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Office and Regional Administration and Local Government 2008). A village mighthave additional committees for services such as education, health, environment andforest protection. Other institutions on village level can include informal andtraditional organizations and a village party branch (Mniwasa and Shauri 2001). Theruling party CCM, which previously dominated the local government system, now hasstructures parallel to the current local government and is not supposed toautomatically be part of local government, however, as claimed by Nathan “partyrepresentatives are in reality still born members of the district council” (Nathan, Lundet al. 2007, p.6.). Now having described the LGAs structure and establishedauthorities with the overall management responsibilities in Tanzanian rural areas, wewill move onto the specifics of forest management within rural areas. However, asforest management also have to be viewed together with overall land management wewill start with the land tenure system.5.4.4 Land Tenure and ManagementAlso having a great impact on natural resource and forest management is the NationalLand Policy of 1995, and the following 1999 Land Act No.4, and 1999 Village LandAct No.5. As natural resource management depends on land tenure and the allocationof specific use rights, secure and clear land tenure is essential for sustainableutilization of land resources. The Land Acts together with the National Land Policy(NLP) set out to establish this, and as stated by the NLP, they intend to “promote andensure wise use of land, guide allocations, prevent degradation and resolve conflicts”.The two land acts recognize three different land categories and are placed underdifferent management authorities in each. In reality though, all land still belongs tothe State and the President which holds the land in trust of its citizens. However, hehas handed over the power to the Commissioner of Lands to delegate and modify landtenure status. As a result District and Village Councils have been handed much of theformal management responsibilities. This has been done in an attempt to formalizeand legalize traditional and customary land tenure arrangements (Akida and Blomley2007). The three land categories are as follows:Reserved Land includes among other forest reserves and national parks, i.e. allland which is set aside by the central government for conservation purposes.103