Governance processes shaping post-displacement livelihood impacts (Study II)

The way the Derema conservation and compensation process played out for different affected social groups was shaped by departures from initial plans, agreements and the relevant policies, compounded by structural challenges related to the project setting for implementing the intervention. Inadequate access to information and other resources set limits to the agency of those affected in the aggregate, and contributed to unequal conditions of claiming and defending access within the affected population.

Despite widespread concerns about the effects of displacement evident during the Social Impact Assessment in 2000, villagers’ apparent support for the establishment of the exclusionary government reserve was subsequently reported (Jambiya and Sosovele 2000, Pohjonen 2002). Yet, only a handful of villagers had direct access to the negotiations with the representatives of EUCAMP and the government. Many of the interviewees in the villages, especially women, felt that they had not participated in making the decision about the corridor (Table 8). Those who represented other villagers in the negotiations, and later in following up on the compensation, were usually older, more affluent men in leadership positions in the villages. Considering that the intervention finally only benefited the wealthy farmers who were able to make investments with the compensation (Study I), it is likely that this group was motivated to promote certain approaches over others, such as displacement with monetary compensation instead of village forest reserves, and cash compensation as personal cheques instead of other forms of compensation. Perhaps due to a cultural bias, the preferences of the male leaders turned out to have a bigger weight in the consultations with the conservation officials. Although women’s voices were heard and documented at the start of the intervention (cf. Jambiya and Sosovele 2000), their requests for a compensation approach that would take the gendered land access into account were not considered at any point of the process. Nevertheless, expectations of prompt and considerable compensation based on what was received for the crops on the corridor boundary – TZS 28,000 (approx.

USD 35 in 2001) per plant – may have initially worked in favour of general support for the cash compensation method in the villages.

Table 8. Participation in the decision about the Derema corridor and the selection of village representatives, and information flows in the two study villages according to the survey conducted in 2008.

(%) Found out about the corridor through (%)

Participated in

ª Researchers, forestry staff, other external contacts.

As the conservation and compensation process lagged on, frustration and dissatisfaction became widespread in the villages. By 2005, the affected farmers from the five villages had organized themselves in a committee that visited the district and regional forestry offices several times in an attempt to obtain information on the status of compensation, and to exert

pressure on the authorities. In doing so, the farmers utilized their broader social networks of people that they thought to be in positions to influence the process. Researchers working in the area and interested in the conservation process, such as myself, were perceived as potential messengers to whom the villagers vented their frustration. Discursive means of resistance included threats of slashing the regenerating forest vegetation and taking back the land by force unless the money was paid, and repeated portrayals of the affected people as the impoverished victims of the conservation intervention. New information was employed in this struggle as it became available, such as when the farmers became aware of their legal right to compensation for the land, in addition to the crops, in 2009.

Access to information turned out to be a key variable shaping the process for nearly all the actors involved. The agency of the farmers’ committee was undermined by repeated failures to acquire relevant information, as well as by lack of knowledge of the responsible authorities or the institutional accountability measures available. For example, whereas virtually all interviewees deemed the final compensation received in 2008 insufficient and less than they had expected based on their own calculations, the World Bank project received very few reclamations during a three-week grievance period in November 2008 (A. Kijazi, Pers.

comm., September 2009). It is possible that the objections to the compensation sums were part of the discursive resistance, but interviewees in the villages claimed not to have been aware of the opportunity or the procedures to file formal complaints.

Although the farmers’ follow up committee was considered a legitimate representative of the majority of the survey respondents who were aware of it – most female interviewees were not, cf. Table 8 – the trust eroded among some people due to the inability of the committee to influence and speed up the process. This was probably fuelled by the general frustration of people with the process, growing distrust of the authorities’ willingness or capabilities to finalize the payments, and disappointment over the amount of compensation when it was finally received. Misunderstandings contributed to the confusion, when the flow of information to most of the affected relied on sporadic encounters between the conservation implementers and village leaders. It gave some actors space to manipulate the situation to their advantage, and whether deliberate or not, varying interpretations of what had been agreed, or not, were presented. Especially women, whose access to village assemblies is restricted particularly in the case of remote subvillages such as Makanya (cf. Table 8), often relied on second-hand information and rumours concerning the conservation and compensation process.

The actors behind the conservation intervention – EUCAMP officials, government forest officers and the World Bank project staff in the last phase – may have similarly operated amidst uncertainty and with restricted knowledge. Indications of unpreparedness and unclear locus of responsibility over the intervention that was started by a foreign-funded development project, with subsequent discontinuities in the involvement of the implementing actors, may be observed throughout the process. They are evident especially in the actions of EUCAMP (cf. Pohjonen 2002, Sjöholm et al. 2001), but it is unclear why the departures from the applicable legal and policy provisions were maintained even after comprehensive studies by consultants in preparation for the World Bank funding, or why the bureaucratic complications

in the land allocation in the lowlands were not better prepared for, even if anticipated (cf.

URT 2006: 24-25).

4.3. Community-Based Forest Management: re-allocation of forest rights and