A Compulsory Research Paper Submitted to Mzumbe University – Mbeya Campus College in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for the of Bachelor Degree of Laws (LL.B) of The Mzumbe University
The overall research problem addressed in the study is that despite the fact that the government is struggling to ensure legal protection of forest and existing laws dealing directly with forest matters still they have never succeeded since forest resource are still being destroyed, this makes it difficult for Tanzania to attain legal protection of forest resource for sustainable utilization as it desires both at national and local level. Hence the issue is whether or not the Forest Act 2002 and its subsidiary legislations is inadequate to meet the most recent demand of forest protection or that they are inappropriate such that, there is a need to amend the law so as to ensure effective legal protection. Therefore, this study endeavours to assess Forest Act and its subsidiary legislation if they are effective enough to enhance legal protection and if it can deter the destructors. About 18 million hectares of Tanzania’s forested land is under protection as forest reserves while 4.1 million hectares are managed under Participatory Forest Management (PFM). However, despite all this significance forests are disappearing at an unprecedented scale world over. According to the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 report in 1990 the world had 4,128 million hectares of forest but by 2015 this area decreased to 3,999 million hectares. The study reveals the findings that there are many reasons advanced including an increasing population, expansion of agriculture land; reliance on wood fuel for energy and other un-sustainable land use practices. Consequently, it is recommended that in order to improve forest conservation and management District council should effectively involve communities in forest conservation activities and to ensure equitable sharing of benefits amongst all stakeholders, private sectors and local Government as appropriate in each case and organized local communities or other organization of people living adjacent to the forest will be promoted.