Governance and Livelihoood Impacts of Forest Conservation Partnerships in Kilwa District, Tanzania

Forest conservation partnerships in Tanzania aim to deliver three sustainability outcomes; improved forest governance, improved forest conditions and ultimately enhanced local livelihoods through tangible socio-economic benefits. This paper is part of the larger project, New Partnerships for Sustainability (NEPSUS) which seeks to assess the impact of natural resource conservation partnerships on sustainability outcomes in three sectors: Wildlife, Coastal and Marine Resources, and Forestry. The project examines the correlation between partnership complexity and sustainability outcomes. Based on qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper presents empirical findings of socio-economic outcomes of forest conservation partnerships in eight villages of Kilwa District. Four of the sampled villages are involved in multi-stakeholder partnerships through Community Based Forest Management (CBFM), Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), and have Forest Stewardship Council certified forests; two villages are adjacent to National Forest Reserves without any form of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) and two others are neither adjacent to National Forest Reserves (NFRs) nor implementing CBFM. In Kilwa CBFM is championed by the Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative (MCDI), which works with local communities to establish and implement CBFM in Village Land Forest Reserves. The findings suggest that there has been improved forest governance and enhanced conservation practices in CBFM villages and that forests in non-CBFM villages suffer from uncontrolled forest use. The findings also show that CBFM villages benefit from Village Land Forest Reserves. However, the benefits are primarily only realized at the community level rather than at the household level. The majority of surveyed households in CBFM -villages find that their livelihoods have improved in the past five years compared to non-CBFM villages. Changes in livelihood conditions at the household level appear, however, to be mostly determined by the performance of crop farming, especially cash crops such as sesame. Understanding the socio-economic outcomes of partnerships in forest conservation thus requires disentangling other factors, such as non-partnership factors, and examining the links between community level benefits and household level benefits.