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• A fuller transfer of decision-making responsibilities to the communities would have enhancedimpact.Background Information:Forests in Tanzania were historically managed by the Forest and Beekeeping Division of the Ministryof Natural Resources and Tourism. This was a centralized management approach with state controland no involvement of local communities. In it, available managerial resources were too thinly spreadto resist pressures on the forests from illegal exploitation driven by denser populations of people. Thus,forests have been steadily reduced and degraded by settlement and farming, commercial charcoal andfuel wood production, overgrazing, uncontrolled fires, shifting cultivation and illegal logging.The result was that forest cover in Tanzania was more than 50 percent in the mid 1960s, 45 percent inthe late 1970s and about 38 percent in the late 1990s. Local deforestation rates were often far higherthan the national figures suggest – between 1991 and 2003, for example, there was an annual rate offorest loss of 4 percent in the area surrounding Gombe National Park in the Kigoma region of westernTanzania.In 1985, international concern over the rate of tropical deforestation led to the formation of the TropicalForestry Action Programme (TFAP). This led to a project in Tanzania in 1992-1999 that aimed tostrengthen national institutions responsible for forests and lands, to improve their policies, and tostrengthen local forestry services in the Mwanza and Tabora regions of the north-west and north-centreof the country. Forest cover was mapped, policy studies were undertaken, and the technical competenceof the forestry department was improved, particularly with respect to the monitoring of royaltycollection. The first three community-owned and community-managed forest reserves were establishedin September 1994.Implementation Partners:Government of Tanzania28 MDG Good Practices