The Miombo in transition: woodlands and welfare in Africa

B.M., Campbell

doi:10.17528/cifor/000465

Cited by 31 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 145 publications

(470 reference statements)

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“…We employed a novel DCE designed to measure user's preferences for different distributions of biomass across different social groups defined by their wealth status, i.e., better-off, and worse-off village members, and thus assess the users' distributional preferences. Forests are common-pool resources characterised by a conflict between the personal interest of forest users to maximise resource harvesting, and societal interests in managing the resource sustainably to guarantee a long-term flow of benefits for all users (Perman et al, 2003) (Campbell, 1996;Lowore, 2003;Kamanga et al, 2009). Moreover, forests provide important indirect benefits such as flood protection and soil fertility, regulation of the availability of water in streams during the dry season, and cultural benefits.…”

Section: Methodological Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Forest Ecosystem Service Management Policies and Their Distributional Rules

Dreoni

Utila²,

Neil

et al. 2022

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Community based management (CBM) is widely advocated as an effective method for governing and managing ecosystem services (ES). However, the distributional rules and maximum harvesting levels are likely to affect both the effectiveness of CBMs in maintaining ES and the fairness and equity of access to these ES. This article proposes a methodological approach for investigating normative trade-offs involved in CBM of forests, where forest conservation objectives need to be traded off against livelihoods objectives. The study uses remote sensing methods to quantify forest ES supply in Namizimu Forest Reserve in Malawi, and links this to demand for ES within the villages near the reserve. It then investigates how a plausible set of CBM rules can be developed to cap consumption of forest products to sustainable amount and quantifies, by using monetary valuation techniques, how these set of rules may affect the total well-being of local population. Our results demonstrate that, due to the spatial mismatches between demand and supply, the distribution of provisioning ES to the population across the harvesting area is unequal in biophysical terms. The current available stock of forest products is sufficient to cover the current demand, however, it is higher than the mean annual increment indicating that this level of consumption is ecologically unsustainable and will lead to forest degradation as shown under the business-as-usual scenario. We then examined the impact of governance and how CBM rules to allocate forest ES to different social groups (poor and rich) under a co-management regime will affect total societal welfare. We found that the distributional scenario that maximises total societal welfare expressed in monetary terms across the whole harvesting area is the scenario that distributes 40% of biomass to the rich group while the remaining 60% is allocated to the poor group. However, this scenario maximises Willingness to Pay (WTP) at total level but does not maximise WTP in each sub-area of forest but just for those that have a high availability for biomass. This indicates that the distributional rules that maximise total welfare at aggregate level may not maximise welfare at local level where constraints from biomass availability require to restrict further the distribution of forest products. When biomass availability is low, total societal welfare is maximised with distributional rules that distribute more trees to richer. Yet, a policymaker may choose a distributional rule that distribute more trees to the poor on normative grounds and forego the objective of maximising total welfare. In such cases the WTP analysis outlined in this paper can support the policymaker in choosing the distributional rule that minimise trade-offs between efficiency, i.e., maximising total welfare, and livelihoods objectives.

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Section: Methodological Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Forest Ecosystem Service Management Policies and Their Distributional Rules

Dreoni

Utila²,

Neil

et al. 2022

Front. For. Glob. Change

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“…The higher population density estimated for serval in miombo woodland indicates that this is an important habitat for the species in the region. One of the most extensive ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa, miombo woodlands cover a substantial portion of Tanzania's protected and unprotected land [71]. Miombo plays a key role in the livelihood of rural communities but faces unsustainable resource exploitation [72,73].…”

Section: Conservation Implications and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, increased woodland degradation and deforestation would negatively impact serval as well as a range of other mammal species. As miombo woodlands have received little conservation attention compared to Acacia habitats in East Africa [71], we recommend additional survey work across their extent to improve the understanding of these systems and protect their unique biodiversity.…”

Section: Conservation Implications and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Density responses of lesser-studied carnivores to habitat and management strategies in southern Tanzania’s Ruaha-Rungwa landscape

Hardouin

Searle²,

Strampelli³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Compared to emblematic large carnivores, less charismatic or smaller carnivore species often receive little conservation attention, despite facing increasing anthropogenic pressure, and their status being poorly understood across much of their range. We employed systematic camera trapping and spatially explicit capture-recapture modelling to estimate variation in population density of serval, striped hyaena and aardwolf across the mixed-use Ruaha-Rungwa landscape in southern Tanzania. Three sites were selected as representative of different habitat types, management strategies, and levels of anthropogenic pressure: Ruaha National Park’s core tourist area, dominated by Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets; the Park’s miombo woodland; and the neighbouring community-run MBOMIPA Wildlife Management Area, also covered in Acacia-Commiphora. Our results show that the Park’s miombo woodlands supported a higher serval density than the core tourist area and Wildlife Management Area, with 5.56 [Standard Error = ±2.45], 3.45 [±1.04] and 2.08 [±0.74] individuals per 100 km2, respectively. This variation is likely driven by precipitation, the abundance of apex predators, and the level of anthropogenic pressure. Striped hyaena were detected only in the Wildlife Management Area and at low density (1.36 [±0.5] individuals per 100 km2), potentially due to the location of the surveyed sites at the edge of the species’ global range, high densities of sympatric competitors and anthropogenic edge effects. Finally, aardwolf were captured in both the Park’s core tourist area and the Wildlife Management Area, with a higher density in the Wildlife Management Area (13.25 [±2.48] versus 9.19 [±1.66] individuals per 100 km2), possibly as a result of lower intraguild predation and late fire outbreaks in the area surveyed. By shedding light on three understudied African carnivore species, this study highlights the importance of miombo woodland conservation and community-managed conservation, as well as the value of camera trap data to improve ecological knowledge of lesser-studied carnivores.

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“…Fire is a natural ecological phenomenon in a miombo woodland ecosystem that highly influences vegetation structure and composition which in turn affects small mammal distribution and abundance (Witecha, 2011). The name “Miombo” is a vernacular term for the forests in central, southern, and eastern Africa that are dominated by the closely related legume family genera Brachystegia , Julbernardia and Isoberlinia (Campbell, 1996). In the Selous game reserve, prescribed burning is conducted between late June and early August and is an integral part of the miombo ecosystem.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of prescribed burning on rodents in an East African woodland ecosystem

et al. 2023

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The name “miombo” is a vernacular term for the forests in central, southern, and eastern Africa that are dominated by the closely related legume family genera Brachystegia, Julbernardia and/or Isoberlinia. Prescribed burning is a common management practice in most miombo woodland in protected areas that highly influences vegetation structure and composition which in turn influences small mammals' distribution and abundance. This practice if not checked might significantly affect the ecosystems. We investigated the effects of prescribed burning on rodent's ecology in the miombo woodland ecosystem in the Selous game reserve, Tanzania, between July 2018 and June 2020. A total of 473 individuals comprising six rodent species; Acomys ngurui (31.50%), Aethomys chrysophilus (28.96%), Mastomys natalensis (18.82%), Lemniscomys rosalia (14.16%), Mus minutoides (2.33%), Paraxerus flavovittis (0.85%) and two insectivorous shrew species; Petrodromus tetradactylus (3.17%) and Crocidura hitra (0.21%) were captured during 14,112 trap nights. There were no statistically significant differences in the abundance of A. ngurui between burnt and unburnt areas but its abundance was statistically significantly different between seasons. M. natalensis abundance was not statistically significantly different between burnt and unburnt areas or across seasons. The burnt sites had the highest species diversity than the unburnt in both wet and dry seasons. A. ngurui and M. natalensis survival and recruitment between burnt and unburnt sites were not statistically significantly different. The study shows that prescribed burning has an effect on specific species and demographic characteristics both positive and negative.

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The Miombo in transition: woodlands and welfare in Africa

Cited by 31 publications

References 145 publications

Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Forest Ecosystem Service Management Policies and Their Distributional Rules

Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Forest Ecosystem Service Management Policies and Their Distributional Rules

Density responses of lesser-studied carnivores to habitat and management strategies in southern Tanzania’s Ruaha-Rungwa landscape

Effects of prescribed burning on rodents in an East African woodland ecosystem

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