Forest resource use and management in two villages in the former Ciskei, South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Rural communities in South Africa are similar to communities in other areas of thedeveloping world in terms of obtaining natural resources. A wide range of resources areharvested from the communal woodlands and processed for home consumption and sale.Until recently, there has been little recognition of the contribution these common poolresources make to the rural economy. In South Africa, only a few studies have attemptedto estimate the monetary value of widely used non-timber woodland products.Natural resources valuation techniques were used to estimate the values of the directconsumption of woodland resources by households in two rural villages: Woodlands, andPirrie Mission, Eastern Cape, South Africa. The two villages are situated next to twodifferent vegetation types. Woodlands is in valley bushveld while Pirrie Mission is nextto high mountain forest. The approach involved a combination of household interviews,participatory group sessions, key informant interviews and natural vegetation assessment.Questions were designed in such a way that they established the types of resources used,the frequency of use, quantities used, their availability, the extent to which they are tradedboth locally and in more distant markets and forms of management preferred.Participatory Vegetation assessment was done in order to monitor the forest use in bothvegetation areas over a period of a year.Results indicated that in both study areas, all households were gathering or purchasing atleast some woodland resources, with the most frequently used resources being fuelwood(48% in Woodlands and 51% in Pirrie Mission), branches (4% in Woodlands and 7% inPirrie Mission), poles (21 % in Woodlands and 20% in Pirrie Mission), fencing (15% inWoodlands and 16% in Pirrie Mission) and herbs for medicinal purposes (12% inWoodlands and 7% in Pirrie Mission). Fuel wood and branches contributed to the largestproportion of overall value in both villages. There was no difference in terms of resourceuse despite the differing tenure of the woody resources. The majority of people from bothvillages ( 41 % in Woodlands and 29% in Pirrie Mission) believed that their woodyresources could be used and managed sustainably if villagers and village managementauthorities could be involved in decision making on how to use them. Quantitativeresults of vegetation assessment revealed that the State Forest found at Pirrie Mission hasa relatively high growth rate with mean values ranging between 0.01- 0.17 as comparedto a communal woodland found in Woodlands village.Sustainable utilisation is critical to the survival of the indigenous woody vegetation.Based on the findings of this study one can conclude that both the community woodlandand State forest are over-harvested. This can be attributed to the fact that after the 1994elections, the State forest became available to all as the Government withdrew themanagement strategies used before the 1994 Government elections in South Africa.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University