Since the adoption of a new Constitution in 1990 and the signing of the peace accord in 1992, Mozambique has witnessed a period of rapid regulatory change in respect to the rules that govern the ownership and rights of use of a range of natural resources.
In recent years, local people and rural communities have assumed increasing prominence in strategies for natural resource management.This paper briefly reviews some of the central legal issues that are associated with this shift. In doing so, its goals are limited. It does not ad dress fundamental questions about when, where and what kind of management works, nor attempt to identify the political, social, economic and environmental ingredient s for success – subjects on which there is a huge, if still inconclusive, literature.
Second issue of the Journal, which is now published in both hardcopy and in electronic formats and provides an open, impartial and practice-oriented global forum for promoting the latest knowledge in land tenure. This issue features five continents and subcontinents exploring common challenges including tenure governance, the legal recognition of customary tenures, land scarcity and redistributive reforms, and the increasing role of information technology in tenure systems.
This paper represents part of an area of work which analyses access to natural resources in Mozambique. An initial paper examined the extent to which Mozambique’s recent regulatory changes to natural resource access and management have had their intended effects (LSP Working Paper 17: Norfolk, S. (2004). “Examining access to natural resources and linkages to sustainable livelihoods: a case study of Mozambique”). This paper is complemented by LSP Working Paper 28: Tanner et al. (2006).
The damage caused by illegal activities and corrupt practices in the world’s forests is a problem of enormous proportions. In many parts of the world, forest exploitation is dominated by rampant illegal harvesting, large-scale violation of trade regulations both domestically and internationally, fraudulent practices abetted or condoned by government officials and other destructive activities in violation of applicable laws. This paper is concerned with one facet of this complex problem–how important is legislation in the fight against destructive and corrupt forestry practices?
Section 1 will examine current debates around poverty, vulnerability and livelihood issues related to access to natural resources. Section 2 will describe the main features of the sustainable livelihoods approaches and relate them to current thinking about access to natural resources. Section 3 will describe and categorise the different types of problems and opportunities that the rural poor face with respect to access to natural resources.
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