Clusa-natural resource management

1. BACKGROUND

This is the summary of five reports composed after two weeks of fieldwork was executed by CLUSA facilitators, village informants, and Forest Department personnel around the Chiulukire Local Forest some 20 kilometers north of Katete. The assessment is a first step in moving toward a jointly-managed forest complete with management plan comprised of input from village populations surrounding or within the forest boundary alongside input from Forest Department and other interested parties. The principle is that if the local populations are able to influence and monitor the activities allowed in the forest, then the management plan will be more likely to succeed in the sense of being respected by all stakeholders. It will also succeed for a longer time frame than could be possible if caretakers of the resource are excluded from the management plan’s formulation.

Specifically, the objectives of the Village Resource Assessment (VRA) are:

• 
  To open up communication with those who are to assist in writing the management plan foreseen for the year 2000, so that resources can be seen through their eyes.
  
• 
  To apply several published and adapted tools for drawing input about forest resources from those who live closest to them, using techniques that are informal rather than technical in nature.
  
• 
  To encourage people (both villagers and Forest Department) to think about the future of the resources and the concept of sustainable management.
  
• 
  To update 20-plus-year-old government-published topographic maps with correct names and spatial arrangements of roads, villages, and streams.
  
• 
  To gauge the level of participation to be expected from different areas around the forest.
  
• 
  To identify which forest resources are most important to each village area.
  
• 
  To obtain some socio-economic information on each village so that certain needs can be identified, taking the place of a full-blown socio-economic study which could be more costly and time-consuming.
  

In short, information and maps from the VRA will lead to further discussion and formation of specific user groups later in the year 2000 so that a management plan can be drafted.

Information presented in the following sections was summarized from the following sources:

• 
  literature pertaining to the forest and Eastern Province
  
• 
  reports from a combination of interviews of different types conducted in the villages in 1999 (see Annex for methods used in each village)