Social and economical aspects of Miombo Woodland Management in Southern Africa: Options and opportunities for research.

Author's Intro: There is relatively little research which has been carried out on longer term patterns of social, economic, and environmental change in southern Africa. That which has been carried out provides compelling evidence that contemporary patterns of land-use and woodland cover are the outcome of much longer term processes. While the short term impacts of rapid population growth seem quite clear -- that natural systems are often placed under extremely heavy stress as a result of population increase -- longer term impacts are more encouraging. Longer term studies, which have relied on historical and archival records rather than on remote sensing data, suggest that even amongst the most intact of woodlands, there is very little unmodified miombo anywhere. In Malawi, for instance, heavily modified miombo accounts for over 95 percent of existing woodland cover (Hardcastle 1993). Mature miombo in the Tabora region of Tanzania is mostly regenerated, having been agricultural land in the 1860s which was subsequently abandoned because of an outbreak of sleeping sickness in the early 1900s (Lawton 1982). These types of transitions in land-use are extremely enlightening for the policy process because they suggest that miombo woodlands are very resilient to many of the pressures placed on them. Much of the policy dialogue about the environment at the regional and national level in southern Africa (as well as internationally) is very negatively oriented: population growth will place increasing and inexorable pressures on natural environments, and there are few approaches which can be taken to mitigate the impacts of these pressures. Policy and legislation, rather than mitigating these impacts, has in some instances, amplified them. Longer term studies, can help to identify both the positive steps which have been taken in response to these pressures as well as the policy initiatives which should be avoided in the future.