The case of six state forests in western Zimbabwe
3.2: RESEARCH MATERIALS AND METHODS
3.2.4: Data collection and analysis
This paper is based on the synthesis of data from the following sources: archival research of grey literature from Forestry commission records, policy framework reports and management plans that were available at the study forests’ administration offices and Chesa Forest Research Station in the city of Bulawayo; contemporary studies (journals, books, book chapters, internet websites and other documents) about environmental and forest governance in general and Zimbabwe’s indigenous forest sector in particular and key informant interviews.
There is a serious dearth of data on Zimbabwe’s indigenous forests and their rate of change for rational conservation decision making (Temu, 1993). The study therefore resorted to key informant interviews that provided mainly perception-based measures of governance quality and forest condition. Cook et al. (2014) measured the accuracy of protected area officials’
knowledge of vegetation condition within protected areas relative to an empirical vegetation measurement tool and found that most officials’ assessments matched the empirical condition measurements. They also found no relationship between the accuracy of officials’ vegetation condition knowledge and their level of experience, education or their gender. Information derived from personal judgements was therefore adjudged to be relevant and reliable and therefore a cost effective substitute for empirical data for this study. The forestry officials that
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were interviewed were Matabeleland North Forestry Provincial Officers, district conservators and foresters as well as retired former forestry officials. These are or were once responsible for addressing a wide range of governance issues and are most familiar with on-ground conditions (Cook et al., 2014). For the Gwaai, Mbembesi and Gwampa group of forests, personal interviews were conducted with 3 Forestry Commission officials from each forest (district conservator, forester and a member of the forest protection unit). Fuller, Kazuma and Pandamasuie group is found in one district and therefore has one district conservator. This led to personal interviews with one conservator for the 3 forests and 2 other officials from each forest (forester and Forest Protection Unit member). At the provincial level 2 officials (The indigenous resources ecologist and chief conservator) were interviewed. Therefore a total of 18 forestry officials participated in the survey.
From the forests’ local communities, purposively selected key informants included the local traditional and political authorities such as chiefs and councillors as well as elderly local residents. From Jambezi, Mvutu, Shangani, Mbembesi, and Nkayi communal areas, 2 leaders (Chief and Councillor) and 2 elderly local residents (one male and one female) who had grown up in each community and were considered local experts in their villages were interviewed since we were interested in the long term perspective of governance principles application and forest condition changes. Chalmers and Fabricius (2007) established that in some African traditional societies, local ecological knowledge is unevenly spread and held by individuals rather than groups and therefore this study found it important to interview experts rather than randomly selected community members. The elderly members interviewed came from villages bordering study forest reserves and forest residents (for Gwaai, Mbembesi and Gwampa forests with in-situ inhabitants) that rely heavily on forest resources for their subsistence requirements. The interviews with local community members determined local communities’ involvement or lack of it in forest governance activities that indicated the principles that were being applied by state officials and the availability of subsistence forest resources to determine forest condition. The selected respondents allowed for in-depth discussions drawing from their knowledge and experiences in the forest sector. The multiple data sources enabled a comprehensive review of the evolution of forest governance arrangements and forest condition outcomes.
On forest condition, the forest officials (foresters, conservators and ecologists) and representatives of forest users (Local leaders and elderly ‘experts’) were asked to assess the status of forest condition using density of vegetation and species diversity as indicators on a four-point Likert scale (International Forest Resources and Institutions, 2008) (4-not at all degraded, 3-moderately degraded, 2-very degraded, 1-extremely degraded (Brown 2010) (Table 50
3.3). On the same scale, local leaders were asked to indicate the subsistence value of the forest by assessing the availability of non-timber forest products.
TABLE 3.3: A summary o f combined qualitative and quantitative scales used to estimate principles application, governance quality and forest condition
Governance principles application
Governance quality desirability
Forest condition
1 - Very low 7-13 Undesirable 1 - Extremely degraded
2 - Low 14-20 Moderately desirable 2 - Very degraded
3 - Moderate 21-27 Very desirable 3 - Moderately degraded
4 - High 5 - Very high
28-35 Extremely desirable 4 - Not at all degraded
In addition to data collected through key informant interviews, forest condition data per specific historical period was also determined using archival forest officers’ inventory reports, management plans and peer-reviewed articles that reported empirical data (information collected through a structured method that is reported in the study - Lund et al., 2010) on forest management and conservation impacts based on field vegetation measurements and assessments by forest managers and users. Therefore, data collected was validated through asking multiple individuals and using results of inventories carried out by foresters at specific historical periods as well as published empirical data.
Qualitative data collected through scholarly works, key informant interviews and archival document searches were in form of transcripts of interviews and discussions, written texts from published literature and Forestry Commission reports. These were analysed using mainly discourse thematic analysis methods and procedures according to the analytic plan that was developed in line with the research design. Taking into cognizance that discourses reside in open social systems (Hopf, 2004), the wide context in which various discourses occurred were considered during their analyses. The specific procedures followed included firstly going through the data sets to gain an overview of the data coverage. Then data were sorted according to the seven governance principles under study so that materials that belonged to the same principle were grouped together. This enabled the researchers to make judgements about the performance of the governing institutions for each principle per specific historical period. To make a summative judgement of the extent of application of each principle, combined qualitative and quantitative scales were used: ‘very low (1)’, ‘low (2)’, ‘moderate (3)’, ‘high (4)’, ‘very high (5)’ (Table 3.3). For each principle, the quantitative scores were aggregated to determine the desirability of the governance quality per each historical period. The governance quality
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desirability scores ranged from a minimum of 7 (if the application of each of the seven principles was ‘very low (1)’ at the forest level at a particular historical period) to 35 (if the application of each of the seven principles was ‘very high (5)’ at the forest level at a specific historical period) (Table 3.3).