**9. Conclusion**

next 10 years. These responses suggest that the respondents are aware that, with increased harvesting, marula will get exhausted in the near future. This seems to concur fairly well with Helm and Witkowski [21] who reported that marula is declining at an unprecedented rate in the Kruger National Park and other areas in South Africa. Aggravating the prospects for sustainable marula harvesting is the absence of dedicated leadership to start implementing strategies for sustaining marula, as there seems to be no government body or non-governmental organization helping in conservation activities in the area. In addition, it was observed that there is no overarching policy and no regulations were in place to govern access to and harvesting of marula products. If depletion of marula were to occur, it will adversely affect poor rural households that depend on it for income, food and other services. Observations around the households during the socio-economic interviews showed glaringly that the poorest households in the study area were food insecure and it was obvious that marula played a huge role as a source of food in those circumstances. Kirkland et al. [28] as well as Tibesigwa

et al. [67] made a similar observation in their respective studies in South Africa.

The study revealed that a large proportion of rural people in the study area relied mainly on marula harvesting for their livelihoods, in addition to subsistence crop production and subsistence animal rearing. The current production of value-added products from marula fruits and seeds in Swaziland has given impetus to rural people, especially women, to harvest marula products on commercial scale. The harvesting process itself, driven by market demand, is thus threatening the sustainability of marula harvesting and, inevitably, also the survival of the species. Every year during the marula season, the majority of rural people in Swaziland take up the opportunity of harvesting marula fruits and seeds for making an extra income to cater for multiple needs that the households face, ranging from payment of school fees to buying of electricity, medicines and food. As observed by Campbell et al. [6], as well as Shackleton and Shackleton [59], trade in marula products is one of the important local income-generating options available to the rural poor, and particularly women in southern Africa. The interface between poverty, rural livelihoods and marula harvesting in Swaziland reflects the dependency of impoverished rural populations on natural capital and, thus, demonstrates the intricate linkage between people and the ecosystems in which they live [69].

Apart from the commercialization of marula products in Swaziland, the study found that several socio-economic factors interlock to contribute to the intense harvesting of marula in Swaziland. Widespread conditions of poverty fuelled by low levels of education are well established in several places across southern Africa where a strong dependency on and wide range of uses of marula have led to the increased exploitation of the resource. All agricultural and grazing fields in the study area have been exploited for marula harvesting causing the level of regeneration of marula in those areas to be very low due to constant removal of the fruits and seeds. The multiple uses of marula products, combined with the introduction of the processing companies, have encouraged many people to harvest large amounts of marula in large

**8. Discussion**

310 Selected Studies in Biodiversity

Marula plays a crucial role in the livelihoods of poor rural households in Swaziland. The current level of commercialized harvesting of marula products in Swaziland is unsustainable as it has negatively impacted on the regeneration potential of marula and, thus, requires deliberate monitoring and strict control of the harvesting process. Many socio-economic factors are interlocking to accelerate the harvesting of marula products beyond its sustainability thresholds to support the livelihoods of many poverty-stricken rural households in Swaziland. Therefore, overconsumption or even depletion of marula in Swaziland will deepen the existing poverty levels among the rural poor, particularly women, who are proportionately more dependent on marula, and therefore most vulnerable to the loss of a natural resource that will impact their livelihoods negatively.
