Projekt

Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) are prominent in Southern Africa, and growing, because of their promise to restore the integrity of transnational ecosystems and alleviate poverty in local communities. Analyses of TFCAs tend to question their potential to socio-economically uplift local communities but rarely consider the effects of social and political dynamics on geo-biophysical properties and dynamics of ecosystems. To enhance the success of TFCAs a holistic analysis of socio-ecological couplings is needed. The project aim is to establish preconditions for successful implementation of TFCAs, using the Chimanimani TFCA in the Zimbabwe/Mozambique borderland as a case study. Its Afromontane ecosystem characterised by protected areas with endemic fauna and flora species, and Zimbabwe's only lowland tropical moist forest, exists adjacent other potentially competing land uses and livelihood strategies: agropastoralism, commercial timber plantations and artisanal gold mining. Accelerated stateled/spontaneous (re)settlement and slowing rural to urban migration, are recent phenomena. Within this milieu, conflict is likely with implications for natural resources, and livelihood management. Using surveys and participatory methodologies informed by a political ecology sensitive to material dynamics and mutlifunctionality in landscapes, the project seeks to explore linkages between the spatial-temporal, socio-economic and political dimensions of land-use in Chimanimani and identify (in)compatibilities between diverse land use types, and sociopolitical interests.

• Prof. Dr. Eva Schlecht

  Universität Göttingen
  Fakultät für Agrarwissenschaften
  Department für Nutztierwissenschaften
  Abteilung Tierhaltung in den Tropen und Subtropen
  Göttingen
  

• Steven Matema

  University of Zimbabwe
  Harare
  Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS)
  Harare
  Simbabwe (Zimbabwe)
  

• Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Schareika

  Universität Göttingen
  Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät
  Institut für Ethnologie
  Göttingen
  

• Prof. Dr. Andreas Bürkert

  Universität Kassel
  FB 11: Ökologische Agrarwissenschaften
  Fachgebiet Ökologischer Pflanzenbau und Agraröko-
  systemforschung in den Tropen und Subtropen
  Witzenhausen