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.