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Institutions remain one of the biggest hindrances to achieving sustainable community-based natural resources management. In Tanzania, knowledge about institutional adequacy, and the contribution of institutions to accumulation by dispossession and power struggles in the Wildlife Management Areas (WMA) is limited. This study was conducted in Burunge WMA in Babati district, Manyara region, Tanzania to assess the effects of institutions on dispossession and power struggles. The specific objectives were to (i) examine institutional challenges facing WMAs (ii) assess institutional rhetoric versus local reality in Burunge WMA (iii) assess evidence of accumulation by dispossession in Burunge WMA and (iv) examine power struggles in the management of Burunge WMA. A cross sectional research design was used. Data collection methods were focus group discussions, key informant interviews, telephone interviews, questionnaires, and literature review. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 20 was used in descriptive statistical analysis to compute frequencies, means and standard deviations. Content analysis method was used to analyse qualitative data where common themes related to institutions, dispossession, and power struggles were analysed. Results showed that participation of local communities in the management and rules making for WMAs have not been sufficiently elaborated in the National Wildlife Policy and Legislation. Moreover, access to resources, land tenure and property rights are unclear in the rules. Likewise, rules do not provide for accountability and transparency to occur, revenues are recentralised, benefits are inadequate and besides existing conflicts, there are no locally based established conflict management mechanisms. Furthermore, respondents had little knowledge of rules on the management of the WMA. Similarly, inadequate participation of local communities in the policy process for WMA establishment and its subsequent management was observed. Rules were used to dispossess local people’s resources including land and revenues. After the WMA establishment, the village land within the WMA changed legal status from village land to reserved land and village councils lost their power over that land. There are power struggles over revenues, land and access to resources that have resulted in conflicts which lacked management mechanisms besides existing land tribunals. Therefore, it is recommended that a review of the Wildlife Policy including taking into account local livelihoods dependence on wildlife resources need to be done. This will accommodate changes that will reinforce devolution rather than recentralisation and accumulation by dispossession, livelihood improvement, accountability, transparency, secure land tenure and property rights, and access to resources and village councils as sole managers of WMAs. Also, a genuinely inclusive process should be employed in the policy and rule making process in WMAs. Lastly, to manage conflicts among actors, low cost locally-based conflicts management mechanisms need to be established in the WMAs. |
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