ABSTRACT
In Chapter I we saw how such attitudes have dogged efforts in Tanzania and Niger to get local people to plant trees - but these were merely selected cases out of many in a large number of countries. In Tanzania, for instance (see Rural Cases 13 and 17), the creation offorest reserves has entailed the evacuation of the local people and the policed denial of access to what were formerly common property or openaccess resources; soil erosion programmes have enforced the destocking ofcattle and hillside closures; even the village woodlot programme with its best intentions of decentralized decision making was in practice controlled from the centre and driven by political needs at the highest levels to meet popular targets. For the local forester, each new village woodlot, whether or not it met people's real needs, became a counter in the game of securing promotion or the approval of superiors.
