When assessing the study results from practical and theoretical points of view some important observations need to be made and these follow next.
5.2.1 Practical application value in local context
Large-scale land use changes in this locality would be unacceptable in terms of the socio-economic and environmental fundamentals associated with the study region. Within the context of the reigning geographical strategy it thus essentially means examining the degree of retention of existing land use or determining whether the proportional contribution each of the existing land uses made towards the five selected objectives is acceptable in terms of land use change. The actual proportional contribution(s) each of the existing land uses made towards the idealised situation at the conclusion of this study are indicated in Figure 5.2.
Figure 5.2: Proportional contribution of current land uses to each objective
As shown in the case of indigenous vegetation, wetlands, built-up areas, as well as the reserved objective, the desired retention of their existing uses is fully achieved. Nonetheless, as expected in terms of rural development, forestry would (in line with its higher priority) incorporate the most
(1804.7ha) land use change, followed by agriculture (355.1ha), and the built-up objective (237.5ha). Agroforestry practices or agriculture were inferior to other land uses in some instances, particularly when the technology was inappropriate or the accompanying policies not enabling.
Yet, just over 95% of current plantations are retained for forestry (925.8ha) as desired, more so since the allocation to communal use (44.1ha) is slightly superficial when considering the concept of community forestry.
Some of the bushland contribution to forestry (179.4ha) represents the retained exotic jungles, viz.
managed woodlots. Alternatively, indigenous bush is allocated to conservation (137.1ha) and the communal use allocation (146.0ha) implies alien vegetation clearing activities. With environmental sensitivity in mind it follows that conversion of present-day rangeland is considerably limited in respect of developmental progress. In fact, more veld is allocated to conservation (512.2ha) than the combined loss to settlement and agriculture (497.6ha). Almost 88% (2524.5ha) of present-day cultivated land would be retained for agriculture, and together with the newly allocated areas, would call for some forms of agricultural intensification. At the same time, badly situated productive agricultural land is also eliminated, ideally allocated to communal use or grazing (288.2ha), conservation (59.4ha), or even falling in the reserved category (2.2ha) in the worst cases. Any allocation to the latter three objectives does not necessarily represent any direct land use change though. As an existing land use class, old cropland provides for most of the objectives as expected, particularly contributing towards communal use (about 56% of all abandoned fields), followed by forestry (26%) and conservation (9%). The balance (173.1ha) is more or less evenly allocated between built-up and productive agricultural land. Therefore, a high degree of logical convergence between actual land use patterns (compare Figure 2.4) and the modelled allocation emphasised the envisaged planning potential of the methods used.
Judging by the practicality or functionality of the allocated objectives measured against current development initiatives, one should consider the extent of the planned rural cluster, shown in Figure 5.1. Current settlement development (i.e. marked out plots on old cropland) basically ended up as forestry land in the last frame. In fact, the cluster materialises next to the same road, but closer to the stream bank in the north and the school located in the other relatively new settlement to the northwest across the same stream. It would therefore make more sense to have the built-up area here as the results indicate because of its close proximity to water and educational facilities.
Moreover, it does not occupy valuable land that is actually better suited for something more productive, such as planting trees in this case.
Enterprise development at local community level, based on tree- and forest products and linking forestry with other land-based activities in household production, was illustrated in this study.
Noteworthy practical examples on this subject are the tree lane along the road, the convenient woodlot sizes and locations, as well as the windrows south of the wetland (in the centre of Figure 5.1) that will reduce runoff velocity from the agricultural land located higher up the hillside.
Moreover, adequate strips of veld separate wetland and riparian zones from agricultural and forestry land, which in turn also avoid areas of high erosion risk.
Conservation wise, ecological corridors and wetland rehabilitation are well catered for as shown and might eventually lead to improved water quantity and quality. However, conversion of alien bush into managed woodlots remains to be given the full go-ahead from government agencies and environmentalists. The fact that investment in tree planting confers strong individual land rights implies that communal land tenure institutions have built-in rules to ensure the intensification of land use in areas where agroforestry has a comparative advantage (Otsuka & Place 2001). Land productivity was thus assumed to be at a maximum here, especially as indicated by the objectives that now occupy old abandoned cropland.
5.2.2 Value from a theoretical perspective
Community management of natural resources has assumed renewed importance in the last decade (De Janvry et al 2002) and, substantiated by interactive collaboration and collective action, gives the affected communities a new opportunity to improve their livelihood. A good understanding of communal tenure systems and land use patterns in these tribal lands dominated by subsistence farming was thus vital during this analysis. Both the socio-economic and biophysical appreciation of land resources should be encapsulated in the concept of resource management domains. In this case the collaboration strategies improved the overall quality of decisions, not least through exploration of new opinions, with the potential for win-win settlements. Using MCDA, we may not be able to operationalise ‘sustainable’ as an additional attribute, but we can estimate a) whether one alternative is ‘more sustainable’ than another, and we can know that b) critical levels of certain attributes of an ecosystem (ecological sustainability) or an economy will probably cause irreversible harm (Steward et al. 1997), e.g. in the form of soil erosion. The possibility that exists within MCDA to use ordinal, interval and ratio scale utility measurement, with full recognition of non-linearities, suited the problem at hand well. It increased its discriminatory powers, and improved the ‘trade-off’ capabilities of the approach with respect to land or resource allocation.
This was also superbly proven by the ‘dominance’ values as implemented in the MCE using the
AHP approach. This study has therefore adequately demonstrated the successful application of a GIS-based multi-criteria spatial decision-making model to identify the optimally suitable areas for land use most likely to support sustainable development.