Wild edible plants (WEPS) are an important source of nutrients and income particularly to poor households. However, information on how WEPS contribute to rural livelihoods varies due to heterogeneous methodologies and settings. This paper is based on a study that investigated the contribution of WEPs on rural livelihoods in semiarid Kondoa District, Dodoma Region, Tanzania. Mixed methods were used to collect data from 343 households (14.32%), comprising six focus group discussions and six key informant interviews with district officials. Findings show that whereas 97% of households use WEPs more on subsistence basis, 8.2% use it for income generation. Income generated from WEPs accounted for about 9.16% of household income, which is somewhat closely to other sources. More or less, prices are even higher than those of corn when compared with national figures. However, income generated from sale of WEPs, though substantial, is less accounted for in household capital assets, rather than satisfying the household's basic requirements. Thus, there is a need to recognize the role of WEPs to rural livelihoods in reducing vulnerability to food insecurity and developing interventions that can improve access to use and management of natural resources.
This paper presents findings on the links between coastal/marine resources endowment and climate change resilience to coastal communities in Mchungu and Kivinja' A' village on the coastal zone of Rufiji District in Tanzania. The study focused on exploring the existing coastal resources and their support to communities' livelihood, climatic threats that are experienced, and the role of coastal resources in enhancing communities' resilience. It further sought to establish other enabling factors for climate change adaptation (e.g., gender, education, governance, by-laws, and membership in social networks). The study used focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and household surveys in data collection. Findings show that Mchungu village is endowed with fish, mangrove, natural canal, and floodplains as their major coastal resources, while Kivinja' A' is rich in salt and coconut production. Communities in both villages exploit these coastal resources for their livelihood activities such as fishing, agriculture, and business. The study further found that coastal communities are already experiencing the effects of climate change through temperature rise, flooding, drought, sea-level rise, and storm surges. These affect household food security in terms of fish catch and crop production. The study revealed that coastal and marine resources were important for increasing community resilience (P ≤ 0.05) to climate change impacts in the studied villages. However, household resilience to climate change impacts was also influenced by gender, by-laws, education, and membership in social networks.
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