Agroforestry systems for sustainable livelihoods and improved land management in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania

Forest destruction for agriculture continues to be a major threat to the rich biological diversity in the East Usambara Mountains in the north-eastern corner of Tanzania. The highest ratio of endemic plant and animal species found on 100 km2 anywhere in the world is depending on the remaining natural forests. Forests are vitally important for the local population in many different ways, and nationally they are an important source of water and hydroelectricity. The soils, of low fertility and mostly acidic Ferrasols, mainly have the nutrients in the topsoil. After clear-cutting, the soils soon become poor when the topsoil is eroded. High-value cardamom is nowadays unsustainably cultivated in the natural forests of the East Usambaras. The general aim was to study the possibilities to develop new profitable and sustainable agroforestry systems for the benefit of the local people that could contribute to relieving the pressure on the remaining natural forests in the East Usambara Mountains. Results from a spice crop agroforestry trial, established in cooperation with a local farmer, showed a clear advantage of intercropping cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) and black pepper (Piper nigrum) with trees, especially with Grevillea robusta. The nitrogen fixing tree species Gliricidia sepium also improved the nitrogen and organic matter content of the soil over levels found in the natural forest. With improved agroforestry methods for spice production the households generated as much as13 times the net income obtained with traditional forest cultivation practices. There are thus sustainable and profitable ways to cultivate spices as cash crops in well-managed homegardens. However, the farmers need stable markets, access to credit and comprehensive extension services. The soil fertility depletion should be reversed with organic manure application and an enabling policy environment for the smallholder-farming sector. Strong farmers organisations and equal rights to resources and decision-making are needed. Organic spices have an increasing demand, and their export would be profitable for these farmers. What is, however, most needed for a change is a political will of a government that understands the importance of agricultural and forestry development for poverty reduction.

Participation or further exclusion? : Contestations over forest conservation and control in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania

This Ph.D. thesis Participation or Further Exclusion? Contestations over Forest Conservation and Control in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania describes and analyses the shift in the prevailing discourse of forest and biodiversity conservation policies and strategies towards more participatory approaches in Tanzania, and the changes in the practises of resource control. I explore the scope for and limits to the different actors and groups who are considered to form the community, to participate in resource control, in a specific historical and socio-economic context. I analyse whether, how and to which extent the targets of such participatory conservation interventions have been able to affect the formal rules and practices of resource control, and explore their different responses and discursive and other strategies in relation to conservation efforts. I approach the problematic through exploring certain participatory conservation interventions and related negotiations between the local farmers, government officials and the external actors in the case of two protected forest reserves in the southern part of the East Usambaras, Tanzania. The study area belongs to the Eastern Arc Mountains that are valued globally and nationally for their high level of biodiversity and number of endemic and near endemic species. The theoretical approach draws from theorising on power, participation and conservation in anthropology of development and post-structuralist political ecology. The material was collected in three stages between 2003 and 2008 by using an ethnographic approach. I interviewed and observed the actors and their resource use and control practices at the local level, including the representatives of the villagers living close to the protected forests and the conservation agency, but also followed the selected processes and engaged with the non-local agencies involved in the conservation efforts in the East Usambaras. In addition, the more recent processes of change and the actors strategies in resource control were contextualised against the social and environmental history of the study area and the evolvement of institutions of natural resource control. My findings indicate that the discourse of participation that has emerged in global conservation policy debate within the past three decades, and is being institutionalised in the national policies in many countries, including Tanzania, has shaped the practices of forest conservation in the East Usambaras, although in a fragmented and uneven way. Instrumental interpretation of participation, in which it is to serve the goals of improving the control of the forest and making it more acceptable and efficient, has prevailed among the governmental actors and conservation organisations. Yet, there is variation between the different projects and actors promoting participatory conservation regarding the goals and means of participation, e.g. to which extent the local people are to be involved in decision-making. The actors representing communities also have their diverse agendas, understandings and experiences regarding the rationality, outcomes and benefits of being involved in forest control, making the practices of control fluid. The elements of the exclusive conservation thinking and practices co-exist with the more recent participatory processes, and continue to shape the understandings and strategies of the actors involved in resource control. The ideas and narratives of the different discourses are reproduced and selectively used by the parties involved. The idea of forest conservation is not resisted as such by most of the actors at local level, quite the opposite. However, the strict regulations and rules governing access to resources, such as valuable timber species, continue to be disputed by many. Furthermore, the history of control, such as past injustices related to conservation and unfulfilled promises, undermines the participation of certain social groups in resource control and benefit sharing. This also creates controversies in the practices of conservation, and fuels conflicts regarding the establishment of new protected areas. In spite of this, the fact that the representatives of the communities have been invited to the arenas where information is shared, and principles and conditions of forest control and benefit sharing are discussed and partly decided upon, has created expectations among the participants, and opened up opportunities for some of the local actors to enhance their own, and sometimes wider interests in relation to resource control and the related benefits. The local actors experiences of the previous government and other interventions strongly affect how they position themselves in relation to conservation interventions, and their responses and strategies. However, my findings also suggest, in a similar way to research conducted in some other protected areas, that the benefits of participation in conservation and resource control tend to accrue unevenly between different groups of local people, e.g. due to unequal access to information and differences in their initial resources and social position.

Straw Performance Studies and Quality Assurance for the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker

The Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC is part of the Inner Detector. It is designed as a robust and powerful gaseous detector that provides tracking through individual drift-tubes (straws) as well as particle identification via transition radiation (TR) detection. The straw tubes are operated with Xe-CO2-O2 70/27/3, a gas that combines the advantages of efficient TR absorption, a short electron drift time and minimum ageing effects. The modules of the barrel part of the TRT were built in the United States while the end-cap wheels are assembled at two Russian institutes. Acceptance tests of barrel modules and end-cap wheels are performed at CERN before assembly and integration with the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) and the Pixel Detector. This thesis first describes simulations the TRT straw tube. The argon-based acceptance gas mixture as well as two xenon-based operating gases are examined for its properties. Drift velocities and Townsend coefficients are computed with the help of the program Magboltz and used to study electron drift and multiplication in the straw using the software Garfield. The inclusion of Penning transfers in the avalanche process leads to remarkable agreements with experimental data. A high level of cleanliness in the TRT s acceptance test gas system is indispensable. To monitor gas purity, a small straw tube detector has been constructed and extensively used to study the ageing behaviour of the straw tube in Ar-CO2. A variety of ageing tests are presented and discussed. Acceptance tests for the TRT survey dimensions, wire tension, gas-tightness, high-voltage stability and gas gain uniformity along each individual straw. The thesis gives details on acceptance criteria and measurement methods in the case of the end-cap wheels. Special focus is put on wire tension and straw straightness. The effect of geometrically deformed straws on gas gain and energy resolution is examined in an experimental setup and compared to simulation studies. An overview of the most important results from the end-cap wheels tested up to this point is presented.