Managing the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa - PROFOR

BOX 1.1. POVERTY TRAPS AND THE MIOMBO REGION
Over the past 20 years, around 80 percent of the world’s poorest people have become better off. This is
an enormous advancement, driven by broad-based growth. But the other 20 percent—almost a billion
people, 70 percent of whom are in Africa—live in countries that are economically stagnating or otherwise
stuck in various poverty traps. Paul Collier (2007), in his book The Bottom Billion, describes four traps that
inhibit growth in these countries: a legacy of conflict, the curse of natural resources, poor governance in
a small country, and the problem of being landlocked in a bad neighborhood.
At the macro level, most of these traps affect several countries in the miombo region. Angola,
Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are all emerging from a period of long conflict.
All countries in the miombo region suffer from poor governance, falling in the bottom half of Transparency
International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index. Zimbabwe has been particularly problematic in recent
years, with repercussions on poverty status and miombo management. The country has seen a high
level of unregulated land clearance and a large increase in the use of fuelwood in response to problems
with electricity supply and prices. The DRC and Angola suffer, to some extent, from the curse of natural
resources with their timber and mineral wealth, with Zimbabwe also playing a role in resource extraction
in the DRC (which fueled its military presence in the DRC). Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are all landlocked
(albeit in a “mixed income” neighborhood, given the presence of South Africa).
At the micro level in the miombo region, each of these poverty traps plays out in particular ways. For
example, when good markets develop for miombo products (the so-called “natural resource trap”), one of
several things often happens. Elites may capture the resource and either over-exploit it or keep the benefi ts
themselves, rather than equitably sharing returns from miombo management with their communities. Wild
resources may be domesticated so that supplies become easily available and outstrip demand, and markets
collapse. Also, nascent local democratic institutions that have been tapped to help develop strategies for
better managing miombo are often undermined when good markets for miombo products develop.
Many communities in miombo regions are “landlocked” to the extent that poor physical and transportation
infrastructure make it diffi cult to tap into external markets for miombo products (when these exist). Even
when there are good markets for miombo products (such as firewood and charcoal), the widespread
participation of the poor in these markets may be only a symptom of the fact that they are locked into
cycles of poverty, and provide products for these markets only because they are important safety nets,
rather than genuine pathways out of poverty. The fact is, the poor don’t get rich from selling firewood.
While conflict itself has had profoundly positive impacts on miombo ecology in some countries where
woodlands have been heavily mined (such as in Angola and Mozambique), other forms of local conflict
pose huge challenges for improving local management. Layers of customary tenure and rights of use, and
access to miombo resources often compete with contemporary regulatory systems. The poor may lose to
those best able to “game” the system to their own advantage. Project-level donor resources sometimes
create confusion over which assets are most valuable: natural resources or donor-financed benefi ts.
Conflict over rights to use and access miombo resources—whether these are grazing resources, tree
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Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION
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