Abstract:
This thesis is about the relationship between planned resettlement, livelihoods and
environmental resources in Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwean resettlement areas, assets such
as human and physical capital, social networks and financial resources are often
clearly insufficient to adequately provide inputs for the sustainable productive and
extractive systems that are required to drive the rural economy. Due to uncertainties
related to agricultural production doubts have been expressed about the benefits of
state sponsored resettlement. Currently, debate is raging on whether land resettlement
in Zimbabwe has yielded the intended benefits among land reform beneficiaries, with
some scholars even questioning whether state sponsored resettlement is not merely an
expensive way of reproducing the livelihoods of communal lands.
This thesis contributes to the ongoing debate about the link between rural livelihoods
and land resettlement, using the case of Mufurudzi resettlement scheme in Zimbabwe.
Based on a livelihood framework, the thesis argues that in order to fully understand
the relationship between land reform and livelihoods, livelihood trajectories have to
be examined. In line with this thinking the thesis presents a number of arguments.
First, the thesis argues that there are many theoretical frameworks for analyzing the
relationship between people, resettlement and environmental resources such as forests
and woodlands and the sustainable livelihood framework is just one of them.
Second, resettlement does not necessarily always lead to environmental destruction.
Instead resettlement provides the mechanism for unlocking the natural capital that
local communities require for survival. Forest and woodland resources are one such
form of natural capital. Under these circumstances access to natural capital,
particularly in the form of forest and woodland resources, becomes the cornerstone of
survival, notwithstanding the role that these resources play in supplying daily
livelihood requirements such as food, shelter, fuel, medicines and other needs, in a
harsh macro-economic environment. Apart from providing important products, forest
and woodland resources also provide a mechanism through which land reform
beneficiary communities can diversify their livelihoods. The key finding of this
research is that despite their continual use during the past 25 years no wholesale degradation has occurred to the forest and woodland resources in Mufurudzi. Informal
CBNRM is responsible for this situation.
