ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the mapping from sequential aerial photography of land cover outcomes for two resettlement scheme areas that are amongst the oldest in the country. It effects a critical analysis of some of the predominant received narratives on environmental change within the small scale farming sector and raises a number of questions concerning the prospects of assessing the sustainability of resettlement as illustrated through an examination of the spatially complex patterns of woodland change specifically. For many Zimbabwean people within and beyond resettlement areas, meeting immediate needs of food and shelter have become extremely difficult and issues of sustainable development have become less visible in Zimbabwean national planning. The chapter identifies that problems in achieving these ends became quickly apparent in the course of implementation of resettlement. The complex, dynamic and multi-directional transformations identified have certainly contested the narratives of linear patterns of resource degradation that continue to shape sustainability debates in Zimbabwe and the wider region.
