Integrated development, risk management and community-based climate change adaptation in a mountain-plains system in Northern Tanzania

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of work conducted along altitudinal gradients in the mountains and plains of northern Tanzania. We find evidence of a high degree of interdependence among groups of people of different language/cultural groups and socio-economic status interacting along environmental gradients from high to low altitude. We call this “socio-geographical adaptation” to climate change. However, our analysis and discussion adds complexity to any simple notion of “adaptation to climate change” since changes are multiple and adaptation is complex

Differentiated livelihoods, local institutions, and the adaptation imperative: Assessing climate change adaptation policy in Tanzania

“…Livelihood diversification-and accompanying economic stratification-accelerated with economic liberalization and have continued apace, as wage labor was supplemented by a range of rural ''non-farm'' sources of income such as small-scale trading and transportation (Bryceson, 1999;Ponte, 2001;Wangui et al, 2012). Pastoralist diversification into agriculture and expansion of irrigation farming has led to increased conflict over land access, with village authorities' ability to adjudicate access rights in question, even where village land use plans have been enacted (Mbonile, 2005).…”

“…A third critical role of formal institutions in transitional adaptation is to evaluate and diffuse what might otherwise be isolated and spontaneous but effective practices to manage climate risk (e.g., for example, new local practices in pest management or income diversification) (Mercer et al, 2008;Wangui et al, 2012). Drawing from community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM), practitioner experience suggests that such scaling up requires ''a functioning institutional infrastructure and so was most likely to be found within a supportive, inclusive and open governance system'' (Pelling and Smith, 2008: 19;Pelling, 2011).…”

“…In the international policy arena, adaptation is now at the center of negotiations within the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) framework, resulting in an internationally-mandated process through which LDCs identify national priorities through the development of National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) in anticipation of adaptation finance through various mechanisms (UNFCCC, 2001). Mainstreaming is a central concern because the integration of adaptation policy into LDC development policy may take advantage of synergies between rural development, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation (Wangui et al, 2012;Wisner et al, 2014;O'Brien et al, 2006). Indeed, progress toward global development priorities enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals will likely require comprehensive inclusion of climate change adaptation alongside disaster risk reduction concerns in development policies (Schipper and Pelling, 2006).…”

“…Where such policies and interventions ignore societal differentiation in livelihoods, resource access and resultant climate risk, adaptation could be fundamentally at odds with core notions of sustainable development and even threaten progress toward poverty alleviation (Eriksen et al, 2011). Thus, both spontaneous and planned adaptation increasingly confront political questions of social equity and justice in sharing the burdens and benefits of adaptation, highlighting the need to reconsider adaptation as not merely an unavoidable response to environmental change but a set of individual and collective choices embedded within existing institutions and structures of development (Agrawal, 2008;O'Brien, 2012;Wangui et al, 2012). It follows that the realization of synergies between adaptation and development would not merely require steps toward piecemeal technical ''climate-proofing'' of development sectors (e.g., agriculture, health) within conventional development frameworks, but may require transitional and transformative forms of adaptation that address institutions, governance, and the broader set of discourses and ideologies of development (Pelling, 2011).…”

“…In constructing human-environmental geographies of adaptation, an anti-politics of adaptation would draw on the dominant narratives of the ''apolitical ecologies'' (Robbins, 2012) of eco-scarcity and modernization, wherein technocratic interventions targeting productivity and improved management of environmental resources are the primary means of avoiding environmental calamities. Just as Hart (2001) argues that intentional development has tended to obscure immanent processes of development and social change, technocratic planned adaptation may eclipse and even render less effective the adaptive practices and capacities of communities-what Wangui et al (2012) have called spontaneous adaptation, following usage suggested by the IPCC .…”