Challenges and Opportunities to Climate Change Adaptation and Sustainable Development Among Tanzanian Rural Communities

In more recent years climate change impacts have been obvious around the globe. This non-contentious reality has resulted in various global initiatives to reduce climate change impacts. However, differences exist in opportunities and capacity to adaptation. This paper, descriptive in nature, draws heavily from literature and also uses 2002 Tanzanian population and housing census to identify and discuss major challenges and opportunities to climate change adaptation and sustainable development in rural areas of Tanzania. Two groups are of focus; pastoralist herders and smallholder farmers. Analysis indicates that opportunities to climate change adaptation among rural community include their knowledge and experience. Challenges are centered on the pervasive poverty, rapid population increase and high illiteracy rates. Forces beyond their control including funds and governance also present definite limits to climate change adaptation. The paper suggests among others, the effective implementation of two top policies: education and social security funding

‘Milking the Cow Without Feeding It’: Perceptions of Communities on Water-user Fees for Smallholder Irrigation in Ruaha Sub-Basin, Tanzania

Water-user fees in Tanzania, like in other low-income countries, have been introduced mainly as a response to neo-liberal thinking which, among other things, believes that water has an economic value and should be recognized as an economic good. The objective of this study was to understand perceptions on water-user fees among smallholder farmers in the Ruaha Sub-basin, Tanzania. It employed qualitative and quantitative tools, including in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and questionnaires. Qualitative data were analysed using a thematic approach, while quantitative data were analysed using SPSS Version 20. The findings revealed that mostsmallholder irrigators were dissatisfied with the payment, amount, and the use of water fees. There were three major reasons for the high level of dissatisfaction. First, owners of private water-use permits did not see why they should pay for water that had no (physical) investment on it. Second, some owners of group water-use permits were unwilling to pay for water because they felt  that they did not get adequate support from the government since all irrigation water-related operational costs, including the constructions and maintenance of irrigation canals, were undertaken by themselves. The lack of community participation in determining the amount of water-user fees and ad-hoc changes of the amount of the fees was another reason for the dissatisfaction. This paper proposes some recommendations for effective management of water resources at a community level. Keywords: water-user fees, water resources, smallholder irrigators, Ruaha sub-basin, Tanzani

Paradox of gender mainstreaming strategies: why are they not fully realized in sexual reproductive health projects in Malawi?

Gender mainstreaming in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services like family planning in Malawi remains a significant approach in development. Yet, the expected gender related changes in gender mainstreaming focused SRH projects have been inadequate. The central aim of this paper is to expose the salient reasons behind the inadequate gender relations changes in the family planning (FP) SRH projects implemented by the local organisations. The study employed an exploratory design with more qualitative focus and a bit of quantitative approach. The empirical data for this article was collected in gender focused SRH projects implemented in selected communities in the last five years by three organisations in Malawi.4 The findings show that, the way project staffs understood the gender mainstreaming strategy affected how they designed and introduced the strategy. Subsequently, this affected the realization of the gender related changes from the projects. Furthermore, it was found that gender related changes were compromised where gender analysis had not been done. Further, the involvement and inclusion of men and women during the family planning projects implementation was mere tokenism. Therefore, the paper recommends that, a systematic process need to be in place when introducing gender mainstreaming in SRH projects for the organisations to achieve gender related outcomes. This entails ensuring that gender analysis is done prior to the SRH projects implementation to understand gender needs and before the staff involves men and women jointly during the projects cycle stages. This paper will contribute to the discussion on the determinants of gender mainstreaming strategy in SRH programmes.Keywords: Gender mainstreaming, sexual and reproductive health, family planning, gender relation