Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Lutamba, the site of so many plant species type
collecions near Lindi, has been clear felled (R.
Wingield, personal communicaion). Rondo
Plateau, menioned in Polhill
(1968)
has been
heavily logged; less than
5
km2 of good natural
forest remains, and this is under threat (K.
M.
Howell, personal communicaion). Scattered for-
est and thicket patches in the north of Serengei
Naional Park have declined as a result of ire and
elephant (Sinclair
&
Norton-Griffiths, 1979).
Chapters in Hamilton
&
Bensted-Smith (1990)
illusrate the patten of deforestaion in the East
Usambaras.
In Kenya the patten is similar, and LandSat
findings are summarised by Epp (1984) who con-
cludes that for many forests, if the present rate of
deforestation coninues, forest cover will be totally
depleted by
AD
2020. A Kenya Forest Working
Group was established in the mid-
l
970s to
monitor forest change, but unfortunately soon
disbanded.
Banes (1990) presents a disturbing analysis of
probable rates of deforestation in the future,
based on the relaionships between population
growth, forest area and past extent of forest clear-
ing. His esimates for Kenya and Tanzania, based
on FAO (1981) baseline data, are:
very different, and someimes incompaible, views
on what is of value in a forest. Essenially, there
are three polarised viewpoints. At one extreme,
the individual peasant farmer living at the
periphery of a forest sees the forest as a source of
land, food and fuel, as well as a refuge for crop-
eating pests. At another extreme, local govern-
ment may see the forest as a source of revenue
and employment in terms of timber; and national
govenments may see forests as major water-pro-
ducing areas for naional development as well as
suppliers of imber and other products. Finally, an
increasing number of local and intenaional
organisaions are ever more vociferously stressing
the less immediately tangible values of natural
forest systems, as environmental buffers and gene
pools.
These different value systems have led to con-
flicing objecives of land use. One source of con-
flict is the degree to which local individual
interests can be served - fuelwood, poles, food
plants, hunting, religious values, etc. - whilst
maintaining govenment objecives. Another con-
ict is at government level, concening the degree
to which commercial exploitaion and manage-
ment may be permitted, as opposed to policies of
full protecion which better serve catchment
needs. Recently there have been major attempts
to defuse such land policy conflicts by approaches
such as the World Conservaion Strategy (IUCN,
1980), although these are yet to be seriously con-
sidered in East Africa. Tanzania plans to develop
a Naional Conservaion Sratey in the coming
years, and a major component of that and the
TFAP will address forest land use conflicts.
The different user demands have been sum-
marised as the individual or subsistence require-
ments of rural populaions as opposed to the
larger scale economic eploitaion of resources by
govenments, which again contrasts with the less
tangible goals of species or biological value con-
servaion which are often based on moral, aes-
theic and scieniic grounds rather than economic
arguments.
Economic values themselves may include real
quaniiable assets, available now, such as imber;
and resources whose value is less easily quani-
Year:
1980
2000
2020
2040
Kenya
Area of forest km
2
)
6900
3752
1199
44
Area per million people
415
121
23
1
Tanzania
Area of forest km
2
)
14400
9120
4345
1100
Area per million people
777
287
87
1
5
Banes (1990) also stresses that this loss will not
be compensated for by new afforestaion. He uses
FAO data to epect a deforestaion loss of 13 310
km2 rom
37
African counries from
1981
to
1986,
whilst new planing would be
1260
km2!
The concept of forest value
The problem of different perceptions
The major problem in discussing forest values is
that different people and organisaions may hold
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