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Poverty alleviation should start with home-grown initiatives
2006-02-28 08:25:56
By Editor
Recently there has been a change of mindset about the contribution of the natural environment towards poverty alleviation, with communities realizing the need to translate the natural resources embodied in the environment into agents of raising their quality of life.
Ordinarily, communities see little connection between conservation of the environment and poverty alleviation let alone the fact that the natural resources around them could go a long way towards providing them with quality food, decent houses, good clothes and other basic needs.
As a result, people from far away places, some even beyond the country’s borders have been able to make good use of land, forests, fisheries, water, among others, to earn a lot of money while communities siting on these resources have remained poor.
Communities along Tanzania’s coastal areas of Tanga, Pangani, Bagamoyo, Mafia , Rufiji, Kilwa, Lindi and Mtwara are among the poorest in the country.
Ironically, these areas are endowed with abundant natural resources in the form of fisheries, mangrove forests and fertile land.
Rufiji district boasts of the biggest mangrove body, but most of the products are smuggled out of the country by unscrupulous businessmen, leaving the community with nothing but a destroyed environment.
Likewise Mafia Island and its environs have abundant fish supplies as this is the biggest breeding ground in the whole of East African coast.
Yet communities are just as poor as their counterparts in areas where there are scanty natural resources.
The same can be said about communities in Kilombero District and a good part of Kigoma region.
Both areas have fertile soil on which almost any crop can grow.
However residents in these areas are still languishing in poverty.
While the reason for the failure of the communities to benefit from natural resources might be lack of awareness, national policies on poverty alleviation have not emphasized the importance of natural resources in the poverty alleviation drive.
The focus has often been on more donations, grants and debt cancellation.
At the 2005 World Summit that preceded the UN 60th General Assembly in September last year, development organizations including IUCN and WWF strongly urged governments in developing countries to use their natural resources to alleviate poverty before looking further afield for donations , grants and loans.
They noted with concern that countries had not fully utilized their natural resources to raise the quality of life of their people and that there was need to take a fresh look at the contribution of natural resources in poverty alleviation.
It is encouraging to note that some communities have already started to benefit from the natural resources around them by translating them into wealth to better their lives. In Tanga district , for example, villagers along the coast now engage in crab and fish farming as well as beekeeping projects, activities that have greatly raised their incomes.
Negotiations are underway between village governments and the district council to reach an agreement on how much revenue accruing from the sale of mangrove poles should be retained by the village governments.
Recently, the ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism assigned WWF- Tanzania Programme Office to undertake the Sea Scape Project that would benefit about 150,000 families in Rufiji, Mafia and Kilwa coastal areas. The project aims to enable the families engage in coastal and marine resource management so as to raise their incomes and attain sustainable livelihoods.
The project also seeks to raise awareness about the economic potential of coastal and marine resources and build local capacity for natural resources protection.
Communities around Lake Victoria will soon benefit from conservation of the environment following the Lake Victoria Research (VicRes) Initiative, a project that seeks to address environmental restoration as a way of poverty reduction.
The broad outcome of the project will be betterment of people’s lives through environmental conservation and protection.
We think that this new thinking of poverty alleviation through sustainable use of natural resources should spread to many parts of the country.
The government has only to set up the necessary conditions and other stakeholders could go ahead and help communities to translate natural resources into wealth.
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