Abstract:
Southern Mozambique has experienced changes in land-use and land-cover over the
last 45 years. South Central Chibuto is a dynamic environmental change ‘hotspot’ of
this region, and because of the socio-economic development that is taking place it is
unveiling a number of land-use changes in Mozambique. In this research,
environmental changes in the region are shown to be a function of various socioeconomic
and biophysical drivers of change. A variety of research methods including
interpretation of aerial photographs and satellite images, analysis of archival material,
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and structured interviews, have been used to
derive some of the drivers of environmental change. These drivers of change include
socio-economic factors, the colonial dual economy and the increase in cash crop
production that led to negative impacts on some lands in the steep slopes of the
ancient dunes, the post-independence policy of nucleation of settlements that has
induced extensive conversions of land use together with the war and the recent shifts
into a market economy that have led to further intensification of land use. The
biophysical drivers include, among others but not limited to, fluctuations in rainfall,
with periods of alternating dry and wet spells shaping land-use change, as well as
single shock events, such as extreme droughts and floods. New factors, including the
HIV/AIDS pandemic and globalization have been identified as having an impact on
the livelihoods in the study area. A valuable, local-scale case or place-based case
study approach is shown to enable a detailed and rich analysis of the complex
trajectory of environmental change. Finally, lessons drawn from this study are shown
to have the potential to inform policies for sustainable livelihoods in Mozambique.
