people that live in it – it is ‘common land’, belonging to the government. People may have access to local natural resources but that access isn’t exclusive or controlled by local people.
This problem of access becomes magnified when it comes to valuable natural resources such as African blackwood. People do not have the authority to prevent loggers coming into the forests around their villages and cutting the blackwood trees.
This lack of security in natural resource management leads to unsustainable harvesting.Why should local people limit the number of trees they cut when they cannot stop other loggers coming in and exploiting the resource?
More trees are cut each year before reaching maturity, and over time, the number of trees declines.
The trees slowly disappear; the people become poorer.
Problem
Forest-dependent communities in Tanzania are amongst the poorest in the world. Remote, isolated, poor transport – jobs are hard to find. Instead, people earn their living primarily from the land and its resources.
The African blackwood tree is harvested and the wood is used locally for making ornamental carvings or exported to be made into musical instruments.
The problem is that the forest doesn’t belong to the people that live in it – it is ‘common land’, belonging to the government. People may have access to local natural resources but that access isn’t exclusive or controlled by local people.
This problem of access becomes magnified when it comes to valuable natural resources such as African blackwood. People do not have the authority to prevent loggers coming into the forests around their villages and cutting the blackwood trees.
This lack of security in natural resource management leads to unsustainable harvesting.Why should local people limit the number of trees they cut when they cannot stop other loggers coming in and exploiting the resource?
More trees are cut each year before reaching maturity, and over time, the number of trees declines.
The trees slowly disappear; the people become poorer.
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