Miombo woodlands stretch across SouthernAfrica in a belt from Angola and the Democratic Republic ofCongo (DRC) in the west to Mozambique in the east. Themiombo region covers an area of around 2.4 million km. Insome areas, miombo has been highly degraded as a result ofhuman use (southern Malawi and parts of Zimbabwe), while inothers, it remains relatively intact (such as in parts ofnorthern Mozambique, and in isolated areas of Angola and theDRC). From a conventional forester's perspective,miombo is fundamentally uninteresting. It supportsrelatively few good commercial timber species. Themanagement of commercial species has been problematic. Thebest areas were logged over long ago. Except in a few areas,remaining commercially viable stocks are relatively smalland difficult to access. Public forestry institutions have,for the most part, failed to put in place effectivemanagement systems for forests, preferring instead to limittheir role to regulation and revenue collection, rather thanto management per se. The objectives of this paper arethreefold, and the paper is structured around theseobjectives. First, in section two, the paper describes someof opportunities for improving the use and management ofmiombo woodlands. Second, in section three, outline some ofthe barriers which are preventing households, communities,and countries from adopting better and more sustainablewoodland management practices. In section four, by exploringsome of the policy opportunities for removing thesebarriers, with the objective of strengthening miombo'scontribution to reducing risk and vulnerability of poorrural households through sustainable forest management.
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