The Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme is meant to convince and encourage communities living adjacent to forests or who have village land forest reserves to conserve them as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the air and subsequently deal with human-induced climate change.
Eventually, the programme is meant to give a just reward to communities for their conservation efforts while at the same time reduce impacts of climate change.
However, the Moka village government would not be convinced. Their main argument against the programme was that it would limit their freedom to use forestry resources which comprised a major part of their livelihoods.
Nine other villages in the district, including Likwaya, welcomed the programme and from time to time, individuals in the villages earned between 1,000/- and 9,000/-, depending on the calculations.
The money divided among individuals was only a third of the total income with another part going to village environment committees and the other third being spent by village governments on development projects.
However, for about four years now, residents of Likwaya and other villages have not been getting any money from the programme and no one has been bold enough to tell them whether any money more would be coming from the project or everything has come to the end.
As a result the villages not only feel betrayed by the programme proponents but have now taken to uncontrolled harvesting of their forests, thereby increasing deforestation and forest degradation.
For these villages REDD+ is no longer the messenger of poverty alleviation that they believed it was.
“If you happen to visit these villages or others in Lindi region, don’t talk about REDD+; they will drive you away with sticks and stones,” says Mr. Cassian SiangaCoordinator of the Tanzania Forest Working Group of Tanzania Natural Resources Forum.
“For them REDD+ had promises of improving their lives but it turned out those promises have not been met.
So communities are angry and they don’t believe it anymore,” he adds.
While communities in Lindi district were eager to participate in REDD+, at about that time their counterparts in Kilwa district were laying the ground for their participation in Participatory Forest Management (PFM) programme.
It is a strategy to achieve sustainable forest management by encouraging the management or co-management of forest and woodland resources by the communities living closest to the resources.
Through the programme villages have created village land forest reserves which they own, conserve and harvest according to sustainable resource consumption principles.
This programme allows villages to own 100 percent of the forests and thus become equally responsible for 100 percent of the revenue that comes from sale of forest products.
The process to declare a village land forest reserves takes time, may be a couple of years.
It also requires a substantial amount of money to meet costs such as surveying the forest land, but all activities are done by the village with some technical and financial support from the district council or NGO.
Since the benefits of PFM are evident to communities, villages like Mchichiri in Ruangwa district found it worthwhile to borrow money from a neighbouring village which had accomplished the process and earned income from its forest in order to initiate the process instead of waiting for funds from the district council or an NGO.
“Nahangwa village which is our neighbor has already bought two tractors worth about 100m/- with money from sale of products from their forest.
We asked them to borrow us some money and together with our own funds, started the process to have our own forest reserve.
We have completed the process and paid the debt. After one year we will be ready to realise the benefits,” says Charles SumulaMchichiri village executive officer.
“That is where the difference lies; PMF is a local initiative that is implemented by the villagers while REDD+ is a foreign concept that provides little chance for locals to make decisions and implement what has been decided. It is simply imposed on the community,” adds Sianga.
Another reason that PFM has won hearts of villagers is the fact that it gives sustainable tangible benefits to villagers and these become a driving force for communities to take forest conservation seriously.
In Kilwa district for example, villages have built classrooms for primary schools and equipped them with desks. Others provide uniforms and lunch to school children which number more than 400.
Still other villages have made outstanding performance. Nanjilinji A offers 30,000/- to women, married or single, to meet the requirements of the expected baby when they are eight months pregnant.
On the other hand, Nainokwe pays for health insurance premiums for its senior citizens and all the money comes from the sale of forest products from the village land forest reserve.
Besides the financial gains, individual villagers take to beekeeping and other activities that increase their incomes without so much as degrading the forests.
“These are not bnefits one finds in villages participating in REDD+ projects. PFM advocates conservation that promotes sustainable consumption of resourceswith the aim of improving the lives of those who manage the resources.
This is something you don’t find in REDD+programmes,” says GwamakaMwakanjala, campaign manager for Mama Misitu campaign.
The communication and advocacy campaign seeks to institute good governance in Tanzania’s forestry sectors by ensuring that communities manage and benefit from them through legal and sustainable harvesting of resources, traders in forest products conduct legal trade while having their concerns, opinions and interests taken on board when setting various taxes and levies and government collects the required revenue from various businesses related to the forest sector.
“Everything centres on transparency which at the end of the day becomes a driving factor for villagers to participate in conservation. Villagers do not find similar openness in REDD+ and this is one of the reasons for their frustration with the programme,” says Mwakanjala.
One shortfall about REDD+ that some people have pointed out is that it is externally funded and the flow of funds is uncertain. Private companies have been funding some of the projects and how much money they are prepared to pump in depends on the world carbon market.
There is also the issue of how countries use such project money- whether the bulk of it goes to communities who conserve forests or ends up in the pockets of individuals who are in the decision-making circle.
A new report by Forest Trends sheds some light on how countries participating in the REDD+ programme spend funds meant to finance conservation activities that reduce carbon emissions associated with deforestation and forest degradation.
“About USD 45.3 million has been invested in Papua New Guinea(PNG) for REDD+ activities between 2009 and 2014. Some USD93.8 million in total funds have been committed or disbursed to Tanzania- but unlike financing for Papua New Guinea, funds to Tanzania have all but dried up,” says the report.
According to the report, financial commitments to PNG got off to a slow start, but finally began in earnest in 2012 and continued to grow in 2013 and 2014. Actual disbursements of those committed funds gradually increased between 2011 and 2014, as well.
“Tanzania, on the other hand, has had almost the exact opposite trajectory. After an initial infusion of funds in 2009, primarily from Norway, REDD+ finance has stagnated. No new funding has been committed to Tanzania since 2010, and this uncertainty has halted progress on key REDD+ forest conservation initiatives,” says another Forest Trends report.
PFM is unlikely to fall into this trap because it does not depend on external funding; all the money is generated in the village and spent on issues agreed upon by the villagers.
“Once a village land reserve forest is declared it is upon the village government to meet all costs of managing it.
In all cases village governments have been able to do so driven by the need to get financial and other benefits as well as improve social service delivery to their people,” says ShaffiMsuya, campaign officer for Mama MisituProgramme.
He adds that besides realizing tangible benefits, PFM is a home-grown initiative which is readily accepted by villagers. “That is why communities that were participating in REDD+ programme have abandoned it and are now shifting to PFM where they can get sustainable tangible benefits,” he says.
This puts the future of REDD+ doubtful especially in Tanzania as communities are no longer getting the money they were promised.
The indecision by donors whether to continue funding the programme or not coupled by the lack of communication to communities has discouraged villagers and the credibility of the programme has been put to scrutiny.
“REDD+ is a donor driven programme that has a bleak future. After having lapsed for some years, a new take-off is highly unlikely because communities will no longer be ready to be taken for a ride,” says Mwakanjala.
Jasper Makalla is the executive Director of Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative (MCDI), an NGO that is based in Kilwadistrct of Lindi region. The organization has worked with many villages in the district and beyond in the areas of land use planning, among others.
It has also been instrumental in empowering villages to have their own village land forest reserves.
Speaking about PFM, he says that communities like the programme because it gives them 100 percent ownership of forests and they have final decision about the rational use of resources.
“There are scores of success stories recorded by PFM but there are none on REDD+. So naturally communities now go for the former and have lost interest in the other,” he says.
However, he is optimistic that a fresh start for REDD+ in the country is possible.
“There are still a lot of forests in the country that could be put into the programme but there should be more transparency in the operations and communities must see positive change in the quality of their lives,” he adds.
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