Deforestation has recently become a major concern for many countries in the world. It is one of the most pressing land use problems. Deforestation is occurring around the world on a scale never known before. More than 30 per cent of the world's forest is believed to have been deforested (Litvinoff 1990). Most of the damage is believed to have taken place during the last 45 years. By the early 1990s, almost 40% of the earth's land surface had been converted into cropland and permanent pasture (World Resources Institute [WRI] et al. 1996).
Deforestation is mainly a tragedy of the developing countries where high rates have been experienced. These countries are estimated to be losing about 11 million ha of tropical forest annually, and it is projected that about 225 million ha will be cleared by the year 2000 (FAO 1982; WRI et al. 1985; WRI and IIED 1988). Over half of today's deforestation occurs in Latin America, where roughly 10% of the Amazon has gone (Litvinoff 1990). Africa is the most severely deforested continent. Forests in Africa are believed to have been cleared 29 times faster than they were being planted in the early 1980s compared to 10.5 in Tropical America and 4.5 in Tropical Asia (Holmberg, Bass and Timberlake, Bass and Timberlake 1991).
Variations in the rate of deforestation, however, exist from one country to another. In Ivory Coast and Nigeria, for example, the rate has been as high as 5-6% a year (Gradwohl and Greenberg 1988; WRI 1990). Ivory Coast alone is believed to have lost over 56% of its forest cover since 1965 (WRI et al. 1988). Burkina Faso loses about 85,000 ha a year to make way for cash crops. In Tanzania, about 10,000 ha of closed forest was being deforested annually between 1981 and 1985, representing an average annual deforestation rate of 0.4% (WRI and IIED 1986). Between 1976 and 1980, deforestation is estimated to have proceeded at an average annual rate of 0.5% (Allen and Barnes 1985). This rate seems low compared to other African countries but it is substantial in relation to the forest resources available in Tanzania.
The depletion of forests is of great concern for environment and development in many developing countries, Africa in particular. Unsustainable use of forests has resulted in severe environmental problems, especially land degradation which is manifested by soil erosion, desertification and general loss of productive potential in rural areas. Soil degradation has been the cause of stagnating or declining yields in parts of many countries especially on fragile lands from which the poorest farmers attempt to wrest a living (World Bank 1992). Deforestation has also affected water catchment areas and destroyed watersheds, affecting the quantity and quality of the water supplies they contain. In some cases, deforestation has resulted in unprecedented floods and loss of life.
Scarcity of fuelwood caused by deforestation has also been a major problem to the majority of people, who, poor as they are, cannot afford to use alternative sources of fuel. African women have been forced to walk farther for fuelwood, reducing the amount of time they would spend on other productive activities.
All these problems are eroding the potential for sustainable development. Thus most developing countries are caught up in a vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment. Their efforts to disentangle themselves from this cyclic phenomenon are thwarted by the international world order with imbalances of trade and the debt crisis which forces developing countries to over-exploit their natural resources to meet their obligations at the expense of their own development.
Tanzania, like many African countries has been experiencing rapid rates of deforestation. However, estimates of the magnitude and rate have varied widely. The Ministry of Tourism, Natural Resources and Environment (MTNRE 1989a), for example, estimates that Tanzania has been losing between 300,000 and 400,000 ha of forest per annum. The FAO and World Bank estimates give an average annual rate of 130,000 ha or 0.3% (WRI 1990; World Bank 1992). Ahlback (1988), on the other hand, believes that the annual rate of deforestation has already exceeded 700,000 ha. Such disparities of data have made it difficult to assess the magnitude of the problem and to come up with strategies aimed at minimising it and dealing with its impacts.
Although generalisations have been made on the rates, magnitude and causes of deforestation in Tanzania, differences exist in different areas because of local variations in the types of land use and economic activities, nature of the vegetation and demands for various forest products including fuelwood. Therefore, any attempt to deal with the problem of deforestation must address these variations in order to avoid making blanket statements about it.
Of particular importance is the need to understand the contribution of the various factors such as settlement and expansion of agriculture, tree cutting for timber, charcoal production and mining to the deforestation problem in different areas. Such factors may be considered as proximate factors. The question is: what could be the underlying forces behind the problem of deforestation? Is population growth the only underlying factor as many people have always thought and believed? If not, what other factors could explain the process of deforestation? Is there any link between the process of deforestation and the development process within and outside the country? These and many other questions need to be addressed in order to understand the problem of deforestation and to devise appropriate strategies to deal with it.
This study was undertaken in Kahama District which, until only recently (about two decade ago), was still full covered with rich natural forests. However, the current large-scale deforestation that is taking place is now a threat to the existence of these forests. Indiscriminate tree felling is fast driving the landscape into bare land. There is even encroachment on forest reserves causing extensive deforestation.
The main objective of this study is to provide an understanding of the principal processes underlying deforestation in Kahama District. In particular, the study investigated the extent and causes of deforestation, focusing more on tobacco cultivation, and tried to link this to broader processes of social, economic and technological change which characterise a particular style of development-centred on agricultural production. It also sought to analyse first the role played by government policies in deforestation and secondly policies and strategies to deal with deforestation processes and their impacts at local and national levels.
In order to address the above issues, the study attempted to answer the following questions:
(i) What is the extent of deforestation?
(ii) How and why is deforestation occurring?
(iii) How are the people living in and around forests affected by deforestation?
(iv) How are they reacting individually and collectively to the problem?
(v) What role is played by government policies in the whole process of deforestation?
The underlying assumption behind this study was that the development process in Tanzania has been largely responsible for the deforestation that has and continues to take place in the country. Such factors as expansion of tobacco cultivation, charcoal production and settlement, which seem to be important factors in Kahama District, are all linked to this process. Although population growth is seen as an important factor, its role can mostly be associated with the settlement of the migrant population and subsequent clearing for agriculture and grazing land. But even this is deeply rooted in the development process that took place in the whole country since the late 19th Century.
At present, one of the challenges facing Tanzania has been the alarming rate of deforestation being experienced in many parts of the country. Yet the rates and extent of the problem are still debatable due to paucity of reliable data and the processes involved are not clearly understood. This study is considered to be an important step towards bridging this information gap. The findings of the study are expected to contribute towards an understanding of the dynamics of deforestation in Tanzania.
As far as Kahama District is concerned, not many people are even aware that deforestation has become and continues to be a serious threat to the existence of the once rich forests. No studies have been undertaken in the district to highlight this problem which seems to be of a more recent creation. It is hoped that this study will highlight the extent of the problem so that appropriate steps could be taken before Kahama also becomes a barren land like the other parts of Shinyanga Region.
There has been much concern about the pressures that population exerts on world resources and the environment. Many people blame the serious problems of deforestation in the developing countries on the growth of population (Anderson and Fishwick 1984; Allen and Barnes 1985; Holmberg, Bass and Timberlake 1991; Green 1992). The fact that population growth increases pressures on forest resources cannot be ignored. Population pressure, particularly in the closely-settled areas, has forced the extension of agriculture into forest and even fragile and marginal lands and increased the demand for fuelwood, setting in motion a downward spiral of forest destruction. However, deforestation is a complex problem, and rapid population growth alone may not explain the rapid rate of deforestation experienced in Tanzania and in many other developing countries.
Myers (1986) identified poverty, unequal land distribution, low agricultural productivity, rapid population growth and various inappropriate and counter- productive government/public policies as underlying causes of deforestation. This view is also supported by Repetto (1985), Repetto and Holmes (1983), WRI et al. (1985), Barbir, Burgess and Makandya (1990), Litvinoff (1999) and Holmberg, Bass and Timberlake (1991). They argue that the rural poor, being themselves victims of the development process, are often caught in a vicious cycle of poverty that forces them into destructive patterns of land use to meet the basic needs for food and fuel. Other factors such as a breakdown of traditional common property management and commercialisation of the forest resources have also led to increasingly severe pressure on forests in most developing countries (Repetto 1985). Therefore, to regard the problem of deforestation as a consequence of population growth alone and the subsequent increase in the demand for food, fuel and other forest products is to oversimplify the problem, creating a danger of mistakenly formulating inappropriate policies and strategies to solve it.
The problem of deforestation in general needs to be looked at in a broader perspective. While single causes of deforestation may be identified and analysed, local interactions are inevitably far more complex than a simplistic overview suggests. According to Palmer (1992), the process of deforestation is derived from the entire pattern of world development since the colonial era, and the economies of most developing countries demonstrate a number of parallels that contribute to a greater or less extent to the deforestation process. Tanzania, like many other developing countries, has been caught up in a serious development crisis in which she is forced to use its natural resources not for development but to meet the financial requirements of the international creditors (IIED 1987).
As argued by Utting (1991), deforestation may be seen to reflect a specific type of development model which began in the late 1800s and early 1900s when national economies were drawn into the world market for primary goods such as cotton, coffee, tobacco, etc. Many countries had to rely on these primary goods to generate the foreign exchange needed to bring about economic growth and development. This situation prevails until today and is reinforced by government policies such as the Tanzania Agricultural Policy of 1983 which emphasises production of the primary export crops in order to generate foreign exchange. A crop like tobacco is a stable and profitable crop in the short-term. In the long-term, however, its environmental costs are high because of the large-scale deforestation associated with it.
As national economies were drawn into the world market, peasant producers were increasingly drawn into national markets (Utting 1991). This meant intensifying agricultural production to produce the food required and a marketable surplus in order to obtain the income necessary to purchase production inputs and consumer goods. The intensification of agriculture led to accelerated conversion of forest areas to crop and pastureland.
Coupled with the above, the modernisation process that was initiated introduced cultural attitudes which saw the forest as a resource to be cut down and used (Utting 1991). Lumber industries were started with the introduction of new technologies in order to meet foreign demands for tropical timber. This led to the opening up of forest areas for commercial logging, which played a key role in the conversion of forests in most developing countries. Deforestation caused by commercial logging is thus believed to be, by and large, a result of economic expansion that fails to take account of the value of the environment (WRI 1990).
In the process of integrating the peasant producers and national economies into the world market, highly skewed patterns of resource distribution emerged, which left many people living in extreme poverty with limited access to land, credit and other essential goods and services. Their desperate need for survival forced them to overtax their land and extend cultivation into forest and even fragile and marginal lands, causing a lot of destruction of forests and severe land degradation. To date, the situation has not changed much. Many people are still poor, and being themselves victims of forest destruction, they have often been caught in a chain of events that has forced them to overtax their land and natural resources, especially forests. Their efforts to escape from poverty by cutting fuelwood and producing charcoal for sale in towns and cities, and growing cash crops like tobacco have damaged the forests even further. They have scoured the countryside felling live trees wantonly. "Even forest reserves have not been immune to their depredations." (Grainger 1990:100).
From the preceding discussion, it is evident that the so-called causes of deforestation such as the spread of agriculture, the expansion of certain commercial crops, commercial logging activities, wood-cutting for fuelwood, and cattle raising which involves conversion of forest to pasture, are, in effect, sub-processes of the broader model or style of development outlined above. The rapid population growth and related pressures on the land may be seen as a survival strategy given that having many children is a cushion against poverty (Utting 1991). This study was, therefore, undertaken within the framework of this development model as presented above.
To understand the dynamics of deforestation, both spatial and temporal data were required. These data were collected from both primary and secondary data sources. The primary data for the study were obtained from three main sources, namely, field survey, informal discussions with district, divisional ward and village leaders and officials of the Tobacco Board of Tanzania, and household survey.
A field survey of the vegetation was undertaken in the study area. This involved traversing through the vegetation at randomly selected sample points and collecting relevant information such as the type of vegetation, dominant species, type of land use in the surrounding areas and any evidence for deforestation. This was done along a series of transacts. These were:
(i) Kahama town to Ulowa in the south
(ii) Kahama town to Bulungwa in the southwest
(iii) Bulungwa to Busulusanguku in the west
(iv) Kahama to Ngogwa in the west and to Ntobo in the north
(v) Ntobo to Ngaya in the north via Nyanghwale-Busangi
(vi) Ngaya to Kahama town.
It was the intention of this study to use Landsat imagery as one of the primary data sources to determine the extent and rate of deforestation that has taken place since 1973. However, in the absence of funds to purchase the imagery, it was not possible to use this source for the purpose. However, data generated from satellite imagery by Hunting Technical Services for the Forest Resources Management Project based at the Institute of Resource Assessment were used to describe the present vegetation of the district, and to provide a qualitative indication of deforestation in different parts of the district.
Discussions were also held with district, ward and village leaders, and officials of HASHI and the Tanzania Tobacco. These discussions were expected to provide information on an overall picture of the problem of deforestation and efforts that have been made to minimise it. They centred mainly on such aspects as changes in land uses, extent of migration and its social and ecological impacts, tobacco farming and its impact on woodlands, extent and causes of deforestation, areas mostly affected and afforestation and forest management programmes.
Detailed information for the study was collected during the household survey. Interviews were conducted with subsistence farmers in tobacco growing areas using a structured questionnaire to obtain the following information:
· socio-economic characteristics of the households; e.g., age, sex, size of household, and history of settlement in the areas;
· land use characteristics such as types and changes over time;
· farm characteristics; e.g., land ownership, types of crops grown, sizes, number and location of plots, systems of cultivation, production trends, changes in farm sizes and availability of farm land;
· tobacco cultivation; e.g., when one started growing tobacco and why, farming system used;
· fuelwood supply; e.g., source of fuelwood, distance to source and whether it has increased or decreased, preferred species;
· charcoal production; e.g., amount of charcoal produced, number and size of trees used per kiln, types of species used, source of trees, and changes in distance to source over time and reasons;
· perceptions on deforestation, especially problems currently being experienced, future supplies of fuelwood and conservation efforts.
Secondary data were obtained from census reports for demographic data of the villages in the district, ward and village records to obtain information on population and village characteristics, and published and unpublished books, research reports, government and Tobacco Authority/board records. Maps were also used to supplement information obtained from the field survey, particularly on land use and extent of deforestation.
Initially, the study sought to uncover the interplay of various factors responsible for deforestation. However, due to financial limitations, it was decided to focus more on tobacco cultivation which is causing a great loss of woodlands in the district. The sample area chosen was Bulungwa Ward in Mweli Division which is one of the areas most affected by deforestation due to tobacco cultivation. Other affected areas are Ushetu and Bukomela Wards also in Mweli Division.
Sample villages were selected in such a way as to reflect the intensity of the deforestation process. Three sample villages were selected. These were Shaka, Makongolo and Nyabusalu (figure 1), which are the leading tobacco producing villages in the ward and also the most affected by deforestation. However, because of difficulties of getting interviewees from Nyabusalu village, only a few people were interviewed. Apparently, the people in Nyabusalu thought that a new tobacco buying firm was trying to win them from another firm. Thus they were reluctant to come forward and be interviewed. Each of the villages comprised several sub-villages, 10 in Saka, 6 in Makongolo and 5 in Nyabusalu. The basic unit of study in these villages was the household and questions were directed to the heads of households.
A total of 98 households were interviewed, 40 from Shaka, 9 from Nyabusalu and 49 from Makongolgo villages. These represented 4.5%, 1.8% and 13% of the total households in each village, respectively. The households were randomly selected with the help of the chairmen of the sub-villages. A structured, closed and open- ended questionnaire was used for the interview.
The data collected from the household survey was processed and analysed using SPSS computer package. The results have been summarised and are presented both qualitatively and quantitatively using frequency tables and cross tabulations.
Figure 1. Kahama District: Location of Study Villages
