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标题：DAMBO CULTIVATION IN ZIMBABWE: CHALLENGES FACED BY SMALL-SCALE DAMBO FARMING COMMUNITIES IN SEKE-CHITUNGWIZA COMMUNAL AREA
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作者：Christopher Munyaradzi Mabeza ; Munyaradzi Mawere
期刊名称：The Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa (JSDA)
电子版ISSN：1520-5509
出版年度：2012
卷号：14
期号：5
出版社：Institute of Sustainable Development in Africa
摘要：Sub-Saharan Africa is one region that has been riddled by political, socio-economic problems in the recent times. These problems have been precipitated by erratic rainfall patterns in the region. In Zimbabwe, erratic rainfall patterns and the economic meltdown in the new millennium has resulted in incredible hunger across the country causing, in turn, the intensive cultivation of dambos. While the history of dambo cultivation in Zimbabwe stretches back to the pre-colonial era, this situation has forced the rural population to ‘invade’ even those dambos that were spared and traditionally reserved for cultural and aesthetic reasons. As such, the cultivation of dambos has met with a number of challenges. It is against this background that the present paper investigates challenges experienced by small-scale dambo farmers and how this has impacted on the nascent environmental, socio-economic developments in Zimbabwe in the recent years. The paper adopts Seke-Chitungwiza communal area of region 2, heretofore referred to as Seke, as a case study. The choice of Seke communal area is not accidental, but premised on the fact that small-scale farmers in this area are among the few who pioneered dambo cultivation in Zimbabwe. More so, dambo cultivation has become a major source of livelihood for the referred people regardless of the challenges met. From the foregoing, we argue for the institution of a robust Environmental Management Agency that is constructively aligned with grassroots (institutional level) implementation in order to foster sustainable cultivation of dambos, equal access to dambos and the development of best practices of natural resource exploitation. We further argue that dambos should become bridging zones for the integration and alignment of locally generated based knowledge and institutional (school) knowledge through creating liberal spaces for dambo cultivators’ experimentation with different forms of farming practices that foster sustainable development.
关键词：Dambo; Seke; communal area; utilization; challenges; Zimbabwe