Towards community-based forest management in Southern Africa: do decentralization experiments work for local livelihoods?

Differences are emerging in decentralization of forest and community management in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. This paper draws on case studies in each country to examine five aspects of their decentralization experience, namely forest tenure, new organizational structures, accountability and livelihood outcomes. Tenure arrangements developed as a result of decentralization are important for communities, as these determine the nature of access sanctioned by the state and security of the arrangements. The transfer of power to new organizations is proving to be a challenge. Experiences across the three case studies show that new committees were formed for these forestry initiatives by outside agencies and attempts were made to make them relevant to the way local communities managed forests. One of the main tenets of decentralization revolves around accountability of community representatives to their constituents rather than to the state. Although moves have been made to promote the accountability of community representatives, these have produced mixed results in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. Only after changes in the approach taken by the state in Zimbabwe did community representatives become more accountable. In Mozambique, because of the special arrangements around the specific case, greater authority was given to community representatives, whereas, in South Africa, the state retained authority over representatives. Decentralization may bring benefits and improve communities' livelihoods from forestry activities, however much more still needs to be done by states in order for forests to take communities out of poverty.