Efficacy of Agricultural Extensions and Environmental Conservation Awareness on the Sustainability of Urban Agricultural Practice: Case of Daraja Mbili and Lemala Wards in Arusha City, Tanzania

Urban agricultural activities can have a minimum or a substantial contribution to the livelihoods of people. They can either conserve or pollute the environment and degrade the land. The information about ensuring agricultural productivity with less effect on the environment is dynamic and the causes of dynamisms are not clear. The study was conducted to examine the cause of dynamisms in relation to changing institutional frameworks and political regimes. The study used qualitative research design and a case study strategy and 60 respondents were interviewed. We did content analysis to analyse qualitative data. The findings revealed that agricultural extension services and trainings, as well as environmental conservation awareness about good agricultural practice were provided to farmers and non-farmers, although the success was not promising. The uncoordinated agricultural activities were rhetorically managed and sometimes managed in uncoordinated ways. In tune with provision of agricultural extension services and awareness of conserving the environment to farmers, the mere conservation of the environment was not successful, unless it had a possibility of increasing agricultural productivity and helping farmers to get their livelihood needs

Partnerships to improve access and quality of public transport - a case report: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This book presents findings from project R7786 Partnerships to improve access and quality of urban public transport for the urban poor carried out by the authors as part of the Knowledge and Research (KaR) programme of the Infrastructure and Urban Development Department, Department for International Development (DFID) of the British Government. The purpose of the project was to identify, explore, and document critical issues in the provision of transport services for and in low-income settlements in developing countries. The identified issues can be used at policy and operational levels to provide better transport services to low-income communities in urban areas. In the research methodology, a sustainable livelihoods framework was used to set the research framework. The city of Dar es Salaam has grown rapidly since the late 1940s. In the 1948 census the population was 69,227; by the census in 1957 it had grown to 128,742. During this period the city remained highly concentrated, with its boundaries on average less than five kilometres from the sea front or the then town centre. The growth has continued and the estimated population in 2000 was 2,286,730, with a continuing annual growth rate of about 4.5 per cent against the national average of 2.8 per cent

Boundary work: becoming middle class in suburban Dar es Salaam

Suburban space provides a useful window onto contemporary class practices in Africa, where it is difficult to identify social classes on the basis of income or occupation. In this article I argue that the middle classes and the suburbs are mutually constitutive in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Using interviews with residents and local government officials in the city's northern suburbs, I discuss the material and representational practices of middle-class boundary work in relation to land and landscape. If the middle classes do not presently constitute a coherent political-economic force, they are nevertheless transforming the city's former northern peri-urban zones into desirable suburban residential neighbourhoods

Access to Health Care Facilities in Dar es Salaam City

The objective of this paper is to examine access to health care facilities under the public-private model in urban areas. It focuses specifically on the way issues related to equitable access to health care facilities areaddressed under the public-private model in a rapidly urbanising context. Equitable access to health care has been central agenda in health policy and national development strategies since national political independence. However, the paradigm shift from centralised to decentralised models in health care service delivery has brought out multiple actors in health service delivery, raising concerns on how equitable access to health care services is addressed. The concept of equity is thoroughly discussed and its variables extracted in order to develop a conceptual framework for equitable access to health care services. A case study area is purposively selected from one of the administrative wards in peri-urban areas of Dar es Salaam, to grasp the context of rapid urbanisation and spatial location and utilisation of health care facilities. This paper has found that proliferation of uncoordinated private health care facilities and shrinking of urban public health care services limit equitable access to health care facilities in Dar es Salaam city. In addition, skewed distribution of health care facilities contributes largely to spatial and vertical inequities in access to health care facilities. Although in some extent, the private sector has improved access to health care in urban areas, strong incentives, spatial regulations and clear structure on the modality of engagement and responsibility need to be considered to realise equitable access to urban health care services. Key words: Hierarchy, administrative units, inner-city, peri-urban areas, public-private model and population

The land use and cover change in miombo woodlands under community based forest management and its implication to climate change mitigation: a case of Southern Highlands of Tanzania

In Tanzania, miombo woodland is the most significant forest vegetation with both ecological and socioeconomic importance. The vegetation has been threatened from land use and cover change due to unsustainable utilization. Over the past two decades, community based forestmanagement (CBFM) has been practiced to address the problem.Given the current need to mitigate global climate change, little is known on the influence of CBFM to the land use and cover change in miombo woodlands and therefore compromising climate change mitigation strategies. This study explored the dynamic of land use and covers change and biomass due to CBFM and established the implication to climate change mitigation.The study revealed increasing miombo woodland cover density with decreasing unsustainable utilization. The observed improvement in cover density and biomass provides potential for climate change mitigation strategies. CBFM also developed solidarity, cohesion, and social control of miombo woodlands illegal extraction.This further enhances permanence, reduces leakage, and increases accountability requirement for carbon credits. Collectively with these promising results, good land use plan at village level and introduction of alternative income generating activities can be among the best options to further reduce land use change and biomass loss in miombo woodlands.This article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/459102Tanzanian and Norwegian government

Knowledge assessment on the effects of climate change due to keeping livestock in urban and periurban areas of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This paper discusses assessment results of the respondents who kept livestock in urban and periurban areas in the three municipalities of Kinondoni, Ilala, and Temeke in Dar es Salaam city region, if they had knowledge that their activities had an effect on climate change. Data show that over two thirds of the respondents did not think that the presence of solid waste, liquid waste, and pollution resulting from keeping livestock would have an effect on climate risks in the future. However, the respondents thought that presence of chemical pollution and land degradation due to keeping livestock in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) would have an effect on climate change. Furthermore, the article stipulates actions that urban livestock keepers would take in the future for mitigating climate risks. In addition, the respondents in UPA thought that people keeping livestock would in the future incur additional costs because of climate risks. The respondents indicated that most livestock types kept in UPA would be vulnerable and sensitive to climate risks and proposed adaptation options to take in the future. It is paramount that time has come for the three Dar es Salaam municipalities of Kinondoni, Ilala and Temeke through their relevant departments (agriculture and livestock, health, planning, community development), among other things, to educate livestock owners on climate risks due to livestock keeping and how to lessen them in the future. Other municipalities in Tanzania and elsewhere could use these results.START, WMO, IPCC, UNE

Dynamics of land use and land cover changes in the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves

Urban growth contributes to land use and land cover changes in protected forest reserves primarily through conversion of peri-urban areas into settlements, agriculture and unsustainable harvesting of ecosystem services to meet demands of the population in the peri-urban and urban areas. It has been widely argued that increased anthropogenic activities have altered the forest cover for Pugu and Kazimzumbwi Forest Reserves. Nonetheless, these arguments are little supported by quantitative data. A study on the dynamics of land use and cover changes in the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi Forest Reserves therefore investigated long-term changes that have occurred as a result of human activities in the areas for the periods 1985-1995 and 1995-2010. Landsat TM and ETM+ images were used to locate and quantify the changes using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Perceptions of local people on historical changes and drivers for the changes were also collected from three neighbouring villages and integrated in the assessment. The analysis was augmented by statistical analysis of 30 years historical rainfall and temperature records from Dar es Salaam and Kisarawe Climatic Stations. The study revealed remarkable decline in closed forest area in the latter period at -1.7 ha/year for Kazimzumbwi Forest Reserve (KFR) and -1.53 ha/year for Pugu Forest Reserve. The woodland variably decreased during the 1985 and 1995 period for both PFR and KFR but increased for PFR and decreased for KFR in the latter period. Unlike for closed forest and woodland, the cultivated land and built up area increased between the two periods for both forests reserves, while other covers variably increased or decreased between the years. The peoples’ perceptions and drivers for the changes are presented and discussed together with the land use and land cover change analysis. The study concludes that, there has been remarkable changes in land use and cover in the catchment and these require concerted actions to reverse the changes and enable the forest reserves contribute to REDD initiatives.CCIA