Encroachment in National Forests: Challenges and Possibilities
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Loading... - Grace Nyakio
- 17 May 2022
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Over time, Zambia’s national forest reserves have undergone tremendous changes as a result of encroachment coupled with the impacts of climate change. Since time immemorial, people have always illegally settled in national forest reserves and as they do so, they are referred to as illegal settlers and the illegal activity is known as forest encroachment. People encroach in national forest reserves for various reasons which include establishment of settlements, farming and charcoal production and most important, to improve livelihoods through the collection and sale of non-wood forests products. However, the main driver of all this is simply poverty. Encroachment in the national forest reserves of the country has highly contributed to deforestation while impeding on the sole purpose of protected forest areas.
National forest reserves were created to protect tree species, water sources and produce forest resources. The Forest Act No. 4 of 2015 clearly provides that ‘All the land comprised in a National Forest shall be used for (a) the protection of forest resources of national importance; (b) the conservation of ecosystems and biological diversity and sustainable utilization of forest resources; (d) and the management of water catchments areas and head waters. Therefore, the purpose of national forests is twofold, in an ideal situation, national forests were created for the production and protection of trees as well as the environment, any other function exceeding the above mentioned is regarded as an offence. A realistic situation on the ground is however saddening.
All national forests across the country have been encroached to some extent. People have illegally shared the portions of land within forest reserves, built houses and created farms. Most of illegal settlers have been living in these protected areas for a long time and they believe its theirs as it is home. The question is how did the situation get there?
The truth of the matter is that forest encroachment is so high in the country and no one seems to bother or question it. As long as nothing is being done to stop and reverse encroachment in national forests, the situation shall reach a point of no return. It shall be very difficult for government to evict people who have encroached in national forests. These people have created families and villages and have become well connected such that the current forest law is weak to make them move out of the protected areas. Some of the illegal settlers were born there and the encroached areas have become their home they know. Now, the situation has dovetailed from being an environmental issue to a more complex and complicated social problem. Its little about trees but human lives.
By law, all the illegal settlers who have encroached the protected forests need to be displaced but inasmuch as I am concerned, government has no available alternatives to their livelihoods. Further, government has no resettlement plan for these illegal settlers. And since there is no resettlement plan, there is no way these people will tend to move out of the protected forests. Currently, the Forest Department has no capacity to move these illegal settlers from encroached areas. You might be wondering why I have said so? Here are some issues;
In the first place, Forest Department under the Ministry of Green Economy is faced with so many crosscutting challenges than any other departments in any government ministry. The Forest Department has for a very long time been faced with too many challenges to the extent where it even fails to execute its basic duties of enforcing the forest law offenders especially the illegal settlers. For example, thedepartment does not have a legal affairs office. I am talking about the department which is present in all the districts country wide and mandated to arrest and take to courts of law the offenders of forest law. It is very sad that there is no office to deal with issues of legal matters pertaining to forest law in the department. This means that the department does not have capacity to handle cases in courts of law against the offenders of the forest law. Other than this, there is no advice regarding legal matters within the department so, most of the legal issues especially encroachment issues go unresolved. There is need for serious reforms for legal matters of the department.
Secondly, the successive governments which have passed from the MMD era to the PF administration did not show any political will to uplift the operations of the Forest Department in order to safe guard national forests. I can only hope that the UPND government shall be able to see this gap and come to realization of how former governments underrated Forest Department and see it become incapacitated. Read More...
