HASHI’s empowering approach was unusual among 1980s rural development programs, but critical to its success. Promoting ngitili as the vehicle for land restoration increased local people’s ownership over natural resources and their capacity and will to manage them. Likewise, allowing traditional Sukuma institutions and village governments to oversee restoration efforts helped to ensure their region-wide success. While elected village governments officially manage communal ngitili, and also decide disputes regarding individually owned ngitili, in practice traditional institutions have played an equally important role in most villages (Kaale et al. 2003:14-16; Monela et al. 2004:98).
For example, while each village sets its own rules on ngitili restoration and management, most use traditional community guards known as Sungusungu and community assemblies known as Dagashida to enforce them. The Dagashida is led by the Council of Elders which decides what sanctions to impose on individuals caught breaking ngitili management rules, for example by grazing livestock on land set aside for regeneration (Monela et al. 2004:98-99).
HASHI field officers have worked to build the capacity and effectiveness of both official and traditional governance institutions. Elected village governments, for example, are increasingly using their powers to approve by-laws that legally enshrine the conservation of local ngitili. Such by-laws, once ratified at the district level, are recognized as legitimate by the national government (Barrow and Mlenge 2003:9, Barrow 2005c).
A 2003 study funded by the World Conservation Union concluded that this twin-track approach had paid off. “Traditional groupings, such as Dagashida and Sungusungu have complemented, rather than conflicted with village government. The blending of the traditional and modern has clearly been an important factor in the success of the restoration” (Kaale et al. 2003:21).
Despite popular support, however, decisions over where to situate ngitili and what rules should govern them are not always democratic. While many communities establish communal enclosures through the village assembly—in which every registered adult can vote—others are chosen arbitrarily by village governments without public consultation (Monela et al. 2004:8). “There is no single way of establishing ngitili and some are more democratic than others,” explains Professor Gerald Monela of the Department of Forest Economics at Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture. In general, he says, devolution of decision-making to village institutions has clearly increased local responsibility for natural resource management and promoted the success of ngitili conservation in Shinyanga (Monela 2005).
This success has not been lost on Tanzania’s other regions, two of which, Mwanza and Tabora, are now adapting and replicating HASHI’s empowerment methods (Barrow and Mlenge 2004:2).
