NTRI FAQs:
Carbon Tanzania
Carbon Tanzania is a carbon offset project developer using the REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) model to generate carbon offsets. REDD+ promotes avoided deforestation, keeping the stored carbon locked in the trees. It is the amount of carbon that is prevented from entering the atmosphere that is scientifically measured as a carbon offset. Carbon Tanzania then links forest communities with the international voluntary carbon market where the offsets are sold to companies and individuals wanting to offset the carbon impact of their daily activities in a bid to slow the rate of global climate change.
Carbon Tanzania develops carbon offset projects in partnership with forest communities on community land. Once the project has been developed the communities manage the project and Carbon Tanzania sells the carbon offsets on the international voluntary carbon market. The revenue generated from offset sales is then paid directly to the community members and not to the central government. The forest communities distribute the funds in a variety of ways including to a dedicated health fund, school fees, the governance and enforcement of the community land use plans, water projects and food rations.
Carbon Tanzania uses the REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) model to generate carbon offsets which protects forests from deforestation. The proceeds from carbon offsets are paid directly to the forest communities when the forest is protected and deforestation does not take place. REDD+ projects need to be certified by independent verification standards to prove the offsets generated are real, measurable and permanent and activities are verified every 5 years to ensure deforestation does not take place, if there is evidence of deforestation certification is withdrawn.
Dorobo Fund
To protect the cultures, people, landscapes, and biodiversity of Tanzania through improved livelihoods and conservation.
The huge growing demand on resources created by a very high population growth rate.
Good governance at all levels. Without good leadership (integrity and wisdom), the chances of success are greatly decreased
Good governance at all levels. Without good leadership (integrity and wisdom), the chances of success are greatly decreased
The landscape is vast, the issues are complex and necessitate collaboration with partners of different strengths and mandates in order to have an impact.
Honeyguide
With the human elephant conflict toolkit that we used to distribute amongst communities, these communities organize groups of people who go out at night and stand-alone on the edge of their farms looking out for elephants. If they see elephants coming towards the farms, they will use the toolkit to turn around and return them back into the national park. All the communities have realized that turning elephants around before they enter the crops is much more effective than trying to get them out of the crops. Currently we have around 490 community volunteers who are up every night and all night long looking out for elephants. Honeyguide provides these community volunteers with toolkits, and these toolkits are effective at chasing elephants away. The most effective tool is the flashlight, that turns around 60% of all the elephants and it is used at the beginning of the contact; it is the Roman candle launcher that is 100% effective however this year it has only been used about 9 times.
Honeyguide’s HEC toolkit is a combination of four sequential gears that’s designed to deter elephants away from crops farms. The toolkit consists of bright LED- torches, blow horns, chilli crackers, and Roman candles (flash flash), which are to be used in a given order respectively depending on the stubbornness of the animal in question.
The primary strategy is one of a deterrent strategy, meaning that with motivated, effective and well-equipped anti-poaching rangers in the field, the areas that honeyguide are working in are not attractive to poachers as the likelihood of being caught is high. The secondary strategy is to ensure that the communities trust and appreciate the work of the rangers and will provide information on any illegal activity in the area; that the intelligence gathering networks are effective and consistent.
Maliasili
Maliasili Initiatives uses the term “organizational strengthening” (as opposed to “capacity building” or other commonly used terms in the change management field) to describe the work it does with its partners. It uses this term because it believes it is the most literal description of what it does – strengthen and improve the organizational performance, impact and leadership of the groups that it works with.
No, instead Maliasili Initiatives seeks out and strengthens leading local organizations that are designing, developing, and implementing cutting-edge projects across East and Southern Africa. All of Maliasili Initiatives’ work is based on a vision of a transformed African natural resource and conservation field that is led by strong local organizations that are designing and able to scale lasting solutions for human well-being and natural systems. To achieve this vision, Maliasili Initiatives seeks to: strengthen those local organizations, build stronger local to global networks and collaborations, and improve the financial models for resourcing effective local organizations.
Maliasili Initiatives supports African organizations, primarily those based in East and Southern Africa, that have the potential to bring about transformative changes that benefit local communities, livelihoods, and ecosystem health in Africa. We are selective in who we work with, since we are making an investment of our time and resources in a given partner’s future impact and performance. We seek out organizations that are innovative, focused on achieving impact, and have an established track record or highly promising and unfilled niche with the potential to improve or scale up their impacts. We want to work with organizations that recognize the value of strengthening their organizations and that are willing and able to invest in the process.
Oikos
Pastoralist women are among the most discriminated people in Tanzania. In addition to bearing children and having an almost unbearable daily workload (collection of water and firewood, preparation of meals, laundry, children caretaking, house building and maintenance, small stock herding and milking), they lack recognitions in terms of human rights: they cannot own land or livestock and lack financial independence.
The Marketplace Literacy initiative is a program originally designed on subsistence marketplaces, aimed at understanding life circumstances and marketplaces in subsistence contexts of urban and rural parts of South India. It is designed to empower illiterate women in becoming confident actors in the marketplace, by boosting their knowledge of the rational behind simple trading strategies. It was adapted to the Tanzanian rural context and in particular to the Maasai cultural context.
Oikos invests in women and youth as recognised catalyzers of development. By increasing women’s knowledge and financial independence through marketplace literacy and technical skills, we can disseminate also the importance of conservation of biodiversity as a development tool. Women who do not live under constant financial restrictions and poverty are less prone to revert to unsustainable practises such as tree cutting for charcoal production to increase their purchasing capacity or to pay to for school fees or medical bills. Moreover, financially independent women have a stronger social recognition and are stronger disseminators of good practices.
Pathfinder International:
Pathfinder believes that when the most basic human needs are neglected, people are unable to serve as good stewards of natural resources. We launched our population, health, and environment programming in the 1980s because we realized that incorporating sexual and reproductive health interventions into existing conservation and livelihood programs in remote and isolated areas brings about exponentially greater results for these communities. Poor access to reproductive health care, destructive extraction of natural resources, and inadequate local governance structures are all connected—so we must build an integrated solution to see real change.
- Need for Family planning services and commodities
- Maternal health; and
- Essential immunization services for children.
Indeed, population dynamics can and often do interact with conservation outcomes, but the relationships are highly complex. Fear of natural resource scarcity brought about by uncontrolled population growth has historically led to terrible violations of human rights, especially women’s right to choose whether and when to have children. Notably, countries such as China and India adopted policies that sought national control over reproduction. The results led to the setting of population targets and to high levels of coercive abortion and sterilization. In 1994, countries met at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, and signed on to the principle that “all couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and means to do so.” Countries agreed that raising women’s education and status and focusing on rights would lead to positive population and development outcomes. However, societal investments on women and girls are lagging far behind. Most developing countries failed to meet the Millennium Development Goal set in 2000 of improving maternal health, with a target of achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015. In September 2015, world leaders ratified a new set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals that concluded that in order to achieve its 169 targets, it is imperative that universal access to reproductive health as well as sexual and reproductive rights are guaranteed, and that gender equality is essential. We must now double our efforts to ensure that women’s and girls’ needs are met and they could freely exercise their rights, so that they could meaningfully contribute to their countries’ development, including the conservation of our planet’s magnificent resources.
Tanzania People and Wildlife
In addition to its highly successful Living Walls program, which protects livestock by replacing traditional enclosures with environmentally-friendly, predator-proof corrals, TPW supports community-based conflict prevention officers as part of its Warriors for Wildlife team. Conflict prevention officers currently collect information on large carnivore-livestock conflict events across 24 communities of Northern Tanzania. They also help to reduce such conflicts by helping herders find lost livestock that have strayed from the group. If not found by nightfall, these animals can easily become prey for predators.
At pasture, conflict prevention officers work tirelessly to alert community members to the presence of lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, and wild dogs, redirecting livestock herds out of harm’s way. When an incident of human-wildlife conflict occurs, conflict prevention officers are trained to respond immediately, diffusing the situation and collecting accurate information about the event. This information is stored in a database and used to determine future locations for the installation of Living Walls.
Access to environmental information, education, and training is the gateway to developing real community empowerment. TPW’s environmental education programs provide local people with the skills and resources necessary to understand and take control of their environment’s future. Recognizing the importance of both the current and the next generation of environmental leaders, TPW provides educational and training opportunities for both children and adults in Northern Tanzania.
Youth environmental education
Job training and opportunities for learning beyond primary school (Grade 5) are rare for rural youth in Northern Tanzania. Through TPW’s youth environmental education program—the largest of its kind on the Maasai Steppe—schoolchildren are provided with valuable opportunities that are not found through traditional education. By engaging in immersive learning experiences such as after-school Wildlife Clubs, Environmental Summer Camps, and national park trips, young people are learning about local wildlife conservation and community stewardship. Additionally, they are gaining essential life skills such as teamwork, leadership, and peer teaching. The highest-achieving students receive full scholarships to a private secondary school, an opportunity that most local youth cannot afford.
Adult environmental management seminars
Developed by TPW and co-taught by trainers from the community, a series of five environmental management seminars equip community leaders, women’s groups, and other ambitious rural citizens with the skills to lead environmental conservation projects. As a result of these seminars, community members are learning how to sustain their most valuable natural resources. In addition, they are discontinuing activities that are destructive to the environment, such as wildlife poaching and charcoal production. As of 2016, TPW has trained 1,000 adults in environmental management and works with 10 community trainers.
TPW utilizes community-based wildlife and rangeland monitoring to measure the success of its conservation programs and to keep a pulse on the overall health of the ecosystem. All information obtained from wildlife and rangeland monitoring is maintained at the Noloholo Environmental Center. The following three main methods are used:
- Big Cat Signs and Sightings: TPW-supported conflict officers report signs and sightings of big cats in their communities using Smart Phones linked to an Online Data Kit system. The presence of these big cats is a strong indicator of the overall health of the ecosystem. Additionally, TPW’s specially-skilled team of Hadzabe hunter-gatherer lion trackers can help count and identify the number of lions, cheetahs, leopards, and hyena that cross a given road at night. From these numbers, it is possible to understand the number of carnivores in a given study area and evaluate changes in populations over time.
- Wildlife Counts: TPW’s Warriors for Wildlife team helps to count the number of animals seen while driving down specific roads. A mathematical formula is then used to calculate how many individuals of each species live across an entire study area. This method is particularly effective for herbivore populations when done repetitively over time.
- Rangeland Monitoring: TPW-supported community rangeland monitoring teams collect vital information regarding pasture health, seasonal livestock grazing patterns and water availability. This information is critical in order for pastoralists to make wise decisions regarding the use of their pastures which impacts both livestock and wildlife populations.
The Nature Conservancy
Success is to have sustainable grass and habitat management in the key livestock grazing and wildlife movement areas. By connecting the national parks, community wildlife management areas and other core conservation areas with grazing corridors we can ensure that wildlife will be durable contributions to the nations tourism economy. These same grazing corridors and well managed village land use plans will sustain maasai livestock economy and ensure that local people have recurring benefits from nature.
TNC’s role is to design solutions to create a functioning social, ecological and economic landscape in Northern Tanzania. We do this by bringing the right partners together to address all the contributing factors that put negative pressure on the ecosystem. By addressing grazing management, local governance, reproductive health, thriving economies, agricultural productivity and climate change, we believe that we can sustain this landscape for people and nature for years to come.
We start small. We identify progressive pastoralists who have the desire to change behavior and we work with them to create examples of how lives and livelihoods can be improved. We use these forward thinking folks as model bomas (households) and work with them to invoke change in others across the landscape.
Ujamaa Community Resource Team
UCRT does LUP to ensure that our target beneficiaries – communities – are able to manage, control, and benefit from their land and natural resources. LUP enables communities to reduce conflicts and to secure land rights for communally used areas as well as for individuals. LUP is a proactive process towards sustainable management of community livelihoods and wildlife habitats, and the community can add value to their land as part of the process. LUP facilities connectivity, enabling both livestock and wildlife to use rangelands sustainably.
UCRT’s approach to LUP is a community driven process, that considers both interest for livelihoods/human and wildlife. Wildlife conservation areas are more targeted, just focusing on wildlife in isolation without having a human face. Therefore UCRT’s approach to LUP is more inclusive and promotes co-existence. UCRT also engages in national level advocacy efforts in order to inform government and decision makers about the benefits of our work in hopes this will influence policy developments that favor communities and wildlife co-existing.
The logic for connectivity to allow wildlife corridor and grazing areas. The wildlife conservationist call corridors while the pastoralists community call communal grazing areas, there’s not conflict of interest because is serves the purpose of both groups (livestock as a livelihoods and wildlife conservation). The only challenges is when separation is created to favour on interest, its contrary to the principles of co-existence
Wildlife Conversation Society
The wildlife migration in the Tarangire ecosystem is driven by water availability and differences in forage quality. The soils, and therefore vegetation, in Tarangire National Park are deficient in certain minerals, particularly phosphorus, which forces large ungulates to move to mineral-rich areas outside the national park, mainly to the Simanjiro plains to the east and the Lake Natron area to the north. The wildlife remains in these dispersal areas on community lands until the standing water dries up, after which they return to Tarangire National Park, which has a permanent water supply because of the Tarangire River. If animals were unable to move to dispersal areas their populations would likely crash; this is why it is so important to protect migration corridors and dispersal areas in the ecosystem.
