ers without their presence. For example, in
one village LUPC meeting the committee dis-
cussed the boundary markers around pro-
tected springs and riverbanks. The village
LUPC secretary said that “everyone is pulling
up the markers.” The TFAP facilitator asked
if she knew who was doing this. She said,
“no, but the village government knows
them.” She told me later that she knew who
had pulled the markers, but that she did not
have the authority to name names.
These political and geographic ambiguities
ran through all levels of the LUPC system in
North Pare because environmental issues
regularly crossed village boundaries. Rivers
are particularly difficult resources to protect
because they often form those boundaries.
When a village LUPC on one side of a river
tries to implement the TFAP plan and the
adjacent village has no LUPC, committee
members find themselves in the odd posi-
tion of protecting only half of a river. The
following exchange at a District LUPC
demonstrates some of the political wrangling
that resulted from ambiguous lines of
authority:
Village LUPC chairman: No one is showing
up for riverbank protection activities. The
river is the boundary between two divisions
and many farmers are not interested in the
project. Many of the farmers in my village
and in the adjoining village have plots on
both sides of the river.
Ward Executive Officer: The problem is who
can call whom. Can our Divisional Secretary
call the Secretary of another Division? Can
one village call another? These are govern-
ment matters.
Village LUPC chairman:So what do I do?
We are under the TFAP project, so how can
I write a letter to another village if they
have no committee?
Ward Executive Officer: Then this issue must
go to the Ward Development Committee
and follow normal government channels to
deal with this other village. We must find
the right person to write a letter to the vil-
lage government. Only the Ward
Development Committee can give orders to
a village chairman. This is only a TFAP
meeting, it’s not about governance.
The semi-official nature of the LUPCs also
intersected with the complexities of bor-
rowed and tributary land arrangements to
produce enough bureaucratic red tape to
prevent terracing. The following field note
from a village LUPC meeting demonstrates
the obstacles for cooperation among inter-
dependent villages:
“I asked what the major land use problems
were in Bondeni village. They replied that
the two major problems are labor shortage
and the fact that many farmers in Bondeni
come from outside of the village. Where do
these outside farmers come from, I asked.
Every other village. So I asked if many of
them come from Ngujini. Yes, they do. Do
they build terraces here? No. But why don’t
they build terraces in Bondeni if both
Bondeni and Ngujini have LUPCs? “Ngujini
people don’t build terraces in Bondeni, they
only build them near their homes in Ngujini.”
The LUPC chairman said that they decided
to deal with these “outside” farmers at their
first meeting. He said that they advised the
village government to tell those people, “if
you don’t terrace these farms and conserve
the soil, you’ll lose your farm and we [the
village government] will plant trees there.”
But the Bondeni village government has no
authority over residents of another village,
so Bondeni has to get Ngujini to make these
Ngujini farmers to build terraces in Bondeni.
The TFAP facilitator closed the discussion by
saying that the people of Bondeni were not
setting a good enough example, and that
they should terrace their own areas first,
then get the divisional government to
resolve the issue. Afterwards one village
LUPC member said that it is absurd to force
a farmer to terrace a plot when the adjacent
plot remains un-terraced.” TFAP intended
the advisory role of the LUPCs to be a
strength, but it became a liability because
ecological problems are necessarily political
History, cculture aand cconservation
