Drivers Of Land Use Change In Africa
Drivers Of Land Use Change In Africa Free
. 918 Downloads.AbstractThis paper examines the socio-economic drivers of land use and land cover change and assesses the impacts of such changes to rural livelihoods in the Zambezi region of northern Namibia.
We carried out a longitudinal analysis of Landsat imagery of land use and land cover. The analysis revealed that the amount of land in the region covered by forest increased significantly in the period from 1991 to 2010 whilst crop/grass land decreased. Focus group meetings, key informant interviews and semi-structured interviews covering 424 households stratified by gender were used. The results show that natural resource uses are vitally important in the rural livelihoods. The drivers of land use and land cover change are agricultural expansion, population increase and illegal logging. Livelihood coping strategies include piecework, food aid, borrowing from relatives and wild food collection.
By gender stratification, piecework contributed 37 and 63% while agriculture contributed 29 and 71% of the income of male- and female-headed households. Logistic regression analysis showed knowledge of regulations, age group and species availability significantly ( p.
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AcknowledgmentsThanks are due to the communities of Kongola and Sibbinda constituencies in the Zambezi region for sharing their livelihood experiences with us. This research was supported by the University of Pretoria and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry in Namibia.
We are also grateful for the financial support from the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL). Last but not the least, we would like to express our appreciation to the Forestry extension officers in the Zambezi region and all organisations and individuals who provided the necessary support and secondary data. This research complies with the current laws of the Republic of Namibia.