Not Affected the Same Way: Gendered Outcomes for Commons and Resilience Grabbing by Large-Scale Forest Investors in Tanzania

Abstract

The topic of large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) has attracted wide interest in the literature and the media. However, there is little work on the gendered institutional changes and gendered impacts on common pool resources (CPR) due to LSLA. The aim of this paper is to address these impacts. This is done by discussing data from participatory research (using the methods of participatory observation, semi-structured and narrative interviews, biographies, focus group discussions, value chain analysis, and household questionnaires) on a forestry plantation operated by the British investor, the New Forests Company (NFC) in the Kilolo district, in the Iringa region. The institutional arrangements regarding different land-related common pool resources from pre-colonial times until the arrival of this investment will be shown. Furthermore, how these arrangements have changed over time and since the LSLA is presented. Then, the effects on men’s and women’s access to CPR and, thus, the impacts on their capacities to perform their reproductive work and resilience will be addressed. Furthermore, the paper focuses on how different stakeholders in the land deal (the investor, the government, different local people) make use of these different institutions to push through their own interests regarding the land. Finally, the paper looks at collective compensation payments (such as monetary compensation and jobs) and forms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes, and how they are perceived emically. It is argued that the LSLA in this case clearly grabs land and land-related common pool resources that were previously held in common. Women, such as daughters, sisters, and wives, had specific access and property rights to these. Thus, the paper concludes that this grabbing lowers women’s resilience and deprives them of important resources for their livelihoods, and for food and cash production at critical times. CSR programmes and compensation rarely reach women and are, for them, an anti-politics machine, hiding the grabbing processes, and impacting the poorest of the poor, while the company uses a development discourse to legitimise its activities. In fact, the people perceive the investment as trapping them in underdevelopment.

Nexus approach and environmental resource governance in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review

“…However, forest resource actors from certified forest communities were found to earn higher incomes than those from non-FSC forests in Tanzania (Kalonga 2014). Such equitable access and property rights were also applicable to land (Gmür 2020). West African (Senegal's) forest resource use sector demonstrated clarity of rules (Faye and Ribot 2017).…”

“…Arguably, this rise is also linked to rising international support for a bioeconomy transition (especially as part of the EU strategy), laying a solid foundation for the pursuit of research questions on this subject. There were mixed reports on the effectiveness and efficient transformation of natural resources during this period (Asamoah et al 2020;Gmür 2020;Malisa et al 2019;Samson et al 2018;Reetsch et al 2020). Just as the number of papers, very few case studies were conducted in the late 1990s.…”

“…Closely linked to these resources is land in Tanzania. Despite the rolling out of cooperate social responsibility and compensatory schemes by land grabbers, villagers resisted the process of transforming their area into forest plantations (Gmür 2020). In some cases, this has been managed through litigation, as in Kenya (Archambault 2016).…”

Mega-infrastructure projects in drylands

“…Despite the option in Tanzania's constitution that local communities can be given common property (see Gmür 2020), SAGCOT led to processes of local common-property institutions being 'legislated out of existence'. This especially disregards local religious views of the land and land-related resources as being in spiritual resource ownership and as depending on ritual activities important for coordination of resource governance.…”

Does Commons Grabbing Lead to Resilience Grabbing? The Anti-Politics Machine of Neo-Liberal Agrarian Development and Local Responses

“…The issue of gender is a particular focus of the paper by Désirée Gmür [31]. She uses data from her research among the ethnic group of the Wahehe farming communities in Kilolo District, Tanzania, who had a common property system regarding land and land-related resources that included resource co-ownership of clan land by women.…”