April 12, 2011

Doctoral student Baruani Mshale received the prestigious International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).  The fellowship will support his forest-related dissertation work in Tanzania.

Mshale is analyzing factors causing deforestation and forest degradation within and between 12 villages in Kilwa district, Tanzania, an examining why local communities and state agencies are resistant to cooperating in governing local forests, despite more than fifteen years of experimentation with participatory forest management. By conducting ethnographic fieldwork and employing ecological methods, he seeks to examine changes in political and ecological systems and their ramifications on collaborative forest governance.

"Sufficient time in the field is required to understand actors' behaviors in relation to causing and avoiding deforestation,"  he said. The IDRF fellowship will enable him to spend that time in the field by providing support for housing and living costs and travel expenses related to research for one year. Mshale is one of 77 fellows selected from 1,213 applications from 128 universities.

"The on-going and unchecked rates of deforestation continue to cause adverse effects on forest and human systems throughout the tropics,"  he said. "The understanding of the factors for effective collaboration between different actors will prove useful in planning for and implementing collaborative forest governance."