Community Attachment and Environmental Stewardship: A Peri-Urban Perspective

This Chapter questions the negligence of attachment scholarship in the context of environmental stewardship with a specific focus in peri-urban areas. This Chapter has illuminated the imperatives of considering place attachement as an important factor in realizing environment stewardship in peri-urban areas. Three selected hamlets (Nzasa, Kisarawe and Pugu-Kibaoni) constitute the study area. A standard closed-ended questionnaire for assessing the extent of attachment of the community was deployed. Literature review on the other hand was used to map baseline information of the study area including the historical significance of the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves. Three attachment attributes were explored;, community knowlegiability levels of the area; level of thoughts and feelings of the area; and the extent of community connection to natural resources in the area. It was revealed that the extent of community connection to the forest reserves are relatively strong. The study revealed considerable contrast on forest knowledgiability levels among men and women in the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves. Males are generally revealed to be more knowledgiable of the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves as compared to their female counterparts. The study revealed that there was substantial relationship between residence status and the level of thoughts and feelings on the forest reserves. The study has shown that natives have more thoughts and feelings of the present and the future of the forest reserves as compared to those who migrated from other parts of the country. The findings suggest that community attachment is of considerable importance in influencing environmental behavior either positively or negatively. Whilist the empirical evidence are drawn from the peri-urban areas of Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves of Dar es Salaam city, the message thereoff is representing a broad reality in the peri-urban areas of the Global South. The inclusion of community attachment perspective in negotiating environmental stewardship is advocated for as it might contribute in addressing the growing degradation of natural resources in peri-urban areas which has been increasingly declining

The ‘peri-urban turn’:A systems thinking approach for a paradigm shift in reconceptualising urban-rural futures in the global South

With the rapid pace of urbanization, urban sprawl has become a prevalent phenomenon, particularly in the global South, leading to the emergence of peri-urban spaces where rural-urban interfaces occur. These peri-urban areas exhibit dynamic and continuous interactions among social, economic, and environmental systems, offering valuable insights for fostering resilient futures. However, this aspect remains largely unexplored in current research due to a lack of innovative methodological approaches that effectively capture the complementarities, potentialities, and contestations inherent in the dynamics of peri-urban areas. We contend that peri-urbanisation needs to be reconceptualized as an alternative socio-spatial framework that extends the predominantly Eurocentric discourse on counterurbanisation, making it more inclusive of the emerging urban-rural transformations in the global South. By doing so, we can better understand and address the complex dynamics and challenges associated with peri-urban areas and develop strategies to foster resilience in these contexts

Climate change resilience : exploring socio-ecological system resilience for livelihood effects of climate change in peri-urban areas

Ecosystem services are increasingly regarded as having the potential for building resilience to the effects of climate change in urban and peri-urban areas. Despite this, the knowledge of ecosystem services typologies aligned with analysis of how they might contribute in building resilience for specific effects of climate change is largely lacking, especially in peri-urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. This lacuna explains in part the limited mainstreaming of ecosystem services into climate change resilience pathways. The overarching aim of this Thesis is to investigate the potential contribution of cultural and provisioning ecosystem services in building resilience for the livelihood effects of climate change in peri-urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa from a socio-ecological perspective. The Thesis analyses two progressive case studies, which have been complementing each other at different levels of both empirical and theoretical analysis. Empirical data was collected via a systematic literature review, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and household surveys. The results were analysed following socio-ecological system resilience thinking, using adaptive capacity as the analytical frame. The results show that literature is largely silent on the contribution of the cultural and provisioning ecosystem services in building resilience for climate change effects in peri-urban areas, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the investigated case for socio-ecological system adaptive capacities it was revealed that the case has considerable resilience-building potential aligned to cultural and provisioning ecosystem services. These include: ecological knowledge (ethnic diversity, promising literacy rates, and diverse age cohorts), economic diversity (bee keeping industry, tourism industry in its multiple forms i.e. food tourism, arts and crafts tourism and nature tourism). It also showed that social milieu constitutes an important adaptive capacity towards building socio-ecological system resilience for the livelihood effects of climate change in peri-urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is substantiated by the analysed synergies between bonding and bridging social capital on the one hand and the identified cultural and provisioning ecosystem services based adaptive capacities towards building win-win-win resilience for the livelihood effects of climate change. The Thesis contributes to knowledge on the potential contribution of cultural and provisioning ecosystem services in building effective resilience for livelihood effects of climate change in periurban areas. The results are revelatory and thus will invoke similar research elsewhere

Exploring the contribution of social capital in building resilience for climate change effects in peri-urban areas, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This article aims to contribute to the literature on the quest for resilient cities by focusing on the climate change resilience building discourse in peri-urban areas, and specifically by exploring the role of social capital-an under-researched topic. The article examines bonding social capital and bridging social capital, with a focus on how they can potentially contribute to, or inhibit, the socio-ecological system resilience building processes in the context of climate change reality in peri-urban areas. Theoretically, the author draws on the existing social capital and resilience related literatures; empirically, the article presents findings from a study conducted in the peri-urban areas of Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam city in Tanzania. The study deployed a household survey and key informant interviews. It found that both bonding and bridging social capital were strong in the research area, suggesting the feasibility of building resilience to climate change effects. Examples are given of a number of resilience building interventions that were established through synergies between social capital actors and local communities, although some doubt is cast over the sustainability of these initiatives. Overall, both theoretical and empirical evidence suggests the importance of including a focus on social capital in exploring the building of climate change resilience pathways in peri-urban areas, and especially in the context of the global south

Socio-ecological resilience to climate change effects in peri-urban areas: insights from the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This article is exploring socio-ecological system adaptive capacities for building resilience to climate change effects in the peri-urban belt of Dar es Salaam, at the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves. Three selected hamlets (Nzasa, Kisarawe and Pugu–Kibaoni) constitute the study area. A combination of household interview, key informant interview, focus group discussion complemented by literature review compose data collection techniques deployed. The study revealed diverse socio-ecological system ‘adaptive capacities’ for building resilience to climate change effects. These includes socio-cultural i.e. heterogenous ethnic groups, promising literacy rate, diverse age cohorts within the population and diverse occupations. Another set of adaptive capacities at Pugu and Kazimzumbwi socio-ecological system regards diverse and innovative ecosystem services based income generating activities i.e. Bee keeping industry and tourism industry in its multiple forms (food tourism, arts and craft tourism and nature tourism). Overall, the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi socio-ecological system has considerable adaptive capacities providing ample platform for agents to act upon in building resilience to climate change effects. It is hereby recommended that the nature, role and extent of agency be explored so as to establish the status quo and therefore the feasible entry point for policy intervention

Community perceptions and willingness to accept and execute REDD+ initiative: the case of Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves, Tanzania

The study examined community perceptions and willingness to accept and execute Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative at Pugu and Kazimzumbwi Forest Reserves (PKFRs) in the course of addressing the overriding problem of climate change. The survey was conducted in two villages' i.e. Kisarawe and Kazimzumbwi adjacent to PKFRs. A total of 110 respondents were randomly selected with a sampling intensity of 10%. Key informants interview, focus group discussion (FGD) and in-depth interviews using a questionnaire administered to selected community members were the major techniques used in data collection. Regarding community perceptions and acceptability of the REDD+ initiative, the study revealed low level of acceptance (16.2%), which was highly attributed to low level of awareness on the initiative. Poor governance and poor community involvement in REDD+ activities were highly ranked as REDD+ perceived problems. Lack of livelihood options was observed to be constraining factor behind community support to the initiative. The study concludes that, for the success and sustainability of REDD+ initiative at PKFRs, robust livelihood options like training the community on how to make charcoal out of dry leaves are needed to be crafted at the shoes of the community in line with educating the community on the rationality of the initiative in their locality.This article is also available at: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/ccc/article/view/j.ccc. 192367002013.2441United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC