1REGIONAL MODEL FOR RURAL LAND USE PLANNING: AN APPLICATION OF GOAL PROGRAMMING

ABSTRACT. —Strong demand for firewood and construction material in the urban areas of Mozambique, especially Maputo city, coupled with slash and burn agriculture, has led to an increase in deforestation. As a measure to mitigate this and other problems facing the forestry sector, the government designed what is known as Strategies for Forestry Development (1991) which includes a reforestation strategy. This contemplates the involvement of the community as a way forward for afforestation since the government has limited funds to embark in large-scale reforestation programs. This paper reports the results of a study which explored the potential for using Weighted Goal Programming (WGP) in assessing the impact of integrating trees into the farming systems in the province of Maputo. Models of typical farms from five ecozones were constructed and aggregated in an effort to assess the impact of the reforestation strategy, at provincial (macro) level, while focusing on the use of resources at the household (micro) level. Despite the scarcity of data and political and climatic instability, which influenced the quantity and quality of data, the planning framework results show that all regional goals can at least be achieved. Land use is predicted to change in all ecozones with regard the land allocation to individual crops. Furthermore, allowing each typical farm to be able to plant at least one hectare with trees was found to be possible, but with some changes in the level of performance of the current farm activities. In addition to income generation, the reforestation strategy was found to reduce adult underemployment, especially in the grassland ecozone, however, in some ecozones it implied the use of more child labour. There is potential for applying mathematical programming in land use conflict resolution in a data scarce environment