User:ButungoSLU

Peri Urban land Use Changes and their Effects on Forest Ecosystem Services
Rapid land use changes taking place in peri urban settlements in cities of developing world have been jeopardizing the ecosystem services. Forests which are the major sources of provisioning ecosystems have been reported to decrease at a very rapid rate over the three decades in Tanzania since the introduction of trade liberalization policies. Researches suggest that further deforestation was fueled by rural-urban migration and that the policies had a negative impact on rural development which was very muchbased on agriculture and therefore many youths had to move to urban areas for survival and thereby exacerbated rapid peri urban development and therefore rapid land use changes. Peri urban areas which were the foci of land development experienced rapid population growth due to the fact that the land there is cheap and affordable to many migrants as compared to land in the inner city centre. This rapid population influx which has driven rapid land use changes has been said to cause rapid decrease of the forests and therefore severely affecting ecosystem services. Ecosystem services in peri urban settlements include forests and their related species, fruits, wild beats and water services mainly provided by ecosystem services. However, water productivity as one of the ecosystems has been facing the problem of scarcity due to among others increasing human population and rapid peri urban land use changes in the sub Saharan Africa. Managing peri urban land use changes has also been another challenge due to poor land use development control and population explosion.