Tobacco cultivation as a driver of land use change and degradation in the miombo woodlands of south‐west Tanzania

Abstract

Miombo woodlands support agriculture, biodiversity, and multiple ecosystem services across an extensive part of sub-Saharan Africa. Miombo is frequently overutilised with deforestation and degradation resulting in significant land use and land cover change (LULCC). Understanding the drivers of LULCC is essential to achieving sustainable land management in miombo woodland regions. Within a remote miombo area of south-west Tanzania in the Kipembawe Division, Mbeya Region, social survey and ecological data were used to identify the direct and indirect drivers of LULCC. Our findings show that tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) production results in an estimated annual deforestation rate of 4,134 ± 390 ha of undisturbed miombo woodland, of which 56.3 ± 11.8% is linked to the post-harvest curing process. This deforestation represents 0.55 ± 0.06% of the wooded area of the Kipembawe Division. The perception of high incomes from tobacco cultivation has encouraged migration of both agriculturalists and pastoralists into the area, resulting in higher livestock numbers that lead to further degradation. Higher human populations need more woodland resources such as fuelwood and building materials and more farmland for food crops. Continued deforestation will reduce the long-term profitability of tobacco cultivation due to a lack of fuel to cure the crop and could render production unviable.Action is urgently needed to conserve globally important biodiversity resources while enabling agricultural and pastoral activities to continue. Improved governance, together with sustainable land management strategies and diversification of livelihood strategies, can reduce dependence on tobacco cultivation and contribute to a sustainable future for this ecoregion. (Foley et al., 2005). A driver of change can be natural or anthropogenic, and it causes a change in the state of something else (MEA, 2005). When a driver unequivocally has an influence, it is described as a direct driver, and when they underlie or lead to a direct driver, they are described as an indirect driver (MEA, 2005). Indirect drivers can be classified into five categories (sociopolitical, religious and cultural, demographic, scientific and technological, and economic), which can influence direct drivers (Nelson et al., 2006). Deciduous miombo woodlands cover 2.4 million km 2 of sub-Saharan Africa (Frost, Timberlake, & Chidumayo, 2003), are home to over 100 million people (Campbell et al., 2007), and contain numerous endemic and threatened species (Conservation International, 2012). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Rapid land use change threatens provisioning ecosystem services in miombo woodlands

“…According to the focus groups with village elders, Kipembawe was sparsely populated by hunter gathers prior to the 1960s (Jew, ). Tobacco cultivation was introduced to the area as part of successive government village settlement schemes in the late 1960s and 1970s.…”

“…The need for land use management within Kipembawe is recognised, as illustrated here through householders’ recognition that the loss of ES will have an impact on their households, as well as government attempts to establish land use management plans and protected areas. Given the multiple demands on this landscape (ecosystem service provision, biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and livestock keeping; Jew, ), an adaptive management strategy that can maintain multiple objectives over time (Milder et al ., ) and encourage multi‐stakeholder dialogue and social learning is appropriate (Guariguata et al ., ). While initially a top‐down approach may be necessary to kick‐start the process (or re‐invigorate those already in place), participation, engagement, and empowerment of local communities to expand their awareness and their role in management is vital.…”

“…This coincides with a second private tobacco company establishing production in the area in 2008, and forest loss is evident through the analysis of the Global Forest Change dataset (Figure 2). Jew et al (2017) identified tobacco cultivation as the main driver of land use change due to land clearance to plant the crop and for fuel to dry tobacco leaves, resulting in an annual deforestation rate of 4,134 AE 390 ha, which if unchecked, will result in total loss of woodland in Kipembawe in less than 200 years. Additional direct drivers were extraction of wood for construction and household use, and degradation due to pastoralism; while indirect drivers were demographic (inmigration) and economic (rising tobacco prices) (Jew et al, 2017).…”

Tracking three decades of land use and land cover transformation trajectories in China's large river deltas

“…Analyzing continuous land use/land cover (LULC) transformation processes in relation to multiple underlying natural and anthropogenic drivers by tracking the long‐term multitemporal dynamics of LULC will promote our understanding and capacity to compromise between the conflicting needs of land conservation and socioeconomic development (Jew, Dougill, & Sallu, ; Quintero‐Gallego, Quintero‐Angel, & Vila‐Ortega, . Previous methods of land use change detection have mostly focused on only two stages at a time and have failed to capture the overall spatiotemporal dynamics of LULC across multiple time intervals (Coppin, Jonckheere, Nackaerts, Muys, & Lambin, ; De Rosa, Odgaard, Staunstrup, Knudsen, & Hermansen, ; Kennedy, Cohen, & Schroeder, ).…”

Land use/cover and landscape pattern changes in Manas River Basin based on remote sensing

“…As the intensity of human activities increases, land use/cover types change frequently [20] . The directional selection of human beings results in the degradation or disappearance of some types of landscape (e.g., forest land and grassland).…”