Like land, all natural
resources in Mozambique formally belong to the State. The resource
base is impressive, both for its quantity and quality. The country
has a total area of 799,830 km 2 , of which over approximately
62 million ha (78%) are covered by natural vegetation. This vegetated
area consists of high forests (0.8%), low forests (13.7%), thicket
(43.3%), wooded grasslands (19.4%) and mangroves (0.5%). Whereas
the major part of the total area consists of thicket and wooded
grasslands (savannah and bush land), 15 million ha (19% of the
total) is classified as open forest (i.e. miombo woodland) and
5 million ha as dense forest.
Despite the fact that wildlife
resources were highly depleted during the war by uncontrolled
hunting, Mozambique has so far managed to keep large areas of
its diverse ecosystems intact because of the relatively low human
population density in these areas and the generally difficult
access to non-coastal or border areas. About 10 million ha (12.6%
of the country) are presently designated as protected areas. Of
this total area, 2.75 million ha are national parks, 1.95 million
ha are game reserves, 450,000 ha are forest reserves and approximately
5.1 million ha are hunting areas. There are five national parks
and five game reserves, all of which were practically abandoned
during the war. New national parks are also being proposed in
different regions.
Access to natural resources is
a critical element in the food security of a large part of the
population. Over 70% of the population live in rural areas and
are dependent upon small-scale agriculture. Local knowledge of
resource use and conservation is important, and there is a strong
relationship between the subsistence strategies of rural people
and NRM.
Many of the natural resources
available to local people are however equally accessible to other
interests and neither Government nor traditional authorities are
able to exercise effective control over their use. Illegal logging
and charcoal production in many areas are seriously depleting
forest assets, and poaching or excessive hunting of wildlife has
almost wiped out once abundant game populations. Flooding and
dense forests make access to the National Parks and Game Reserves
difficult for long periods during the year, and local people who
often depend upon resources inside parks and conservation areas
are also threatened either with relocation outside park borders,
or at least having their use of park resources severely restricted.
Safari hunting meanwhile has reappeared
in many of the old official hunting reserves (coutadas)
and buffer areas close to the national parks, and continues to
grow steadily. There are 12 coutadas, mainly located
in the central and southern parts of the country, particularly
in Sofala Province . From a community perspective, however, the
NRM situation in these areas is not as bad as in those conceded
to private operators since 1993.
The administration of protected
areas was transferred in year 2000 from what was MADER to MINTUR.
Private investors have been granted licences to manage and develop
some national parks and protected areas (such as Niassa Game Reserve),
but other major assets such as the Gorongosa National Park and
the Maputo Elephant Reserve remain in a state of limbo, waiting
for the Government to decide how they should be managed and by
whom. There are many calls for community-based management of these
areas, and their rehabilitation and sustainable management is
a new and important challenge now facing Mozambique.
Current support intervention
• Assistance to Community
Forestry and Wildlife Management
Potential support interventions
While many donors and support
agencies are working in these areas, FAO has a particularly impressive
track record in promoting participatory and community-based development
that can generate sustainable and equitable forms of development.
FAO helped to establish the major platform for CBNRM provided
by the Land Law, which recognizes long held customary rights over
large areas including land that is now inside protected areas
and parks. FAO-supported projects such as GCP/MOZ/056/NET in the
National Directorate for Forestry and Wildlife (DNFFB) have since
used this platform and acquired extensive experience in community-based
NRM using participatory and stakeholder-consensus approaches.
These projects include activities taken together which now give
FAO a strong foundation for assuming a more prominent role in
natural resources and conservation through a range of community
management models developed and tested since the mid-1990s. Good
working partnerships and cost-sharing arrangements have also been
forged with national and international NGOs during this process.
These strategic elements need to be maintained and expanded upon
in any new programming exercise.
This invaluable experience must
now also be applied to the development of new and imaginative
programmes that address conservation issues and target the underlying
objectives of poverty alleviation in PARPA. An expansion of FAO-led
experience in NRM can directly target food security and poverty
alleviation while also supporting sustainable development, conservation
and bio-diversity goals. Along the way, difficult and acute problems
such as how to deal with communities living inside or using the
resources of national parks can also be addressed and resolved.
Several potential programme areas can be highlighted in this context:
• Local Knowledge
and Natural Resource Management and Bio-diversity Conservation:
Local or indigenous knowledge of local natural resources
has developed over a long period of time, been shared within and
between farming communities and been handed down through generations.
This knowledge has grown through constant experimentation, innovation
and change, and is central to rich and dynamic local farming knowledge
systems that continue to play a crucial role in local food security,
especially for subsistence farmers. Nevertheless, these systems
have been neglected by research institutions and policy makers
alike. The FAO Links project (Gender, biodiversity and local knowledge
systems for food security: GCP/RAF/338/NOR) could play a catalytic
role in promoting the sustainable use of bio-diversity in Mozambique
and also in giving due recognition policies to the wealth of local
knowledge of both male and female farmers in agricultural programmes.
Examples of potential areas for future assistance in this context
include:
• Support for the incorporation
of a training module on local knowledge and gender dimensions
in NRM issues within the existing curriculum for the NRM MSc at
Eduardo Mondlane University ;
• Technical support to the
National Institute of Agriculture Research (INIA) to strengthen
their capacity to develop and apply gender sensitive socio-economic
and participatory research methodologies; and
• Support for a network of
institutions and individuals working on bio-diversity conservation,
gender, and local knowledge issues in Mozambique .
• Protected
Areas Management: Through projects such as GCP/MOZ/056/NET
and the new UTF/MOZ/074/MOZ that has succeeded it, FAO can promote
follow-up and new activities that focus on producing sustainable,
tangible benefits to the participating communities and attracting
new local level investment in partnerships with communities without
compromising the conservation goal of NRM. Potential areas of
intervention include:
• Technical support to strengthen
national integrated environmental, conservation and development
management capacity through support to the Wildlife School in
Gorongosa and/or Maputo Reserve;
• technical support
to introduce collaborative management in protected areas, bringing
tangible economic benefits to communities involved in the management
of those areas;
• technical support
to collect data for creating an inventory of fauna in protected
areas; and
• technical support
to assist in the formulation of policy and strategy for the management
of conservation areas;
• technical support
to review the dimension and adequacy of hunting and protected
areas;
• technical support
on conflict management, customary laws, land rights, forest and
wildlife legislation application within protected areas.
• Improve inter-ministerial
administration capacity for integrated wildlife management, especially
through the National Directorate of Protected Areas in MITUR:
The institutional arrangements regarding natural resource
management are very fragmented and no clear mandates have been
established yet. Activities would include analyzing the functions
and developing the organization of the three Ministries (MITUR,
MINAG and MICOA) so they might be better able to co-ordinate integrated
wildlife management, and address the human development and poverty
alleviation issues that are also at the heart of the NRM issue.
• Support the
development of legislation and implementation of policy on eco-tourism
with a strong focus on integrated natural resource management:
MITUR is now developing new tourism legislation, which
should include a comprehensive wildlife management policy for
eco-tourism development. FAO-supported activities would include
technical support to MITUR in the development and implementation
of the new eco-tourism legislation, ensuring that it fully incorporates
a community participation dimension and brings real income-enhancing
and food security benefits to local people.
All of these interventions are
new 'niche areas' where FAO a) already has an acquired international
track record, and b) there is relatively little being done at
present in Mozambique, at least in a structured and programmatic
way. There are also clear linkages in this area to key activities
being supported in other 'sectors', notably the development of
a new National Land Strategy, and the training of the judiciary
in natural resources legislation.
Operational FAO projects such
as the Belgian-funded food security project in Manica also offer
an excellent opportunity for FAO to promote a community based
NRM approach in practice, and demonstrate to its Government and
other partners how a future policy and implementation programme
might look. Within FAO in Mozambique, better coordination between
its various natural resources projects can contribute fundamentally
to FAO having a greater role and impact in this important new
area. And through the UNDAF for Mozambique , FAO can use its acquired
experience in this area to create new partnerships and mobilize
resources.
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