Information on deforestation and forest management is limited due to lack of understanding as to how socioeconomic factors affect deforestation. Without adequate data, it is difficult to manage deforestation; particularly in Chipuriro where deforestation is occurring at a rapid rate. This research was carried out to address the problem. Surveys and landsat images were used to collect data. To quantify deforestation, images were processed using Geographical Information System. Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient was used to deduce the relationship between socioeconomic factors and deforestation. Socioeconomic factors were obtained through household surveys and focus group discussions. Results indicated high rates of deforestation in Ward 18 (4.7% per annum) while in Ward 16 woodland cover increased throughout the study period (7.7% per annum). Population growth with its demand on fuel wood, settlement and agricultural land caused a significant decrease in woodland cover in Ward 18. Plantations increased the area under woodlands in Ward 16. / Environmental Sciences / M. Sc. (Environmental Management)

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Diese Arbeit ist die erste systematische Analyse des globalen Bewässerungsbedarfs für die Bioenergieproduktion des 21. Jahrhundert. In der aktuellen Literatur finden sich diesbezüglich Prognosen von 128,4–9000 km3 yr−1. Die Zahlen hängen stark von den gewählten Parametern und Annahmen sowie den angewandten Methoden und Modellen ab. In systematischen Simulationen für die wichtigsten Parameter mit dem globalen Vegetationsmodell LPJmL, ergeben sich zwei mögliche Pfade um die Erwärmung auf 1.5°C zu begrenzen. Entweder müssten hocheffiziente Bioenergiesysteme entwickelt werden oder es müsste eine unbegrenzte Plantagenfläche bewässert werden dürfen, ohne dabei den Wasserbedarf der Ökosysteme zu berücksichtigen. Letzteres führt zu einem Interessenkonflikt, bei dem die Biomasseproduktion zur Klimarettung auf der einen Seite und der Schutz von Ökosystemen auf der anderen Seite stehen. Ein weiteres Dilemma wird sichtbar, wenn man den Wasserstress, der sich aus der zusätzlichen Bewässerung ergäbe, mit dem in einer durch ungebremsten Klimawandel um 3°C erwärmten Welt ohne Bioenergie vergleicht: In beiden Szenarien könnte (im Vergleich zu heute) der Wasserstress bis zum Ende des 21. Jahrhunderts stark steigen. Tatsächlich ergäbe sich im Bioenergie-Szenario aber sogar potenziell mehr Wasserstress als im Klimawandel-Szenario. Nachhaltiges Wassermanagement als Kombination aus Wasserentnahmebeschränkungen gemäß den Anforderungen von Flussökosystemen und verbessertem Wassermanagement auf agrarischen Nutzflächen hätte das Potenzial, diesen zusätzlichen Wasserstress zu begrenzen, wäre jedoch auf globaler Ebene schwierig zu etablieren. Diese Arbeit bestätigt, dass Bioenergieplantagen neben den Negativemissionen, die sie liefern sollen, auch zu unerwünschten Nebenwirkungen in anderen Dimensionen des Erdsystems führen könnten. / This thesis provides a first systematic assessment of 21st century global irrigation water demands for bioenergy production, for which the current body of literature projects a range of 128.4–9000 km3 yr−1. The numbers strongly depend on the parameters and assumptions chosen as well as methodologies and models applied. Systematic simulations for the identified key parameters in the dynamic global vegetation model LPJmL yield that even with optimal bioenergy plantation locations, 1.5°C can only be reached in scenarios with highly efficient bioenergy systems or strong irrigation expansion without withdrawal limitations. As a result of the large irrigation requirements, a conflict of interest arises between producing sufficient biomass and protecting environmental flows. A further dilemma is delineated by a comparison of the water stress resulting from the additional irrigation needed to limit climate change and the water stress in a 3°C warmer world without bioenergy. In both scenarios, the global area and the number of people experiencing water stress would increase severely by the end of the 21st century. The bioenergy scenario shows even higher water stress than the case of unmitigated climate change. Sustainable water management, as a combination of water withdrawal restrictions according to environmental flow requirements and improved on-field water management, has the potential to limit this additional water stress. But it would be a challenge to establish such strategies on a global scale. This work confirms that in order to provide large amounts of negative emissions, BECCS might lead to undesired deterioration of our environment and impacts for humanity. It further highlights the dilemma of rising water stress regardless whether climate change or climate change mitigation via irrigated bioenergy become a reality.

This is a study of the creation and evolution of state forestry within colonial Kenya in social, economic, and political terms. Spanning Kenya’s entire colonial period, it offers a chronological account of how forestry came to Kenya and grew to the extent of controlling almost two million hectares of land in the country, approximately 20 per cent of the most fertile and most populated upland (above 1,500 metres) region of central Kenya . The position of forestry within a colonial state apparatus that paradoxically sought to both ‘protect’ Africans from modernisation while exploiting them to establish Kenya as a ‘white man’s country’ is underexplored in the country’s historiography. This thesis therefore clarifies this role through an examination of the relationship between the Forest Department and its African workers, Kenya’s white settlers, and the colonial government. In essence, how each of these was engaged in a pursuit for their own idealised ‘good forest’. Kenya was the site of a strong conservationist argument for the establishment of forestry that typecast the country’s indigenous population as rapidly destroying the forests. This argument was bolstered against critics of the financial extravagance of forestry by the need to maintain and develop the forests of Kenya for the express purpose of supporting the Uganda railway. It was this argument that led the colony’s Forest Department along a path through the contradictions of colonial rule. The European settlers of Kenya are shown as being more than just a mere thorn in the side of the Forest Department, as their political power represented a very real threat to the department’s hegemony over the forests. Moreover, Kenya’s Forest Department deeply mistrusted private enterprise and constantly sought to control and limit the unsustainable exploitation of the forests. The department was seriously underfunded and understaffed until the second colonial occupation of the 1950s, a situation that resulted in a general ad hoc approach to forest policy. The department espoused the rhetoric of sustainable exploitation, but had no way of knowing whether the felling it authorised was actually sustainable, which was reflected in the underdevelopment of the sawmilling industry in Kenya. The agroforestry system, shamba, (previously unexplored in Kenya’s colonial historiography) is shown as being at the heart of forestry in Kenya and extremely significant as perhaps the most successful deployment of agroforestry by the British in colonial Africa. Shamba provided numerous opportunities to farm and receive education to landless Kikuyu in the colony, but also displayed very strong paternalistic aspects of control, with consequential African protest, as the Forest Department sought to create for itself a loyal and permanent forest workforce. Shamba was the keystone of forestry development in the 1950s, and its expansion cemented the position of forestry in Kenya as a top-down, state-centric agent of economic and social development.

No Abstract Provided / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)