Yusuph Juma can confidently drive his truck fully packed with timber past the traffic cops without having to be stopped or questioned of the origin and destination from the timber.
He is a licensed and recognised logger in Angai forest in the south east of Tanzania and it has absolutely nothing to fear while taking his timber for sell.
Years back, when his business was illicit, he says he would not attempt that. Instead he would either transport his timber late into the evening or bribe the police.
“Now I've nothing to fear. I have been licensed to cut and export timber from the forest here,” Juma told Climate Home News.
“I have been able to cut about 1300 trees in this area between June and December at my own pace. However i have purchased it for,” Juma said.
He sells his timber mostly to China and locally to timber wholesalers in Dar Es Salaam.
Juma’s transformation was made possible by a 2002 law, which provided a legitimate grounds for communities to possess and manage forest reserves, along with a clear pathway transfer land rights towards the community.
Deforestation in Tanzania has turned into a big challenge as logging, agricultural expansion and global warming displace East African forests.
According to the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Tanzania lost over 5.86 million hectares of forest between 2000 and 2023. The report also found more than 70% from the harvested trees in the forests are unaccounted for due to illegal logging and for that reason the federal government looses revenue.
The measures implemented in 2002 – such as the licensing system Juma works under – specified for to control illegal logging. Now people can legally harvest trees in the forest only after getting approval.
Liwale region is among the communities around Angai Forest designated like a village forest reserve (VFR), as individuals the region possess the to use the forest because of its resources – mainly the trees – while conserving it. This has occurred possible under Tanzania’s community-based conservation programme called participatory forest management (PFM).
The scheme at Angai has been around for more than a decade, but insufficient know-how on the ground has meant slow implementation. However, this appears to be changing.
Local organisations have banded along with 14 communities to determine Angai Villages Land Forest Reserve (AVLFR). From AVLFR, they try to source then sell sustainably harvested timber along with other forest products, in addition to enhancing governance and business capacities and improving land and resource rights. A portion of land in Angai forest continues to be put aside for agricultural practices where individuals are allowed to rotationally cultivate crops like maize and beans. Another has been set aside for firewood collection.
Two projects in the area have been set up in the region underneath the UN’s Redd+ scheme, that allows communities to market carbon credits to acquire halting deforestation.
In partnership using the Tanzanian government, the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) chose Angai because the pilot site for its five-year Redd+ enter in 2008, which was supported by funds from the Norwegian government.
Tanzania was chosen since it featured highly on international agendas on Redd+ because of its large forest estates (48.A million ha) and estimated deforestation rates (1.1% of forest size each year).
One from the sites is managed through the Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative (MCDI). MCDI Angai forest coordinator Idi Hamisi, asserted prior to the programme started, all of the resources in the forest harvest accustomed to visit the central government and the villages had no control over their resources.
“MCDI officials educate locals on forest management, how they can generate resources from the forest and how to manage the resources generated,” Hamisi said.
So far, he said, participating communities have earned a lot more than $500,000 through the programme in the five years since harvesting began. 35% of this income would go to the village natural resources committee to pay for forest management pursuits like patrols; 5% goes to the district; the rest of the 60% would go to the village council.
“This communal income is spent on village development projects, and provides residents with concrete incentives to handle forests sustainably,” he said.
The villages of Liwale and Kitogoro are a couple of of these communities. They've been harvesting timber with the PFM programme for two years, utilizing their profits to boost schools and make more clinics.
The management of the forest is overseen by the village council committee, that is appointed by and made up of village residents.
Hamisi explained the council officials interview potential loggers, who then pay a fee to reap timber. The loggers are then granted a license to reap underneath the supervision from the committee.
“They need to first provide the bank slip to exhibit they have deposited the cash in to the community's account before they're because of the permit,” said Abdi Sheikh, Kitogoro village executive officer. “There after we ensure that just the marked trees based on how much they've paid are cut. Therefore the council's officials need to be there constantly until he finishes the tree-cutting.”
The timber comes at a cost negotiated between your logger and the council, but should be at least $90 per cubic meter.
An additional national safeguard against illegal logging is a stamp accustomed to make sure that logs are legally harvested. The stamp contains a unique code that is hammered into each log and stump, allowing authorities to trace the movement of timber in the country. Logs cannot be legally transported without the stamp.
As a result of the programme, councils of each of these two villages have been in a position to build a dispensary that are now designed with solar power panels. Previously, the only real nearby hospital was 180km away.
“Mothers opted to provide in your own home rather than walking for your long-distance to go the hospital,” said Liwale village executive officer Ahmed Mabweha.
Liwale council approved purchasing motorcycles and bicycles to assist with forest patrols. In cases where illegal activity has been detected, those responsible have been arrested and fined by the council.
Most importantly, locals report a drastic reduction in the neighborhood deforestation rate. Mabweha said residents replant trees in the forest after the harvesting season, focusing totally on indigenous species for example mahogany.
However, challenges remain. The villages are struggling to attract buyers for his or her timber. MCDI is helping the villages find customers through advertisements in the local media.
Numerous studies have shown that community forest management – for example has been deployed in Angai – represent an invaluable and often efficient way of protecting tropical forests.
But in a 2023 study Redd+ in Tanzania, Andreas Scheba, a post-doctoral research fellow at South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council, found villagers around Angai still do not have full control or ownership from the forest.
“To fully benefit from the community-based forest management , there has to be legal and agreed upon land tenure considered village land and not just general communal/village land,” said Scheba, adding the current Tanzanian system did not consider this and thus it was not competitive with expected.
“Based on my small study and interviews in Angai, the villagers, following a long time of taking part in the forest development and conservation projects, they're slowly losing their hopes of ownership from the forest and therefore are giving up,” he explained.
Jasper Makala, ceo of the NGO MCDI, which manages one of the projects, said because land was of the federal government of Tanzania there wasn't any conflict between individual entitlements towards the forest. The communities around Angai were trained around the need for sustainable management of the forest for their own benefit.
“The programme has created an avenue for the people to earn revenue for the development in the community.
