Fostering Collective Action In Conflict Management For Sustainable Land Use Planning In Ulanga District, Morogoro Region

ABSTRACT

A study on fostering collective actions towards conflict resolutions was conducted in

Ulanga District. The main objective of the study was to analyze and recommend collective

action strategies in land use conflicts for sustainable land use planning and management in

Ulanga District. A sample of 120 households was interviewed during the study. Structured

questionnaire, Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and information from key informants were

used to explain the variability in land use, dynamics observed and conflict management or

resolutions were proposed. The partitioning of land into communal grazing land, land for

crops were not formal and therefore influencing land acquisition and ownership in the

study area leading to conflicts. The land ownership varied with size throughout the

community and most of the land was categorized as village land where very few possessed

land rights (customary or title deed). It was revealed that the occurrence of the conflicts in

the area had a number of predisposing factors including overstocking (34.2%) and lack of

proper land use planning (30.8%), and occasionally, unauthorized invasion by livestock

keepers in farmer’s fields and lack of by-laws and having corrupt leaders escalated the

conflicts Penalties, use of leaders and negotiations were the major means used in

managing conflicts as shown by 29.6, 23.5 and 19.1 percentage of the respondents,

respectively. Underutilization of the existing institutions and misuse of authorities

impaired the efforts for conflict management. Regression results revealed that age of

respondents related to duration of stay in the area, family size, education level and origin

of the respondents greatly influenced occurrence of the conflicts observed and were

statistically significant at P< 0.05. It was recommended that a need for establishing a

negotiation platform was inevitable and that this could necessitate formulating collective

action strategies for resolving conflicts and ensuring sustainable land use management in

Ulanga district.

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DECLARATION

I, Octavian Adam Moshiro, do hereby declare to the Senate of Sokoine University of

Agriculture, that this dissertation is my original work and that it has neither been

submitted nor being concurrently submitted for degree award in any other institution.

__________________________ _____________________

Moshiro, Octavian Adam Date

(M.A. Rural Development)

The above declaration is confirmed

_________________________ ___________________

Dr. Jonathan Mbwambo Date

(Supervisor)

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