The Politics of Deforestation in Africa

This study examines the workings of three African political systems, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda, with special focus on how decision-making power is negotiated and exercised at two principal levels: the local, where communities make decisions regarding forests on a daily basis, and the national, where environmental policies are negotiated and enacted. Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda are good cases to examine the political economy of forest conservation because these three countries’ forest policy efforts have benefitted from foreign donors’ support largely due to their exceptional biodiversity. Additionally, despite strong support for forest conservation, all three countries have had variable success with forest despite foreign assistance. The book’s central claim is that deforestation persists in Africa because conservation policies and projects consistently ignore the fact that conservation is possible only under limited, specific conditions. These conditions relate to the concurrent alignment of key actors’ interests at two critical levels of decision-making: local and national. The book further argues that conservation policies are predicated upon unexamined assumptions relating to (1) the power of rules over resources users’ behavior, (2) the impact of forest assistance on conservation policies and practices, and (3) the symbiotic relationship that binds actors from the national and local levels of decision-making.

This chapter scrutinizes the first assumption guiding conservation policies, namely that state-sanctioned rules deter deforestation at the local level. It examines whether states are capable of creating institutions powerful enough to constrain resource users’ behavior at the local level. It further asks what rules, other than formal ones, apply at the local level. The chapter addresses these questions by examining how rules-in-use, or rules as applied, emerge and how they affect forest users’ compliance choices and forest conditions at the local level. Through a detailed analysis of rules-in-use and compliance choices across rural communities of Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda, the chapter shows that where interests converge toward forest protection, the rules devised to restrict forest access raise the prospect of conservation significantly. Where and when interests converge toward exploiting forests, however, no rules can effectively contain deforestation. Conversely, when actors’ interests diverge (e.g., the state opts for conservation while private actors opt for exploitation or vice versa) conservation is possible only where those who enforce forest rules have the capacity to make such rules “stick.”

This chapter explores how environmental policies are negotiated, enacted, and executed in the three African contexts. In so doing, it questions the validity of the second most widespread assumption that foreign aid encourages conservation at the national level. The chapter highlights the central role that foreign aid plays in the making of development policies, some more conservation-friendly than others. It also underscores the executive branch’s predominance and foreign donors’ role in environmental policymaking. At the national level, where the primary actors driving environmental policy are African governments, dominated by the executive office, and foreign donors who use aid to sway governments’ development policies, donors’ ability to persuade African governments to commit to conservation-friendly development policies rests on a specific and limited condition: The executive’s and foreign interests must align and be consistent with conservation norms. When this is the case, institutional investments, manifest in institutional proliferation, raise the prospect of forest conservation considerably. When interests do not align, however, institutional proliferation reflects not so much conservation commitments on the part of African leaders as it does their eagerness to convert foreign aid into patronage opportunities that serve them politically. This reality explains the gap between institutional investments and environmental outcomes.

This chapter addresses the third myth driving conservation politics in Africa, namely that the local and national levels work in a symbiotic fashion whereby conservation outcomes at the local level drive decisions at the national level, and vice versa. Further, this imagined symbiotic relationship is assumed to be conducive to conservation. In reality, these two levels of environmental politics work in tandem, connecting only sporadically. More commonly observed is a chronic disconnect between the two levels of environmental decision-making. By looking at concrete attempts to connect these two levels across Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda, it becomes clear that far from facilitating interest alignment, this disconnect hinders it. As a result, decentralized forest management has scarcely been achieved, as evidenced by the high number of failed community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects.

This final chapter revisits the book’s main question: Why does deforestation continue given substantial efforts invested in curbing the problem in Africa? The chapter highlights the study’s findings by identifying common trends, opportunities and constraints across the three African political systems. It also highlights variations in the ways conservation politics are played out across the three countries. Based on lessons learned at both local and national levels, the chapter presents policy recommendations to better connect actors across decision-making levels, on the one hand, and make more effective use of existing institutions and resources on the other.