The landsafe socioecological development model for the customary commons of Zambia : evolution and formalization

Abstract

Zambia is either customary land (94%) under some measure of control by chiefs and headmen, or state land (6%), comprising protected areas and land held under 99-year leasehold. Protected areas and their resources are prone to alienation by the state for mining, forestry, fisheries and wildlife exploitation. Customary land comprises villages and their surrounding agricultural land, the remainder being the customary commons that is harvested and plundered for its natural resources by residents, non-residents and criminals. It is also subject to alienation to leasehold by chiefs and government officials, and appropriated by the state for agriculture and agribusiness, forestry, fisheries, mining, tourism, wildlife conservation and game harvesting. Customary area residents with significant wildlife populations are 30% poorer than those living elsewhere. Customary residents have no ownership or harvesting rights to game animals. To counteract the open-access harvesting and plunder of customary land and the protected land associated with it, it is proposed that statutory trusts be established by customary communities, that customary land be vested in them, and that they enter into co-management custodial and harvesting agreements with the state in respect to fisheries, forestry, water and wildlife. Between 2003 and 2011, the author attempted to implement his model, called Landsafe, in two adjoining chiefdoms in the Luangwa Valley. This article proposes that the successful implementation of Landsafe would assure customary residents secure access to land and lasting benefits from renewable natural resources, essential to biodiversity conservation and to the socioecological and cultural integrity of Zambia.