The Social Side of Logging

The Social Side of Logging in The Miombo Woodlands of ZambĂŠzia, Mozambique +

Partnering with People and Forests in The Miombo Woodlands of ZambĂŠzia, Mozambique

Ingrid L. Nelson

Titles: The Social Side of Logging in the Miombo Woodlands of Zambézia, Mozambique Partnering With People And Forests in Zambézia, Mozambique Author: Ingrid L. Nelson Publication: JA! Justiça Ambiental Photography: Ingrid Nelson & Justiça Ambiental Layout and Graphic Production: Ruben Manna & Dino Lemos Number of Copies: 1000 Prints

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Index Preface by Anabela Lemos The Social Side of Logging in the Miombo Woodlands Partnering With People and Forests

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Preface Sustainable Community Management and Good Governance of Forests, Zambezia by: Anabela Lemos

When we were approached to participate in this project funded by the European Union and Oxfam Novib, it was like embarking on an adventure. It was a rare opportunity to make changes from the ground; a project to support the creation of two community forest concessions.

We were excited with the idea for various reasons, but the most important one was the thought to return the forest to the people that should be the ones to have the right to use the resources, and the responsibility to maintain the forest for the future generations: the ones that live from generation to generation, the ones that have the knowledge that a forest is not only trees.

With that in mind, we were sure this would be a big step forward in decreasing illegal logging, as we believe with rights also come responsibilities. People now had the dual responsibility to ensure the future survival of the forest and also to improve local livelihoods not only by cutting trees but also by increasing the potential for small-scale, localized activities, such as bee keeping, carpentry, use of medical plants etc.

Through these case studies, we decided to document the entire process and the outcomes of the project, testimonies of successes and failures, what worked and what didn’t, challenges and perhaps solutions for moving ahead.

With high ideals, we started the proj-

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ect with our partner ORAM (Organização Rural de Ajuda Mútua or Association for Rural Mutual Assistance, a local NGO). Yet as the project began to be implemented we ran into difficulties. As a pre-cursor to this project, there had been a previous project which ORAM had implemented, to get authorization for the community concessions in the communities of Nipiode and Muzo.

However, the previous project had not managed to get the necessary authorisations and concessions. Also the capacity building of the communities had gone very slowly. In Muzo the process still lagged behind and the land use permit called DUAT (Direito de Uso e Aproveitamento de Terra, or Right to Use and Profit from the Land) was not given to the communities. Even in Nipiode, the previous project’s work had not been completed.

This particular project where we were involved was building up from the initiative of that previous project. The project was to register the land, request forest concession for the management of the forest by the community. This project had similar objectives: to authorize the community forest concession and for the community to gain the legal right over the forest. However, much more work was needed in the second project. This project was supposed to ensure that all documentation was in place for the forest concessions, and that the capacity-building activities with the communities were more effective.

We also aimed to increase community buyin, to make the communities feel that it was their project, to increase their knowledge and information, and to improve communication between the partners and the communities themselves.

However, the project ran into troubles when we realized that many issues had arisen in the previous project and were never dealt with. Hence we found ourselves in a very complicated and strange situation and with many unresolved issues. Some of these issues will be revealed in these case studies.

Some of these conflicts continue to exist today, and because we were perhaps too close to the confusion, we requested Dr. Ingrid Nelson to undertake these case studies. Dr. Nelson is a geographer that conducted her PhD research in Muzo community, one of the communities in this project, and was independently present in the area before and during part of the project implementation. As someone who was not too involved with this particular project, but at the same time had a very good understanding of the local area, its complexities, communities, NGOs , illegal logging and government and the most important impartial.

Dr. Nelson prepared three case studies, which will cover many of the issues, conflicts, problems as well a deep understanding of the situation of the area, the links and networking of community, NGOs, the gov-

ernment and the net of illegal logging. These case studies will give you a glimpse of the reality on the ground. The three cases studies appear separately and are: 1. The Social Side of Logging in the Miombo Woodlands of Zambézia, Mozambique; 2. Partnering with People and Forests in Zambézia, Mozambique; 3. Fear and Becoming ‘Fiscais’: Policing Community Forest Concessions in Zambézia, Mozambique.

This volume presents the first and second case study.

We hope you will enjoy the reading and understanding of the complexity of working in these circumstances. At the same time, we want this to be a guide to avoid many the problems and issues that we had to face, if such a project is to be successfully implemented. With all the issues, problems and complexities, we still believe this is the way forward for sustainable resource use. The outcome of this project was not what we had expected. Nothing was easy, but nevertheless, we believe that this is a way forward.

The funding for the project ended without the final authorization approved by the government. However, JA will carry on working with the Muzo communities to help their project moving forward.

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The Social Side Of Logging in The Miombo Woodlands of Zambézia, Mozambique

Early one morning in May of 2010, I sat on a straw mat drinking tea with 14-yearold Carlos1, his younger sister and her friend, in a village situated along an old dirt road in the dense miombo woodlands in Maganja da Costa District in Mozambique. Over the past few months, Carlos had allowed me to tag along with his friends as they hunted for namanooga (termites) for bait to fish in the local rivers. He knew many footpaths through the woodlands and he often stopped to snack on or collect the various mushrooms, fruits and insects that we found.

As we prepared our tea, Carlos searched for his notebook amidst my papers.

He found my “comic book” and proceeded to read it aloud to the girls2. The comic titled “O Verde Despido” (The Forest Stripped) was developed and published by Mozambican NGOs Justiça Ambiental (JA!, Environmental Justice) and Amigos da Floresta (Friends of the Forest) in 20093 in response to the rise in illegal logging between 2004 and 2007 in provinces such as Zambézia. Carlos slowly read through the phrases about a village in Zambézia that worried about the clearcutting of forest nearby. The story portrayed main characters who navigated the local and provincial forest regulatory system to stop a Mozambican timber boss and a Chinese timber buyer from destroying their forest. The illustrations showed a group of people staring

with alarm at a large patch of tree stumps, cut plants and dead birds.

Carlos turned to me and said, “but our forest doesn’t look like this when the loggers come…they only take some of the trees.”

Carlos was right in this context. Over the past five years, select residents of Carlos’ locality formed an association called ACODEMUZO to protect the surrounding forest across parts of two localities, while they awaited government recognition of their right to run their

Caption: The image of clear-cut forest in the “O Verde Despido” publication.

1 Names have been changed to protect anonymity 2 I had collected a Number of publications from various organizations’ offices in Maputo and Quelimane.

3 The publication was financed by IIED and OXFAM-NOVIB. The authors of the text included Celso Zacarias, Bertino Alberto, Age Carimo and Elsa Muchanga. Zacarias Chemane designed the illustrations.

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own 33,000 hectare (ha) commercial forest concession. But in early 2010 significant numbers of individuals in the community begin undermining ACODEMUZO’s protection efforts, and selling access to miombo hardwoods to several competing timber buyers who were keen to exploit this relatively intact woodland in Maganja. The loggers and buyers did not clear-cut the trees. Rather, they first cleared paths for trucks to enter key collection points in the forest. They only cut pau ferro (Swartzia madagascarensis) in early 2010, because this was what they could sell to buyers at the port or to companies with timber storage lots in Quelimane, Mocuba, Nicoadala and Nampula. The tire tracks remained in the forest, but only the occasional pau ferro stump and the occasional rejected tree trunk of pau ferro (crooked or too small) marked the under-canopy of the woodland.

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Later, another timber boss—whom I shall call Simão—used these same access roads to illegally harvest chanfuta (Afzelia quanzensis) and jambirre (Millettia stuhlmannii) outside of the area of his simple license and inside of the area claimed by ACODEMUZO. The woodland experienced a gradual, dispersed and species-by-species thinning of the canopy between 2010 and 2011. This, as Carlos pointed out, did not match the image of the clear-cut portrayed in the “O Verde Despido” comic.

Another tactic adopted by the simple license timber boss Simão involved leaving his chainsaw and fuel with a key “cutter” and logistical “manager” hired within the community. These men then approached various households along the road to see if they had large trees of a particular species that they would sell for a paltry 100 meticais (MZN)

each. Simão’s rationale for this was to obtain logs that were the most easily accessible from roads and footpaths before exerting more effort to clear new paths through the forest. The rationale for households was that this would also help families clear their fields for planting. Cutting large trees is typically an activity conducted by men, and it can take several years for men to clear fields without a chainsaw, especially given the low population density and density of the forest in this area. Households headed by elderly women, widows and divorcÊes also require the help of extended male family members to clear fields. This means that some men are responsible for their own fields as well as those of their mothers, sisters, etc. Other households who already had cleared fields wanted cash for the few remaining trees standing in their fields. The impact of cutting these

trees for some families will last longer than the paltry 100 MZN gained from the one-time sale of the trees. Both this cutting strategy and the species-by-species example above affect how deforestation occurred in this area between 2010 and 2011. If someone was to watch the forest canopy change from above, we would see the clearing of trees from fields and along the road most clearly, while we would not easily be able to notice the selective and gradual disappearance of specific trees from deeper within the forest where there are no roads or houses. To see this second type of deforestation, we would need special satellite images with very high resolution; but experts in Maputo only currently use low-resolution images.

The contrast between more and less obvious canopy change is often ignored by experts in Maputo, who use low-resolution

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satellite images to detect deforestation in Mozambique.4 This often affects international and national assessments and forest inventories concerning who is to blame for deforestation and what solutions are required. Cutting large trees in peoples’ fields along the road gives one very partial impression that deforestation occurs due to villagers expanding agriculture into the forest. Cutting patches of forest for charcoal production also leaves a similar mark on the landscape, as charcoal producers typically open new spaces for family members and others to cultivate.5 However, the majority of miombo timber illegally cut for export in the ACODEMUZO and surrounding areas does not immediately appear on satellite, because its method is more subtle than outright clearcutting. Only high-resolution satellite imagery that can detect subtle changes in the non-visible light reflected by the canopy can reveal the extent to which timber buyers are responsible for non-clear-cut deforestation in areas farther away from roads and houses.

What’s more, the miombo woodland canopy has not always been in decline. I asked Rita, an older neighbor, what organizations such as the Association for Rural Mutual Assistance (ORAM-Associação Rural de Ajuda Mútua) who initiated the ACODEMUZO project, were doing in the village.

She explained, “The people from ORAM told us to stop uncontrolled forest fires and overhunting and warned us that the forest was disappearing. Maybe they want the forest for themselves…the forest has gotten bigger here…”

She was right that the forest has expanded in many areas. This is due to the history of the area. At least as recently as 1969—the year when aerial photos were taken by the Portuguese authorities—there were large open areas that had been cleared for various activities by colonial authorities.

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4 They use a combination of Landsat and SPOT imagery 5 Those cutting within their own locale…there are other problems with ‘outsiders’ cutting bamboo and making charcoal in others’ territory 6 The war is also referred to as ‘the Civil War’ or the ’16-year war’. The terms bear different political connotations.

Women were forced to cultivate cotton in their fields and there were also other fields completely set aside for cotton production and a few cashew stands in later years. Cotton buyers drove along the dirt road and picked up the cotton at key storage sites. After independence, the district suffered from severe raids and disturbances during the war of destabilization6 between Frelimo and Renamo.

Many community members recalled hiding in the forest and fleeing to nearby towns and camps. One matriarch explained, “We had to go [to Muidebo]. We lived there, ate there and walked there, but we sometimes came back to harvest our manioc. There was so much hunger and people died.” While daily life was disrupted for so many years, the bush advanced into the homes and fields of former inhabitants and especially into the former areas of cotton cultivation. After the war, the population only recently began to increase.

It has taken many years to clear away areas to restore homes and fields. The areas of forest regrowth since 1969 are detectable from aerial photos when compared with highresolution satellite images in 2010.7 Rita’s perspective that many areas of the forest are bigger, not in decline, is accurate depending on the particular patch of forest one considers. Another aspect is that, when patches of upper canopy thin out due to logging, this leaves light for a fast-growing under-canopy but which mostly consists of shrubs, bushes and small trees. These plants are only kept in control by careful sweeping around the home every morning and laborious clearing and burning of fields in anticipation of the new planting season.8 Thus, while some parts of the forest canopy decline in some areas, other lower parts of the canopy expand quite rapidly. This is why claims of the threat of disappearing forest and clear-cutting are more complex within local contexts. Hence, claims about deforestation seem question7 See Nelson, I. (2012) A Feminist Political Ecology of Livelihoods and Intervention in the Miombo Woodlands of Zambézia, Mozambique, Doctoral Dissertation in Geography at University of Oregon.

8 Such plants are not only a burden. They are valued for their medicinal properties and some plants can serve as fences to keep goats away from gardens around the home.

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don’t have a husband, so you can’t prevent us “You

from cutting

the tree”

able to people such as Rita and Carlos, who have spent their lives in these woodlands.

Campaigns for sustainable forestry, therefore, need to be more specific in the claims that the forest is disappearing. This may be the case when the macro picture is viewed and the forest canopy is monitored across an entire province or country, but the patterns are much more nuanced on the ground at a micro scale. This could sometimes lead to unfortunate blame-games, where forestry experts may blame locals for the ‘general’ problems without understanding the local complexity in combination with the broader political economy of the global trade in rare hardwoods.

There are residents of the village, however, who do complain about recent logging in the area. The elderly parents of one of the leaders of the ACODEMUZO association are sympathetic towards his efforts to manage the forest as a concession. They blamed the extensive fires in September 2010—that almost engulfed their home—on loggers based in Quelimane, who camped in the forest and were stealing timber from the ACODEMUZO concession. Three women in different households complained of logging tractors running over their crops in order to access hidden roads in the forest. While many men and women were relieved that they could sell larger trees in their fields to timber bosses in order to reduce the labor normally required of men to fell trees for agriculture, not all village members wanted to sell trees in their fields. Many miombo hardwoods have medicinal and spiritual properties that healers rely on near their fields and homes. This is particularly true of women healers who treat minor illnesses among children and immediate family members and neighbors. Having the trees nearby reduces the distance they walk into the forest for these resources and ensures that they know

a particular tree’s healing potential well. An elderly divorced woman living with her son and two grandchildren complained that the loggers cut her tree down despite the fact that she forbade them to do so. She said that one of the men (possibly from Quelimane) had family in the community and knew that she was divorced. He rudely said, “You don’t have a husband, so you can’t prevent us from cutting the tree.” Widows and divorcées may face additional challenges in keeping their trees standing, but not in all cases, as older male relatives such as brothers and uncles can be called to intervene. This woman never received compensation despite the fact that the timber boss paid other owners of fields where he had cut timber. Other trees cut farther away from people’s homes were not paid for on an individual basis because of their location in “the forest,” which locals understand as a place that only “God” or “the State” could possibly own9.

The miombo woodland is a mosaic of different meanings, resources and journeys.

These are social spaces. Certain spaces in the “forest” are considered only spaces of spirits where initiations can take place, others are hunting areas. Yet other parts of the forest are frequented via footpaths connecting neighboring communities that are not positioned close to the road. A patch of forest could be used only rarely, while another could be continually shaped by human activity. Before the fire season, matriarchs in the major families call together relatives to clean the gravesites of ancestors and they prepare food and liquor for those participating in maintaining these sacred sites. Older cashew, mango, palm and orange trees indicate the location of abandoned homes that have receded into the advancing miombo bush. Hardwoods near these fruit tree sites are often paid for by timber bosses because families still claim these areas as part of their

9 Based on 82 in-depth surveys about forest resources that I conducted in three povos in 2010.

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homes and set of fields, despite being fairly overgrown or seemingly abandoned. Clearing surrounding trees and bush around these older fruit trees can protect them from fire.

Other sections of what ‘experts’, activists and others who do not live in these woodlands might refer to as “forest” or “bush,” are actually neighborhoods maintained by the daily act of sweeping around homes. “Forests”—according to many living in villages in the miombo woodlands—are spaces that the government, NGOs, loggers, urban residents and other “outsiders” try to claim, cut or control. The bush, cemetery, neighborhood and other spaces that such “outsiders” might interpret indistinguishably as “forests” are a different category of “forest” altogether according to local norms. The miombo trees, exotics such as cashew and orange trees and other elements within these spaces are often highly cared for and tied to complex stories, some of which involve precious timber while others are tied to mushrooms, cemeteries or fruit trees.

Two examples are helpful for understanding the social sides of forest spaces.

First, at age 10 Katia had to leave her home to live with relatives (in a semi-servant position) after her parents died. Among the many fears she faced when she lost her parents, Katia worried that others would take the oranges from her parents’ trees. In order to benefit from the oranges, she created a small warning (using witchcraft) to ward off potential fruit thieves. The warning included a small structure made of sticks with twine attached to a stitched pouch with a cross, rotting herbs in a glass bottle, a large snail shell, ash and roasted corn in its husk. Although seemingly separate from “the forest,” her claim over the oranges affects her nutrition and social life, as Katia can offer oranges in exchange for

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other forms of support and she can sell the fermenting oranges to those with equipment for making cachasso (hard liquor). Controlling this resource, along with snacking on fruits, termites and other resources in the forest, adds to her diet and social standing in a context in which she receives the least amount of food in her new household. Thus, fruit trees in the forest contribute to the social fabric within the miombo woodlands in complex ways, not just precious hardwoods.

A second example of the social aspects of forests concerns the violation of a sacred site by illegal loggers, which led elder women in the community to complain in the middle of a heated meeting between community leaders and multiple logging bosses.

A logging truck drove through a sacred cemetery in July 2010, destroying the footpath and several trees and leveling the broken wooden cross, leaving it in the road. In the meeting logging bosses accused one another of stealing the other’s timber. While the older women were angered by the violation of the cemetery, members of ACODEMUZO demanded that logging within their proposed concession stop and focused on the broader

issue of their concession being stalled by local government and limited assistance from ORAM. After the event, different residents of the village accused different logging bosses of being the culprits of the cemetery destruction.10 The women struggled with these tensions between their responsibilities to maintain the cemeteries and the fact that their husbands were actively helping loggers find their way in the forest and receiving payments for permission to cut within the local povo’s forests, and earning wages from managing logistics and hauling timber.

Such intra-familial tensions between those who are concerned about the actions of loggers and those helping illegal loggers’ access timber are difficult to reconcile.

As Carlos continued reading through the comic, he finally stopped and asked, “But what happens when nobody agrees, and when there is more than one boss? I’m not sure how to stop cutting the forest here. My father is carrying timber right now all day today”. His father José carried timber all day long for a man from Quelimane called Nilo, who had no license for any area inside or surrounding the ACODEMUZO territory. Nilo

10 Based on my interviews and cross-checking different stories, I believe trucks rented or owned by a furtivo based in Quelimane. I refer to him as Nilo for the remainder of this essay.

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stop cutting the forest here.

“I’m not sure how to

My father is carrying timber right now all day today” had large trucks, rented a tractor and he paid a higher wage than other loggers because he didn’t pay government licensing fees and taxes. Some of his men from outside of the community slept in a prominent household in the community as guests, but members of that same household were furious when the tractor driver nearly ran over children and destroyed crops and part of the road while he drove drunk. This driver was so out of control, that one day he just drove back in the direction of Maganja with no indication of when he would be back to finish the hauling job ordered by Nilo. When Nilo’s truck knocked down the cross on the cemetery pathway, he blamed the incident on other loggers during the heated meeting in July 2010.

The July meeting confused village members further. A legally recognized timber boss called Abdul had concession rights to the north of the ACODEMUZO concession and in the meeting he accused Nilo’s men of stealing his timber and village residents of helping in the whole process. Nilo denied stealing the timber, stating that he was cutting outside the concession.11 Nilo also argued that the government and ORAM would never get the ACODEMUZO concession approved and that it was better if he and ACODEMUZO shared equipment and risk. He agreed to cut only outside of the ACODEMUZO area and only those trees in the ACODEMUZO area that the association permitted him to cut (in principle this would be no trees). Suddenly, an ACODEMUZO leader began storing Nilo’s chainsaw and food for workers in his wife’s home and Nilo’s truck and tractor tire tracks marked the front area of his home when they met to update one another. Many men and women thought that if a deal had been struck between the furtivos (loggers without licenses) and ACODEMUZO, then this must mean that men in the community could haul timber for money without taking

sides. Soon, however, Nilo disappeared and ACODEMUZO members felt tricked and they soon condemned his actions.

Abdul, a neighboring concession holder had no sympathy for village residents and was not concerned that he often paid his workers months after the agreed time, as he claimed, “they lie about not receiving wages, they steal my timber anyway and they give it to the furtivos…even one of the guys working for ORAM is in on it…they had better watch out as I am taking the whole lot to court.” I could not confirm his accusations about ORAM staff, but he sent a truck to pay salaries many months after he had promised.

He took select furtivos based in Nicoadala to the district court in Maganja da Costa, but no new cases were brought forward and eventually another owner took over Abdul’s concession license in 2011.

By the time the simple license holder Simão came onto the scene in mid-2010, the rivalries between loggers were already intense. Simão positioned himself as a responsible ‘Patrão’ (patron or boss) that would build a school and who had to pay lower wages because he actually followed the law and had to pay licensing fees, etc. His license allowed him to cut trees across the river from ACODEMUZO, but the map drawn up by the provincial authorities had the wrong local leader’s name on it. He held a consultation and paid tribute in a ceremony with the district authorities and with this leader.

When the leader explained that he was the wrong person for requesting permission to the specific territory in the license, the district authorities (who have since been replaced) told him to shut up and stop creating problems. Once Simão found out with whom he actually needed to consult, this other leader demanded the same ceremonial procedures as the incorrect leader had received. Simão refused and thus was barred from logging in

11 I have photographic and GPS-verified evidence that he cut trees within the ACODEMUZO concession.

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the area of his license. He then proceeded to log within the neighboring ACODEMUZO territory, which created further tensions between those who supported ACODEMUZO and those who either felt left out of ACODEMUZO or who hoped ACODEMUZO would work, but who wanted immediate opportunities. By this time Nilo had disappeared and Simão became the only known logger actively working in the area for a brief time before other furtivos arrived (others cut forest farther from the village).12

Many misunderstandings concerned outsider’s demands for clear boundaries.

For example, when Simão sat with village leaders and demanded to walk through the forest and determine the boundaries of everyone’s logging activities (Nilo, Abdul, Simão, ACODEMUZO and others), he requested my assistance with the supposed certainties of GPS. I explained that although I had the skills, my work would not be recognized by the state, which determines who to license for determining such boundaries.

What’s more, the GPS could have as much as a 30m error in the forest, which would necessitate a fairly thick buffer, not a basic line through the forest between loggers. But most importantly, leaders and residents of the various povos and villages in the forest do not think about territory in terms of distinct bounded areas. In such relatively sparsely populated spaces (about 9 people per km), boundaries between povos depend upon where the families living on the ‘frontier’ of a particular chiefdom cultivated crops, and upon their recognition of a particular chief whose labor demands they obey. This can best be visualized as groupings of overlapping and oddly shaped bubbles with differ-

ent people living in the overlapping spaces claiming that the territory belongs under the authority of different ruling families. While the provincial authorities draw maps with distinct hard lines for concession and license boundaries, these lines are non-existent and highly social and political on the ground. Such politics are impossible for loggers, activists, local government and other such “outsiders” to understand without extensive meetings with leaders and with people who use different resources in these spaces—but such meetings will never reveal hard boundaries—at least boundaries without controversy.13

One of the biggest challenges with the ACODEMUZO project is that the law necessitates creating boundaries. Even though the ACODEMUZO project is one of two ‘community’ concessions (in the process of recognition), as opposed to private company concessions, this does not mean that a whole village feels that the concession is theirs. The creation of ACODEMUZO’s association and boundaries basically labeled the territory as a ‘forest’ and a proposed timber concession—more like territory controlled

by God, the government and private outside company territory—than the social space that everyone experiences on the ground.

Claiming the territory as a forest concession prioritizes this space for timber production, even though other resource uses and social activities might be allowed or encouraged within the same space. What’s more, the ACODEMUZO territory overlaps with parts of more than one locality, which has confused government officials, NGO staff, activists, illegal loggers and locals. The contradictions created by the concession boundary make the contradictions of who hauls timber legally

12 Locals use the term “aqueles que vêm de fora” or those who come from outside or “outsiders” to refer particularly to NGO staff, district or provincial government, activists, health workers, to myself and to others who do not live in this locality or who do not have family living in this locality.

The definition is inconsistently applied.

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or illegally in the village seem less strange.

As Carlos read the “O Verde Despido” comic, his father José carried timber for the furtivo Nilo. José’s brother became a key manager for the simple license holder Simão, who set up camp near one of the local leader’s homes. The leader’s son was a key participant in mapping ACODEMUZO’s territory with ORAM in 2005 and he receives priority in any selection for work, whether for outside pesticide spray campaigns, illegal or legal logging. Carlos’ father José is extended family of another leader who prohibited Simão from cutting in ACODEMUZO’s area, but later gave in when the district government told him to accept the situation. This leader’s father-in-law actively facilitates and has worked for Simão, Nilo and others, while his wife and her sister are two of the most outspoken against the impacts of the loggers in creating social conflict, defiling sacred sites such as cemeteries and destroying planted fields. His wife’s daughter is married to a key ACODEMUZO member. Village residents are caught between the promises, bribes and threats of different competing timber bosses, authorities, and family members.

What’s more, there is also an underlying jealousy on the part of families who are not part of the ACODEMUZO association. Some of the association leaders are those most fluent in Portuguese and most likely to have strong contacts beyond the village for other forms of work and favors. However, as their project was delayed by local government and slow progress on the part of ORAM, many ACODEMUZO members lost face in their villages, as their connections appeared to be dead ends and to lack meaningful power compared with connections to powerful lin13 The term ‘furtivo’ may or may not be appropriate for Simão. He had a legal simple license that expired in December of 2010, but because of the disagreement with the local leader in the territory designated by the license, Simão predominantly cut timber within ACODEMUZO’s proposed concession (outside of the area of his license).

eages, church leadership, Frelimo leaders and select timber bosses.

A simplistic explanation for the motivations of locals for helping outside loggers steal timber within the community would focus solely on the extreme poverty in the area and the desire of locals for wages, however small. But as I have already shown, the perceptions of access and status achieved by connections with any “outsider” perceived to have connections to power, jobs, the church or other networks is also important.

Despite all of these complexities, one of the worst outcomes would be to abandon the ACODEMUZO project. The space is already an outcome of intensive local, national and international intervention. Rather than read this landscape and project as a failure (e.g. a failure to achieve the original vision of the project), it should be understood as a set of political, social and ecological relationships that are still in the making and whose outcome cannot be designed by any one person or organization. The conflicts, negotiations and partnerships make this forest, its spirits, its diverse species, its neighborhoods and its conflicts.

The next essay in this sequence elaborates the social sides of illegal logging in Zambézia with a focus on the perspectives from one of the organizations working with the ACODEMUZO association, Justiça Ambiental. The essay also provides an update on recent efforts to bolster ACODEMUZO’s legitimacy in the face of local government and authorities and within the local villages. The stories and lives of these forest neighborhoods continue every day and night.

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Partnering With

People And Forests

in Zambézia, Mozambique

Partnering with a struggling community-based forestry project several years after its creation is extremely difficult. Tense relationships with former and continuing project members must heal. Misunderstandings require careful attention. Realistic hopes and aspirations need enduring support, trust and solidarity. The forest ecology too, changes through time. And most importantly, political issues cannot be erased by technical fixes.

In 2010, the Mozambican environmental justice organization Justiça Ambiental (JA) embarked on such challenging partnerships with two ongoing community-based forest projects in the miombo woodlands of Zambézia Province that were originally initiated in 2005 and in 2007.1 More than a two-way relationship between rural Mozambican community members and a group of activists, this collaboration involves a complex and dynamic network. The network includes donors from Europe, a Mozambican rural development organization called ORAM (Organization for Rural Mutual Assistance), government officials at the district, provincial and national levels, select timber companies and related businesses, forest technicians and engineers, cartographers, academics, activists and other organizations working to stop deforestation and to change forest management in Mozambique.2 & 3

What kinds of stories do people in

this network tell one another about their work, fears and aspirations? Are the stories different depending on who tells them? How do old relationships change when new partnerships form, and what does this mean for forests and the people living in them? How can a sense of ownership in forestry projects thrive when there are so many different collaborators and interests involved? And finally, how are people and forests and their shared histories changed as they come together?

This essay delves into the messy and inspiring relationships—and politics—that keep community forestry projects going in the face of daunting obstacles, and in the context of new partnerships.

In the previous essay, I described the ongoing conflicts, negotiations, spirits, species, neighborhoods and partnerships that make up a particular miombo woodland in Maganja da Costa District in Zambézia, Mozambique. The Zambézia provincial office of ORAM began working on forestry issues with two localities in this area in 2005.

They wanted the government to recognize a planned community-run 33,000-hectare (ha) commercial forest concession covering part of the two localities. They formed an association called the Muzo Community Association of Environmental Defense and Sanitation (ACODEMUZO)4 that was eventually registered in 2007. Their concession is, howev-

1 JA and ORAM refer to this project as the Community Sustainable Management and Good Forest Governance project (Gestão Comunitária Sustentável e Boa Governação das Florestas - Zambézia), which began on the 22nd of March in 2010 and has an official timeline of European Commission funding from the 1st of February of 2010 until the 1st of February of 2013 2 Donors include the European Union and Oxfam-Novib.

3 This collaboration involves a specific Zambézia provincial delegation of the larger ORAM organization, called ORAM-Zambézia.

4 The full name in Portuguese is: Associação Comunitária de Defesa e Saneamento do Meio Ambiente do Muzo.

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er, still awaiting final government approval.

ORAM also helped to establish a community association in Nipiode in Mocuba district in 2007 called the Community Committee for the Management of Forest Resources of Nipiode (COGERFN).5 With the encouragement of ORAM-Zambézia, members of COGERFN created a company called MMK – Madeira Mahiku Kanligana to manage a concession of 20,000 hectares. A third forest project in Zambézia involves a proposed 40,000-hectare community-run concession in Gilé district managed by the Community Association for the Management of the Natural Resources of Uapé Etakua Ekumiaho (ACOGERNU)6, established in 2010, but JA is not involved with this particular project. The stories of these forest projects and associations involve great enthusiasm, struggle and continued confusion.

Motivations

Why would members of Justiça Ambiental (JA) want to get involved in what was at the time in 2010, a group of failing forest projects initiated by ORAM-Zambézia? JA was founded in 2004 in order to focus primarily on water, mining and other environmental issues across the country. The director of JA, Anabela Lemos, explained to me that they also agreed to focus on forests as far back

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as 2005, but she stated: “At the time we were struggling to get correct information from the central and northern provinces beyond the limited reports of crime, corruption and forest destruction, but the information was all so secretive.” By 2006, JA members had a meeting in Quelimane with some representative groups of civil society in which they discussed the findings of Catherine Mackenzie’s investigative Chinese Takeaway report that detailed widespread illegal logging activity in Zambézia. JA members agreed to help release and distribute the report and to help find ways to lobby and do advocacy and research to raise awareness of the reality of illegal logging in Zambézia. When I came to Mozambique in 2007, JA’s forest-related work primarily involved watchdog work bringing national attention to deforestation and research. But they soon expanded their attention to illegal logging to other provinces.

JA joined a coalition of environmental groups that later was called Friends of the Forest.7 They created an ADF in February and created a presentation based on Mackenzie’s reportcan take out. They held a march in April 2007, and JA launched further investigative research in Cabo Delgado8 province in August and September and later in Tete province (only TETE). ORAM-Zambézia and JA’s activities were connected in terms of building a broader solidarity between the groups

5 The full name in Portuguese is: Comité Comunitário para a Gestão de Recursos Florestais de Nipiode.

6 The full name in Portuguese is: Associação Comunitária para Gestão de Recursos Naturais de Uapé Etakua Ekumiaho.

7 JA left the Friends of the Forest collective in 2009, citing multiple issues, among them was the pro-REDD+ attitudes of some Friends of the Forest members (REDD+ is the United Nations (UN) Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program). Mozambique is not a UN REDD+ Program country. Mozambique is part of the World Bank Forest Partnership Facility (FCPF), which also facilitates REDD+ assessments and implementation. JA fundamentally disagrees with REDD+ on the basis that REDD+ will likely lead to the commodification of nature, grabbing of community land and forests, the legitimization of planting more exotics, not slow-growing native species and that it will not curb the fundamental drivers of deforestation and illegal logging. Friends of the Forest largely collapsed over the issue of afforestation and the inclusion of Mozambican organizations that too readily adopted foreign development agendas.

around the urgency of dealing with deforestation in Mozambique before the country’s forests disappeared. When I returned to Mozambique in 2009, their activities converged in the physical spaces of the community-run forestry project areas.

Both JA and ORAM collaborated with investigative reporter Catherine Mackenzie for a follow-up research report titled, Tristezas Tropicais: More Sad Stories from the Forests of Zambézia (2009). They visited the communities that were trying to establish their own forest concessions and associations. They found that despite the efforts of local communities to stop illegal logging within their proposed concessions and despite ORAM’s civic education programs and support for community associations, the ACODEMUZO and COGERFN concessions were actively undermined by local government officials and other logging operators (legal and illegal). If the grand experiment of community-run concessions was going to survive, they would need more advocacy and support.

Tracing Stories, Facts and Rumors in the “Community” Forestry Projects9

When I began living in the ACODEMUZO area in 2009, I found that there were a wide range of opinions about the commu-

nity forest concession project within the local communities living in and near the forest. The project included much more than mapping territory and conducting forest inventories.

ORAM held educational meetings in Muzo to denounce the overhunting of animals and uncontrolled fires. Members of the community were also called to carry water and make mud blocks for an office that ACODEMUZO would use to run their association.10 Some community members expressed so much initial interest in ORAM’s activities that, in addition to forming an association board, they agreed to establish “interest groups” (also called “natural resource committees”) centered on managing specific resources. These included three bamboo groups (including a women’s group), two carpentry groups, three timber groups and (possibly) an herb/spice group.11 I visited members of the women’s bamboo collective back in August 2007.

There was an immense level of excitement in these early activities (although not everyone participated). On December 27th, 2009, soon after I arrived in Muzo, António12, a man from a neighboring povo, came to my house bearing a gift of peanuts. He exclaimed, “I stopped loggers from stealing timber from the community…they left the cut timber here, they returned, but still did not take it.”

António was not a member of the ACODEMUZO board. But he participated

8 See Ribeiro and Nhabanga’s Levantamento preliminar da Problemática das florestas de Cabo Delgado (2009, Maputo: Justiça Ambiental).

9 While I include information from the ACODEMUZO and COGERFN concessions, I primarily focus on the ACODEMUZO project, because I lived and researched in this area between 2009 and 2011.

10 The building was never finished according to survey respondents regarding ORAM’s activities in the community.

11 Source: field notes from a meeting with the president and treasurer of ACODEMUZO on May 11th, 2010 and observations of a presentation by ORAM-Zambézia at the Maganja da Costa administration on April 1st, 2010.

12 I use a pseudonym for some individuals in this essay, while I use actual names for those participating in public debates.

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in a natural resource committee and an “exchange of experience” organized by ORAM in 2005 for ten members of ACODEMUZO (including one woman) to speak with other communities engaged in natural resource management projects in Manica and Sofala provinces (including a visit to Gorongosa National Park, which is a distance of roughly 530km). António was enthusiastic about his experiences in the project. He was proud of stopping illegal loggers in the community’s planned concession area. But by late 2009 and early 2010, I soon found out that the natural resource management projects had stopped, the ACODEMUZO leaders were discouraged by the stalling of their paperwork in local government offices and by many other factors. The broader enthusiasm of local people who were not formal members of the ACODEMUZO association had also disappeared. What happened to curb enthusiasm in the project? Was the problem merely in the stalled paperwork?

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Some community members interpreted the informational meetings run by ORAM to discourage forest fires and over-hunting to be a sign that outsiders were coming to restrict peoples rights and activities in the forest, so that a select few members of the new association could make more money from selling timber. Several older women were especially concerned about this issue when I chatted with them during afternoon walks through the povos. Securing official tenure rights for a particular group of people through formal or informal means by definition excludes various other people and activities from the spaces that are claimed, regardless of how many times the word “community” or “collective” saturates the required meetings and paperwork. Specific local families, passers-by, extended family members in other districts and others are very aware of the implications of “projects”. While select individuals see spaces of opportunity in such projects, others worry that the limited access

to these spaces that they do have through kinship and other ties, will disappear as a new project privileges new relationships and vague admonitions by outsiders to share a set of vague benefits—20% of project income, authority, etc.—with the “community”.

I will return to this issue in the next section of the essay.

Although the interest groups were a good idea, the access to markets to sell the bamboo, honey and other items simply did not sustain these programs, and they also seemed inferior to the broader agenda of timber harvesting (as evidenced by the preference given by ORAM members to meetings with the core ACODEMUZO association members during occasional visits).

Members of JA were only partially aware of these sticky issues when they joined the project in 2010. JA’s director Anabela Lemos explained:

“All that we knew was that the finalized ORAM project did not manage to reach

all of their goals. For example, ACODEMUZO’s concession was not approved. So we thought that by partnering with them we could bring support for the legalization of the concession, advocacy and help combine cultural and local knowledge with science to create new models of development in Mozambique in which communities are both responsible for and benefit from the forest, not only by using and cutting trees but by using all of the other benefits that a forest could give them. We believe that community forest management is the way to go because it will not only help decrease poverty in the country, but also stopping illegal logging because if the forest is theirs they will also protect the forest.”

But during JA’s first field visit, something seemed fishy in both the ACODEMUZO and COGERFN projects, so they conducted surveys in the communities to understand how a wider range of people living in the area understood the project. They conducted

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twenty-three surveys (of fifty-nine people) in “Muzo” in June. They found that about 60% of respondents had heard of ACODEMUZO, but 90% of respondents admitted that they did not know its objectives. Only 14% knew of the forest concession project and many respondents stated “we are seeing something but we don’t know what it is”. In my own survey, two respondents who said they did not participate in ACODEMUZO’s activities stated that a local leader required them to bring him a chicken or other food to participate in the meetings with ORAM, and others were not present on the day the meeting was held (they were visiting other communities, working in their fields, etc.). I also noted that many of the women who signed the original documents for establishing ACODEMUZO (to meet gender participation expectations) were the wives and sisters of the male association members or the community leadership. New leadership positions created by this association were held by family or close friends of the traditionally powerful families in the community.

Given the lack of understanding of the project and local suspicions of the project, JA was faced with a difficult task of addressing the mistrust, healing broken partnerships and regrouping, all while continuing to maintain pressure on local, provincial and national government officials to finally recognize the community’s concession claim. Because of the “lost” paperwork, part of the concession recognition process (a consulta) had to be redone in 2010. JA and ORAM staff had to find a way to create a stronger presence in these local spaces, so that anyone could ask questions about the project or share their opinions outside of brief formal meetings.

JA recently sent trainers and a forest engineer to Muzo to help certify members of ACODEMUZO to be official “forest police” or fiscais recognized by the government. They 13 Museu de História Natural in Maputo

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coupled this with small material goods such as soccer balls and they are also pressuring the national government to recognize the ACODEMUZO concession, especially now that under the project ORAM managed to install a sawmill in the community for local production.

After sorting through the stories, facts and rumors in these communities—which, depending on who is speaking could overlap more than we might think—JA and other key people involved in the community forestry projects had an opportunity to reflect together in a public debate in Maputo on their new relationships and strategies. A key issue that continues to present problems for everyone involved is the expectation of sharing benefits and the role of some local leaders in both the success of the project and continued illegal logging in the region.

Sharing: The Community Leaders Debate

Towards the latter stages of the project, JA, ORAM and others held a meeting in Maputo to take stock of their community-run forest project activities. The debate on the 20th and 21st of September in 2012 focused on the experiences and lessons learned in the ACODEMUZO and COGERFN projects.

The issue of the roles of community leaders in these projects and in facilitating illegal logging was clearly of significant concern to participants. Lucília Chuquela of the National Natural History Museum13 asked: “One of the lessons learned referred to the community leaders’ important role in illegal [timber] cutting because it gave them income. But my point of view is that this should not happen because the income is for proper benefit and they as community leaders represent a community and if whatever income comes out this should be for the common not individual benefit. The question that I still

have is how to deal with the situation because for me this is not to be a community leader.”

Nadja Gomes of JA and LDH, questioned to what extent the project monitors the 20% that community concessions (run by a community company or an association) must devolve to the broader community. She stated, “This can not be at the individual level because it is a value that can not be divided for a large number of people but it could be that there is some sort of plan, control or relation in terms of the quantity of funds or money that arrives versus the quantity of return that will go to the local population. And until what point is it that these same populations are satisfied with the new desks in the school or with how the communities will know what are the direct necessities that they have aside from them [the desks].” Ana Monge of the European Union (a key funder of key stages of the project) expressed serious concern over the issue of sharing and local leaders: “Where there was reference to community leaders taking advantage, this seems to me to be a very negative aspect. One of the actions that the project should try to avoid was these things happening. And appearing as lessoned learned, I don’t understand the framework very well, what is it that we will learn from this point? Is it that the project is trying to avoid these kinds of problems?”

Laurenço Duvane, director of ORAMZambézia responded to these concerns with a lengthy explanation:

“All of us know that when a logger arrives in a forest area and wants to cut or rob timber, he goes to the leader. With or without authorization this is who says where the logger is allowed to cut. I don’t like to say that in these situations, legal or not, the leader does not redistribute the income to the community…What we have verified is that in reality at times the leaders are lured by such tiny

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things (for example a radio or bicycles) and the furtivos take advantage of this situation…

And now should this be that this is a leader? I don’t know but this is how it appears to me…

These are the constraints that exist. But in our point of view, in what we have done in terms of civic education, we told leaders not to enter into these schemes because this is not correct and not legal. The leader can’t sell common products, in this case forests, for the benefit of him or the community because there has to be a correct transaction for this to be done.”

In response, Agostinho Jaime Pequenino, a representative from the COGERFN community forest project stated: “There have been certain situations in which the community leaders tried to take timber illegally, bringing the furtivos into the concession. But one day they met with all of the leaders and there were debates between them and the members of the committee, and they reached the conclusion that the benefits should be for all of the communities, and never for the benefit of each leader individually. If they benefit one person, our children will not have desks or chairs in school, and as they are the future of the community, they need to study. For example, in the last assembly that occurred on the 3rd of August, we debated with others in a conflict with a logger who tried to enter the concession. He asked assistance from the District government but since they didn’t have transport, all of the leaders and the general population was invited to be present to debate the question. We went to the tractor and expelled the furtivos. Today, therefore, the five communities covered [in the concession] are fighting together against these people.”

I interpret this debate with particular concern. When the project created the ACODEMUZO and COGERFN associations (and

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the MKK company in Nipiode), this was supposed to help the state recognize at least some members of the communities as legitimate entities to hold concession lease rights.

It also helped ORAM keep track of with whom to meet and work in their visits in the forest.

But association membership also creates tension with a whole series of hierarchical relationships in these communities that have to do with kinship, historical memory and current economic realities.

To some, membership in the association created a new opportunity for connections with development organizations and companies outside of the community; a contemporary version of the historical process of finding a patron (patrão) with good power and connections. Even if the project failed, perhaps the relationships they build through the experience will help them in a time of need. The new association positions also essentially compete with the benefits and authority of traditional and other leadership roles in the different communities and families in these areas. The responsibility to call people to attend meetings is a responsibility that takes the leader’s time away from other activities in his own fields and business endeavors. If loggers, officials and most others in the region bring gifts of alcohol or other items when they visit out of common practice and out of compensation for his time, why should a donor-funded project be any different? The concessions cross many populations, some of which have unresolved family skirmishes over territorial and political power. Leaders in these contested sites are expected to put aside these visceral issues and come together to support a new association of people with competing claims to authority supported by outsiders and assume on good faith that this association will benefit their kin and their population. That these issues of the

role of leaders keep cropping up in conflicts is not surprising. The persistent expectation by outsiders that “community” trumps kinship, should give us greater pause.

When Agostinho—a member and beneficiary of the authority given to him to speak through his involvement in COGERFN—recounted the story of leaders coming together and agreeing to keep illegal loggers out of the concession and the story of expelling the tractor from their area, he stood in front of stakeholders who are heavily invested in this project succeeding. They are invested in the idea of a project that “benefits the entire community.” They see favoritism practiced by leaders as nepotism and corruption, or according to Ana Monge of the EU as “a very negative aspect.” Agostinho’s story had to present a victory in the context of constant pressure to redefine the roles of local leaders.

JA members have seriously reflected on this very complicated issue. They understand that the assumptions at the outset of the project (before they joined) were creating problems with the project. But they also understand that these very political issues are extremely challenging to address in a way that will satisfy the worldviews and perspectives of European donors, formal law, their own convictions about environmental justice and the priorities and motivations of competing families and peoples in the forest. Their struggles to address these issues of sharing and leadership are best illustrated with the following story.

When I asked JA members to describe a key moment or issue during the project that significantly changed their understanding of the situation or that led to major changes in their strategies for the project, they responded:

“The first issue that changed our per-

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spective of the project was when we went to the field for the first time in May 2010 and we were shocked to see that the information we had of the project had no connection whatsoever to what we found in the field in terms of what we saw when we listened in both the COGERFN and ACODEMUZO area. After this first shock and many ignored requests for various project reports we decided to do our own analysis.

The second issue concerned our observations of the COGERFN community concession in 2011 where a community sawmill had already been installed. We observed irregularities due to the influence of a corrupt leader of the association who, allegedly kept key legal documents with him in his home instead of at the sawmill and who had allowed incorrect practices such as marking logs with chalk instead of the proper paint and accepting timber from furtivos to be processed (we still need to have more concrete proof ). COGERFN has since elected a new leader.

The third issue was during the party with Ingrid [when she showed a movie of scenes from the research that she did], in Muzo, when food was prepared and divided giving priority to the leaders (in a hierarchy of leadership) and the women that prepared the food.14 The majority of the children present at the event stayed without eating, the few that ate did so because their mothers who cooked the food gave them food. These were children with extreme vulnerability due to poverty in which they walk kilometers and kilometers in the sun without access to water15 and on this Sunday, a day of religious ceremonies, many of them had come from two

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days under these conditions. [Despite being invited to eat with the leaders], the JA team withdrew and quietly went and prepared and ate food apart from the larger group because they felt ashamed about such differentiation and in our perspective injustice in the [local] priorities in the sharing of food in front of the gaze of the starving children and old people who just watched.

Not that it is for JA nor any external element invited into these communities, where they enjoy their good will and readiness to receive us, for us to then create conflicts that go against all of their cultural habits. It is not that within three days of staying within these isolated communities that this will allow us to demonstrate positively and to be able to convey a message without being aggressive or confrontational towards their habits before creating further conflicts amidst such poverty and vulnerability. This experience served to make us more attentive to these issues, so that a future events involving any type of benefit, whether food or other products, we would make sure that such benefits would be shared in a more just manner and that benefits the children and the elderly. This approach will have to deal with the traditional leadership hierarchy, so that they also share the approach. Also, we did not get too involved in this event because it was more to commemorate Ingrid’s return and to show the documentary. If we were only there for the project we would never have allowed that to happen. We also believe that the food was enough to share with more people.”

This issue of sharing and hierarchy infiltrates most aspects of the ACODEMU-

14 The women that prepared the food have no kinship ties to me. There is no reason that they should labor all afternoon to cook food for people, many of whom are not in their kin/family. They consider their labor as work that requires some form of payment and the ability to “see the movie” was not a compelling enough incentive to compensate for this labor. They saw privileged access to choice portions of meat as a key motivator for cooking the meal, despite my own and other’s admonitions that the film event was “for the community.” The fight that ensued over dividing the food among leadership, and the women who cooked the food and their children resulted in one leader having to step in and impose his authority in an effort to please us as outsiders and resolve the confusion, because this particular problem did not follow normal lines of authority. This leader suddenly found himself imposing a way of “sharing” that generated conflict and that still left JA members very upset, because so many other children from neighboring communities never received any food.

15 Based on my observations in this community, it can be stated that many children are undernourished and likely dehydrated at various times of the day and across the year. But what is not observed by many outsiders is the fact that these children have extended kin and family in different sections of the community area. While they are likely not going to be able to obtain much food along their long walks from these homes, they can and do ask politely for a cup of water if they are very thirsty, from homes along the road and they are frequently given this water, knowing that the favor will be returned when the extended family travels to their area. These children also snack on forest foods (such as insects and fruits) in their travels through the community. Yes, they did not benefit from what was initially enough food to go around for all attendees of the event, but it would also be a stretch to flatly portray them as “starving” and as receiving no assistance from fellow community members.

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ZO endeavor. It shapes outsider’s mistrust of local capabilities for forest governance.

The community concessions are essentially based upon technical provisions in the Forestry Law and regulations that the benefits from managing a “community” forest concession will reach the number of families counted in the reports to donors and forest management plans.

There are contradictory stories that these forestry projects introduce. One story argues that a new community company will run the project and that this company or association will benefit everyone. The other story is that the association and company will need to take care of or sustain itself with some of the proceeds of its sales (as any business requires). Based on past experiences with historical and more contemporary companies and patrons, the promise of benefits to everyone falls short of real benefits and suspicions about association member filling their pockets spreads like wildfire. Both stories parallel people’s historical experiences, and both do not combine easily with the reality that kinship and connections to people with connections matters more than lofty ideals of “community equity”. The idea of sharing resources with “the community” is an invention of the government and international development donors. Many people in the community already share and work together for mutual benefit, but this primarily occurs within hierarchical structures and through connections in church and through kinship networks (especially beyond the household to aunts and uncles), not in the sense of the “whole community.” This notion of community is one more tool of governing and organizing the labor of and controlling

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populations in rural areas (linked to historical colonialism, socialism and in the post-conflict interventions of many NGOs).

Outside of the activities of people in church and in their extended families and their work farming and collecting resources, many people think that there is not much extra time for more activities that have very little guarantee that they will receive benefits before families with more authority take the benefits for themselves. The “community” is the unit of involvement of the government (this works differently in the structure of the church) but this is not a unit that drives the majority of culture, society and economies of people. Kinship relationships and responsibilities drive these cultures, societies and economies. These kinship relationships are not simply static relics of tradition or the result of “isolation” or “habits.” These relationships are dynamic and they are what will make or break a forest project, an illegal logger’s access to an area or any other type of intervention. The issue goes much deeper than “good leaders that share” versus “corrupt leaders that pocket the proceeds of illegal logs.” How does sharing work in these spaces, especially when trust in outsiders bringing benefits is one of the scarcest commodities in the forest?

Sharing: The Community Leaders Debate

My critical discussion of the ongoing debates and issues in these forest projects is not meant to be an attack or to discourage the projects. The projects have already changed the lives and the local politics on the ground in these places. They are part of these forest spaces now. The space is already an out-

come of intensive local, national and international intervention. As I emphasized in my first essay, one of the worst outcomes would be to abandon these projects. Rather than read this landscape and set of projects as failures to achieve the original vision of the projects or to achieve adequate sharing or governance, they should be understood as a set of political, social and ecological relationships that are still in the making and whose outcome cannot be designed by any one person or organization.

The conflicts, negotiations and partnerships make this forest, its spirits, its diverse species, its neighborhoods and its conflicts. Kinship and the ways that people do offer one another their support, their labor, their love and their trust need to be understood on their own terms before we can start to figure out how new “community-run forest associations” and variously imagined communities fit into these relationships. As JA members have found as “latecomers” to these forest spaces, it is only through hard work, listening, reflection and serving as allies, that these projects can find their space in the miombo woodlands. I am always inspired by and in awe of JA member’s flexible, strong and optimistic approach in these projects.

Sadly, I just learned that the funding for this collaboration will not be continued.

JA’s director, Anabela Lemos recently reflected on the situation: “Although the European Union did not agree with the extension of the project, JA will carry on visiting and supporting the ACODEMUZO project to the extent that we can with our funds and following up with the authorization of the concession and doing more analysis,

as we believe in their willingness and strength to make it work. In Nipiode (COGERFN) we tried with all of our energy to make changes and to stop all of the injustices (we still need more proof), but we will not spend much more of our energy with such a corrupt system that came from within the project’s previous structuring, as no one is willing or wants to make the needed changes. As much as I do respect and understand the EU’s decision not to fund the project further, as this project: (1) did not meet many of its goals, (2) had so many conflicts to resolve, (3) the relationship between our organization and ORAM-Zambézia was not what we expected, and (4) there were many changes to the project personnel, even with all of that, donors should understand that three years is not enough.

Just beginning to find out what conflicts exist and to be sure of these took a whole year and to find solutions and then have time to implement them and allow changes to happen will take much more time. If anyone says otherwise we believe such short-term changes would only be make-up or made up. Yes we were naïve because we did not have the slightest idea at first that there were so many different conflicts. For us this is a lesson. We will never go into a project like this without good preliminary analysis and research of the situation first.”

I think that despite the conflict over the role of local leaders and the many massive challenges in these woodlands, staying with the troubles and staying right in the fray of these difficulties is exactly what is needed to turn these projects into something unexpected, something just and something in which the forests and the people living in them can thrive on their terms.

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This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union.

The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Ingrid Nelson and Justiรงa Ambiental and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.