Since the adoption of a new Constitution in 1990 and the signing of the peace accord in 1992, Mozambique has witnessed a period of rapid regulatory change in respect to the rules that govern the ownership and rights of use of a range of natural resources. There are new laws and regulations in place that govern access to and beneficial use of land, forest and mineral resources and a new environmental framework law.
This regulatory change has taken place within the context of an official overarching concern with the reduction of absolute poverty in the country, which still exhibits some of the highest incidence levels of rural poverty in the world. A sector wide support programme for agriculture and rural development, PROAGRI (in place since 1999), and the Poverty Reduction Strategy and Plan (adopted in 2002), have both established principles and priorities in respect to natural resource usage that are intended to ensure a reduction in the vulnerability and an improvement in the livelihoods of the rural poor.
FAO has been involved in providing assistance to the recent policy development processes in Mozambique, particularly in respect to the land and forestry sectors. There are ongoing FAO projects in land administration, community forestry, territorial planning, food security and judicial training, all of which are concerned with or affected by the policies, institutions and processes that impact upon access to natural resources by the poor.
At a global level FAO also has a sub-programme on building stakeholder capacity to improve access to natural resources, through the identification and development of appropriate pro-poor policy and legal environments. This sub-programme has now identified the need for an analysis of the links between access to natural resources and livelihood strategies of the poor in Mozambique, particularly in the context of the recent policy and legal initiatives.
Approach and focus of the paper
The overall purpose of the paper is to analyse the extent to which the regulatory changes to natural resource access and management have had their intended effect and to identify and explore the critical issues that require further attention.
A livelihoods approach to this analysis assists in understanding the following key aspects:
the extent to which the voice of the rural poor has been and can be included within policy formulation and decision-making processes around natural resource management;
the extent to which the rural poor are able to make claims upon and capitalise from new opportunities created by the policies;
the extent to which the policies and/or implementation initiatives are having differential impacts upon different segments of the rural population (i.e. the extent to which the implementation of the various policies is supporting or undermining the livelihood strategies of the poorest members of the population);
the impact of the differing interpretations accorded to new policy concepts and legal tools by the various mediating institutions and processes that interface with poor peoples’ access to natural resources (including government, non-government, community and ‘traditional’ institutions); and,
the effect that new policies and approaches may be having on the nature of disputes related to natural resource access or control and the extent to which these changes are supportive of or detrimental to peoples’ livelihoods.
The figure below, adapted from “Tools for Sustainable Livelihoods: Policy Analysis” (IDS, 2000), shows the important components for analysis of natural resource policies from a livelihoods perspective.
Figure 1 Livelihoods analysis components
