Deforestation of woodlands in communal areas of Zimbabwe: is it due to agricultural policies?

A goal programming model for planning management of Miombo woodlands

“…At the start of the analysis, part of the woodland is cleared for agricultural production while the rest remains forested. This is the initial condition, and conforms to reality in the region (Minde et al 2000;Chipika and Kowero 2000). As described in detail later, the area maintained as miombo woodland can change from year to year due to conversion to agricultural use.…”

“…The study confirmed varying dependency of these communities on the woodlands for their incomes, with the woodlands contributing up to 70% of household incomes in some study sites in Tanzania (Monela et al 2000) and as little as 10% in some sites in Zimbabwe . Further, the study through regression analysis, confirmed the expansion of agricultural cropland (Chipika and Kowero 2000;Minde et al 2000), though not always conclusively into the woodlands and/or grazing fields.…”

Household livelihoods in semi-arid regions: options and constraints

“…Groundnuts and roundnuts are predominantly food crops; they are being partly replaced by a cash crop (cotton). Increasingly, cotton is becoming popular with communal farmers (Chipika and Kowero 2000). Despite the high production costs and the considerable skills cotton production requires, farmers are interested in this crop because of the high returns and the fact that it provides one of the few sources of cash (Chipika and Kowero 2000).…”

“…The contribution to household economies of income derived from employment, returned through remittances, may be declining, because of stagnating and declining economies in the region (Addison 1996;World Bank 1996;Arrighi 2002). Livelihoods are also vulnerable to economic policy shifts, particularly economic reform programmes whose pressures reinforce dependence by the poor on the environment, often causing further rapid deterioration in its quality (Chipika and Kowero 2000).…”

Land use/cover change and landscape fragmentation analysis in the Bindura District, Zimbabwe

“…Since the major thrust of the economic development was agriculture, more land was needed to resettle people and to increase agricultural production. However, the slow pace of land redistribution attributed to the 'willing buyer/willing seller' conditions coupled with demographic expansion on limited land as well as the adverse socioeconomic environment and endemic droughts, led to further degradation in the CA (Nkala, 1996;Chipika and Kowero, 2000).…”