Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative (MCDI)1 has been supporting PFM in Kilwa district, southeastern Tanzania, since 2004. MCDI focuses on sustainable management of high-value hardwood timbers in the miombo woodlands on communal village lands in Kilwa district. The NGO’s name comes from its flagship species, East African Blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon or mpingo), which is used in Europe and North America to make musical instruments. Reductions in carbon emissions are generated through community-based fire management that prevents and potentially reverses forest degradation.

15.1 Basic facts: Where, who, why and when

15.1.1 Geography

MCDI works in Kilwa, the most northerly district in the Lindi region. Kilwa district has an estimated 36,549 households, of which 85% live in rural areas (DADPS 2009). Fishing and subsistence agriculture are the main economic activities, absorbing more than 80% of the labor force. The average annual per capita income is estimated at USD 106 (TZS 150,000)2 (DADPS 2009; MACEMP 2009). Fishing is both an important economic activity and the main source of protein in the area. The three crops produced in largest volume are cashew nuts (302,445 kg of production in 2005/06), sesame (315,684 kg in 2005/06) and coconuts (92,800 kg in 2005/06), while maize, sorghum, cassava, rice, sweet potatoes and cowpeas are the main food crops. Other crops grown include pulses, mangoes, citrus and vegetables.

The average annual precipitation in Kilwa was approximately 929 mm from 1998 to 2012 (TRMM 2014), and the vegetation is mostly miombo woodland with patches of East African coastal forest. In recent years, logging and grazing have both increased due to two factors: (i) improvement of the road that links Kilwa with Dar es Salaam (especially the completion of the Mkapa bridge over the Rufiji River in 2003), and (ii) relocation in 2006 of livestock keepers from the Ihefu Wetland in Mbeya to Lindi.

The intervention area for this REDD+ initiative covers 103,819 ha of village forest reserves (VFRs) and 396,236 ha of other village land in 10 villages with a total population of 19,010 people (Figure 15.1). Villages (kijiji) are the smallest unit of administration in Tanzania, falling under the local district council. Village governments are the primary decision makers over land use within their village boundaries.

15.1.2 Stakeholders and funding

MCDI is an NGO working in collaboration with government authorities and communities to reduce poverty through PFM and other forest-related projects in Kilwa district. Founded in 2004, MCDI’s work currently falls into two thematic areas: (i) timber and forest certification, and (ii) REDD+, with PFM and community benefit-sharing underlying both. In both thematic areas, MCDI works with a variety of different partners, as listed in Table 15.1. In addition, the village governments manage VFRs and implement village by-laws for forest management, as approved by the district council.

In December 2009, MCDI was awarded a start-up grant of USD 1.95 million from the RNE in Tanzania to develop an initiative combining certification of sustainable PFM under FSC, with access to the carbon markets through REDD+. The initial goal was to catalyze the expansion of PFM across the miombo woodlands of Kilwa (MCDI 2010), but revenue from certified timber was not sufficient to cover the full costs of expanding PFM and the declining international price of carbon led to significant doubts that REDD+ revenues would be sufficient to pay for it. Thus, MCDI now views timber and carbon as complementary revenue streams for community forestry that together, can secure the long-term future of the forests.

Tanzania’s forest policy enables village councils to establish VFRs. VFRs formalize local rights to manage and benefit from forests on community lands. MCDI has developed a VCS methodology for quantifying carbon savings from community-based fire management in VFRs and plans to sell carbon offset credits in the voluntary market. (Because the carbon savings are from fire management, additionality would not be undermined by an increase in timber revenues.) The initiative also aims to get certification from CCBA to demonstrate the quality of its offsets.

15.1.3 Motivation

MCDI started conservation work in Kilwa in 2004, seeking to raise awareness about forest values and sustainable forest management. Kilwa was selected because of the high rates of loss of both miombo and coastal forest, and the opportunity to build on a bilateral Danish-funded PFM project that was phasing out. By 2010, MCDI had achieved FSC certification of 20,000 ha, and the participating communities were earning revenues from sales of certified sustainably managed timber. This generated interest from other communities, leading to the expansion of certification to a total of 100,000 ha by 2014.

MCDI’s involvement in REDD+ was opportunity-led, in response to RNE’s call for proposals for funding from their REDD+ fund. Their initial application focused on three key drivers of deforestation and degradation: agriculture, charcoal production and timber harvesting, by both local households and external actors. Specifically, they conceived a sustainable charcoal initiative to be subsidized by carbon offset sales. After launching the initiative, MCDI assessed these drivers of deforestation and estimated that both timber and charcoal extraction had far lower impacts on carbon stocks than previously assumed, although losses from charcoal are expected to increase substantially in the coming years. Swidden agriculture and agricultural expansion are significant drivers of deforestation in Kilwa district, but tackling them would not have fitted well with MCDI’s approach to working with communities on timber management. MCDI helps communities improve management of forests that are not suitable for other uses, specifically on lands that are not suitable for farming. Because these forests are not imminently threatened with agricultural conversion, MCDI’s interventions cannot be expected to reduce forest loss due to agriculture. However, MCDI did identify another major driver of forest carbon losses: frequent uncontrolled bushfires. Thus, they worked with their partners to redesign the initiative around improved fire management.

15.1.4 Timeline

The Mpingo REDD+ initiative started in November 2009, when MCDI signed a funding agreement with the RNE. Figure 15.2 lists key events both prior to and following the launch of the initiative.

15.2 Strategy for the initiative

The initiative’s key goals are to promote sustainable forest management and support community development. Activities designed to achieve these goals include the establishment of village forest reserves and development of livelihood alternatives in the communities. The initiative seeks to reduce emissions from forest fires by preventive early burning (also known as prescribed burning) of the miombo woodlands, thus reducing fuel load and avoiding larger wildfires. These wildfires typically occur in the middle to late dry season, and they increase tree mortality and retard regeneration, thus leading to degradation of aboveground biomass carbon stocks.

These activities are expected to be financed through the sale of carbon credits, supplementing revenues from sustainably managed timber. In the VCS methodology developed by MCDI and the University of Edinburgh (UoE), aboveground biomass stocks are measured with satellite PALSAR data combined with field data providing ground reference points. Their analysis suggests that early burning could make a difference of between 0.1–0.5 tC/ha/year. This would be very difficult to detect against a baseline of 20–30 tC/ha using simple repeat monitoring on a yearly basis. For this reason, the project uses a model developed by UoE called GapFire to predict carbon gains. These predictions will be checked against updated biomass maps derived from analysis of new radar data once every ten years.

MCDI has developed an approach to benefit sharing that leverages the existing democratic structures of the villages in which it works. Revenues – either from selling timber or from future carbon sales – are split between the village natural resources committee (VNRC), which is responsible for managing the forest and implementing the early burning, and the village council, according to a fixed formula chosen by the village and written into the management plan. The VNRC portion covers management costs, while the rest is profit that can be spent on various village development activities as voted for by the villagers and overseen by the village council. Under PFM, villages voluntarily give the district council (local government authority) a 5%–15% share of their revenues from timber sales, but it is not clear if this will also apply to revenues from REDD+.

Although MCDI is the only intervention focused on forest management, Kilwa district has simultaneously received other external development support, including for infrastructure, education, agriculture and public health from both the national government and international donors. When MCDI began, there was concern about land purchases and planned biofuel production by a company called Bioshape that has since gone bankrupt. This generated resentment in local people of investors who were seeking to acquire land for bioenergy development.

15.3 Smallholders in the initiative

The initiative is implementing REDD+ in ten villages, of which four were surveyed by CIFOR. Table 15.2 summarizes the key characteristics of these villages. REDD+ activities are coordinated by a village government authority, which includes the chairman of the village, village executive officers and members of the village council. FPIC must be granted by the village government before REDD+ can be implemented. By its definition, PFM also requires the active participation of the local community. Under the Forestry Act of 2002, responsibility for managing the VFR is delegated to the VNRC, which is elected by the village general assembly. Therefore, the quality of governance within the VNRC is critical to the success of PFM.

Members of the village government are elected, with the exception of the village executive officer who is employed by the district council. In most cases, the village council is formed by 25 members of which, by law, a minimum of 30% must be women. However, the degree to which women effectively participate in decision making varies substantially across communities, as reported in our women’s meetings. Overall, KILW3 and KILW4 had a higher level of women’s participation in decision making at all levels (village, forest management and household levels) compared to the other villages, although women in KILW4 reported less influence on decisions at the village level. In the other two villages, women did not participate in forest monitoring, and in KILW2, women did not actively participate in making forest rules and regulations.

In three (KILW1, KILW2 and KILW4) out of four of CIFOR-GCS’s study villages, it was reported that maize is the main agricultural commodity and that it has grown in importance in recent years due to higher prices. In village meetings, there was consensus that sesame is also becoming more important, while timber, sorghum and guava have generally become less important. Several reasons were cited for the decline in sawn timber as an income source, including increases in costs and depletion of valuable tree species due to demand from outside the village. Lack of livelihood opportunities was reported as the most common reason why people had left the village in the two years prior to our survey in 2010.

The villages in the initiative area are highly forest dependent, with men typically collecting building materials (e.g. poles and thatches) and women collecting fuelwood, medicinal plants and wild fruits. While village respondents indicated that nearly all households harvest NTFPs including fuelwood, only a few households (< 20%) harvest timber (see Table 15.3). According to village respondents, forest cover had remained stable in two villages but declined in two others, at least partly due to increases in permanent and swidden agriculture.

15.4 Challenges facing the initiative

MCDI has developed a framework for integrating REDD+ investments with existing forest governance, land tenure and local governance institutions. At the village level, the operational framework for REDD+ is therefore the same as the current governance structure for PFM. The initiative thus provides a model of how to integrate REDD+ with local governance institutions, land management systems and existing forms of forest management. However, for PFM to succeed in the long term, sufficient incentives need to be in place and real benefits need to flow to participating communities, or else they will lose interest and forest integrity will not be maintained.

Sale of carbon offsets is potentially one way to address this challenge – if it generates enough revenue. This depends on the price, which in turn depends on international demand. It also depends on the quantity of offsets generated, which is limited by the small carbon stocks in the miombo woodland and coastal forest biomes. Finally, revenues must be sufficient to compensate for the transaction costs of the intervention, which have turned out to be high in the case of PFM. These challenges led MCDI to design interventions that would generate other sources of revenue, such as sale of certified timber. Timber revenues are expected to eventually surpass carbon revenues.

Currently, one of the greatest challenges facing the initiative is recruiting enough human resources and adapting methods for local implementation. MCDI has a good track record of taking advanced forest management techniques and adapting them for use in community forestry. However, some of the science around impacts of fire on miombo woodlands is cutting edge, and MCDI staff and collaborating researchers have had to experiment to determine the best approach. As the design phase comes to an end, MCDI and its partners need to document in simple language how the interventions work, and how data collected by field workers relates to carbon offsets that can be sold.

The proponent organization perceives tenure as one of its key challenges. Although village boundaries in the intervention area have been surveyed by the Ministry of Lands, some are still under dispute. By introducing the potential to earn rents from resources located within those boundaries, PFM and REDD+ can exacerbate boundary disputes. Thus the initiative requires continued support from government bodies (especially the Kilwa District Council Land Office) to resolve tenure conflicts. Further, the communities are still working on getting village land certificates as the legal basis for PFM, although they generally consider their land tenure to be secure.

Perhaps more important, the lack of clarity and uncertainty about how carbon revenues will be generated and shared tends to demoralize communities who would otherwise be interested in participating. Partly because its approach is genuinely new, MCDI cannot be specific about expected revenues until the early burning has been completed and the first offsets have been sold.

15.5 Lessons from the initiative

MCDI is pioneering an approach that enables local communities to earn a living by conserving and managing their forests. This includes a new method for inventorying timber stocks that is participatory, efficient and scientifically robust. MCDI is recognized as one of the leading implementers of PFM in Tanzania; it was awarded the first certificate by FSC for community-managed natural forest in the African continent in March 2009, and carried out the first commercial timber harvest from a PFM forest in Tanzania in September 2009. It hopes to identify and access a niche market prepared to pay a significant premium for products made from timber that is demonstrably legal, sustainably produced and fairly traded. However, up to now timber revenues have been below expectations and thus the initiative is counting on carbon revenues as a complementary source of revenue, generated from complementary actions to manage wildfires, thereby protecting both carbon and timber stocks.

MCDI is the only initiative of its kind to combine PFM, FSC and REDD+ and as such, offers an important example for other REDD+ initiatives. Unless and until the price of carbon rises substantially, many of these initiatives will struggle to finance all of their costs from the sale of carbon offsets. Indeed some experts predict that a flood of forest carbon offsets arriving on the market in the next few years will further depress prices. MCDI is viable even at low carbon prices because carbon is a complementary revenue stream to other forest income sources such as FSC-certified timber. Other REDD+ initiatives could emulate this approach by exploring potential markets for a range of forest products and services, designing their forest management programs as holistically as possible, and diversifying revenue sources wherever possible.

15.6 Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the leaders, district officials and communities of Kilwa for their cordiality and for sharing their time, knowledge and perceptions; thanks to MCDI’s team for sharing their REDD+ initiative information with us. We could not have completed the fieldwork without the assistance of Julius Edward and Christina Justine, and the stakeholders who were interviewed about the initiative.