The objective of the study was to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable forest management in southern Africa. The study employed a targeted approach, also referred to as purposive sampling, to select respondents from the various sectors. The results show that COVID-19
had an 80% impact on forest management operations. The COVID-19 pandemic did not have a significant effect on the conversion of land from forest to other land uses. However, there was severe illegal logging and moderate to severe fires. The COVID-19 pandemic also had a severe impact on the
agriculture, environment and ecotourism sectors, with nature reserves completely closed. From the forest production perspective, the impact of COVID-19 on production, supply, demand and the price of timber was generally low due to the commercial nature of the forestry sector in South Africa;
the largest economy in SADC being classified as an essential sector.
Traditional agroforestry landscapes play a critical role in conserving biodiversity and sustaining rural livelihoods through multiple products and services. However, an unprecedented rise in the unsustainable utilisation and management of provisioning ecosystem services from these landscapes contributes to forest biodiversity loss and impacts livelihood efforts. The objective was to evaluate the link between distance and socio-ecological determinants and the provisioning ecosystem services consumption behaviour. This study tested whether "rural people's preferences and extent of PESs harvesting decrease as the distance from the village to forest patches increase, regardless of the prevalent socioecological conditions'. Using a structured questionnaire survey, data were collected in 882 households in four villages of Thulamela Municipality, Limpopo Province in South Africa. The data were analysed using Chi-square, Fidelity level, Use-value, Friedman test, and Generalised linear model. Consistent with the hypothesis, the results showed that local people harvest most of the provisioning ecosystem services at an immediate (1 st ) level, followed by intermediate (2 nd ) and far distance (3 rd ) levels. This study further revealed the existence of 108 useful tree species in the study areas. This study also found that although socio-ecological determinants influence consumption behaviour, the influence of specific socio-ecological determinants was not consistent across the different regimes of distance from the forest resources. The fact that there is a preference to use and harvest provisioning ecosystem services from the distance regime closest to the household, shows a concerted effort to conserve and enhance the abundance of multipurpose tree species in homesteads and the immediate areas.
Traditional agroforestry has been recognised to contribute to biodiversity conservation; however, biodiversity strategies often lack information about drivers of tree species diversity loss, which is crucial for decision-making. Anthropogenic disturbance has positive and negative effects on tree species richness and diversity. This study was conducted in Vhembe Biosphere Reserve, Limpopo Province, and used distance from the nucleus of the community to the forest as a parameter to assess tree species richness and diversity. Vegetation data were collected using three transects of 150 m in each distance level and sampled a total area of 1000 m2 by sampling five rectangular plots of \(20m x 10m \left(200{m}^{2}\right)\). Data analysis was conducted using Chao1, PERMANOVA, nMDS, PERMDISP, DISTLIM, dbRDA and SIMPER. The findings are in consonant with distance decay of community similarity hypotheses, with estimated tree species richness of 76, 93 and 95 species in an immediate distance, intermediate distance and far distance, respectively. Moreover, the highest species variation was observed at an intermediate distance, which indicates that there is greater species composition at an intermediate distance compared to immediate and far distances. The results confirm that the distance and associated factors have major detrimental effects on tree species richness and biodiversity in traditional agroforestry landscapes. Harvesting of provisioning ecosystem services is found and known to be extremely high in the study area. Effective interventions such as planting native trees and conserving the existing vegetation must be implemented to reduce and halt overexploitation.
The capture of the benefits by the elites due to the lack of a benefitsharing mechanism is a serious threat to the development of forestry land restitution projects in South Africa. This study investigated the benefit-sharing mechanisms desirable to land claimant beneficiaries in forestry-based land restitution projects. A random sampling technique was used to select 351 and 170 households' beneficiaries in Levubu and Tzaneen communities in Limpopo Province, respectively. Data were collected using a household questionnaire and focus group discussions. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data. Findings revealed that there are still no benefit-sharing mechanisms in Levubu and Tzaneen communities, but the beneficiaries comprehend the significance of developing a benefit-sharing mechanism for fair and equal distribution of benefits. The results revealed that stakeholders' meetings (58.7%) and open beneficiaries' meetings (40.6%) were preferred mechanisms. In addition, beneficiaries in both Levubu (54.4%) and Tzaneen (68.9%) preferred to receive benefits monthly. This paper provides the first overview of a benefit-sharing model in forestry-based land restitution projects in South Africa. It concludes that there is a need to consider the early development of a benefit-sharing mechanism in land restitution projects in order to allow a greater equal share of the benefits.
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