Formal water rights in rural Tanzania: Deepening the dichotomy?

Water rights / Water law / Water scarcity / Water use / Water users’ associations / Irrigation water / Cost recovery

Toward a sustainable and resilient future

This chapter focuses on the implications of changing climate extremes for development, and considers how disaster risk management and climate change adaptation together can contribute to a sustainable and resilient future. Changes in the frequency, timing, magnitude, and characteristics of extreme events pose challenges to the goals of reducing disaster risk and vulnerability, both in the present and in the future. Enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to cope with, adapt to, and shape change is central to building sustainable and resilient development pathways in the face of climate change. The concept for social-ecological systems recognizes the interdependence of social and ecological factors in the generation and management of risk, as well as in the pursuit of sustainable development. Despite 20 years on the policy agenda, sustainable development remains contested and elusive. However, within the context of climate change, it is becoming increasingly clear that the sustainability of humans on the Earth is closely linked to resilient social-ecological systems, which is influenced by social institutions, human agency, and human capabilities

Summary of household baseline survey results: Lushoto, Tanzania

This report summarizes the results of a baseline household-­‐level survey, led by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), carried out in 7 villages and 140 households in Lushoto, Tanzania in January 2011. The objective of this baseline effort was to describe the characteristics of the farming systems found across a wide range of research sites in 12 countries, including the Lushoto site, and to better understand what kinds of farming practice changes households have been making and why

Water rights and water fees in rural Tanzania

In Molle, Francois; Berkoff, J. (Eds.). Irrigation water pricing: the gap between theory and practice. Wallingford, UK: CABIComprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture Series

Formal water rights in rural Tanzania: deepening the dichotomy?

In the past decade the Tanzanian government, with a loan from the World Bank, designed and implemented a new administrative water rights system with the aim of improving basin-level water management and cost-recovery for government water-resource management services. This paper evaluates the processes and impacts after the first years of implementing the new system in the Upper Ruaha catchment. In this area, the l11<l:iority of water users are small-scale irrigators and livestock keepers who develop and manage water according to customary arrangements, without much state support. Although water resources are abundant, growing water demands intensifY water scarcity during the dry season. Contrary to expectations, the new system has failed as a registration tool, a taxation tool, and a water management tool, and has also contributed to aggravating rural poverty. As a taxation tool, the system not only introduces corruption by design, but also drains government coffers because the collection costs are higher than any revenue gained. As a water management tool, the new system aggravates upstream-do,vnstreanl conflicts, because the upstream water users claim that paying for water entitles them to use it as they like. However, unlike these and other counterproductive impacts of the new system, the taxation of the few private large-scale water users according to negotiated rates appeared to be feasible. The paper argues that the root of these paradoxical results lies in the dichotomy between the 'modern' large-scale rural and urban economy with its corresponding legislation and the rural spheres in which Tanzania's m<l:jority of small-scale water users live under customary water tenure. While the new water rights system fits the relatively better-off minority to some extent, it is an anomaly for Tanzania's majority of poor \yater users. Illis paper concludes by suggesting easy adaptations in the current water rights system that would accommodate both groups ohvater users, improve cost-recovery for government services, mitigate ,vater conflicts and alleviate rural povert

East African food security as influenced by future climate change and land use change at local to regional scales

Climate change impacts food production systems, particularly in locations with large, vulnerable populations. Elevated greenhouse gases (GHG), as well as land cover/land use change (LCLUC), can influence regional climate dynamics. Biophysical factors such as topography, soil type, and seasonal rainfall can strongly affect crop yields. We used a regional climate model derived from the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) to compare the effects of projected future GHG and future LCLUC on spatial variability of crop yields in East Africa. Crop yields were estimated with a process-based simulation model. The results suggest that: (1) GHG-influenced and LCLUC-influenced yield changes are highly heterogeneous across this region; (2) LCLUC effects are significant drivers of yield change; and (3) high spatial variability in yield is indicated for several key agricultural sub-regions of East Africa. Food production risk when considered at the household scale is largely dependent on the occurrence of extremes, so mean yield in some cases may be an incomplete predictor of risk. The broad range of projected crop yields reflects enormous variability in key parameters that underlie regional food security; hence, donor institutions strategies and investments might benefit from considering the spatial distribution around mean impacts for a given region. Ultimately, global assessments of food security risk would benefit from including regional and local assessments of climate impacts on food production. This may be less of a consideration in other regions. This study supports the concept that LCLUC is a first-order factor in assessing food production risk