Posted on September, 07 2006

By Anthony Field*

It is the dry season in Tanzania’s highlands when I enter a mud house in the dusty village of Ihahi in the country’s southwest. Here, in the dim of the light, I find a dozen or so people chanting and punching the air with their fists.

I wonder if I’ve stumbled on a political rally. But as I listen closely to what they are saying, I realize it is more a pep rally of sorts, praising the success of their community conservation banks (or COCOBA for short).

“Water is life!” goes the chant. “Let us use it wisely and conserve its sources. COCOBA is our saviour, alleviating poverty and improving our environment.” The chanters then settle down to their weekly meeting to discuss community banking and issues that effect life within the water catchment area of the Great Ruaha River.

Tanzania’s Great Ruaha River flows through the Usangu wetlands and the magnificent Ruaha National Park within a river basin that is home to more than three million people. Overuse of water resources, particularly for rice irrigation schemes, coupled with intensive livestock grazing and deforestation, have seen this river dry up each year for longer and longer periods – the record is 111 consecutive days.

After the meeting, in the cool of the hut, I chat with Exavery Mbaya, one of the COCOBA officials, about life in the village and the severe water restrictions.

Seven years ago, Exavery made the break from farming to become a tailor, so he understands all too well why these community banks, which were set up with help from WWF, are so important to the future of the community.

“They provide people with access to loans for the first time,” he explains. “It has allowed me to expand my business and send my two children to secondary school.”

Exavery beams, proud that he has broken free of the dependency on agriculture that ties more than 80 per cent of the population to the land. His children are now in the minority who go to secondary school and have a chance to make a better life for themselves.

“Before the community banks, if the crops failed here the need for money would drive people to damage their environment,” he says. “Today, the bank members act like environmental ambassadors, spreading the word to people beyond the COCOBAs about water management and other environmental matters.”

Running dry in the Highlands
Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, with average incomes nearly 100 times lower than those in the UK. However, this southern African nation is rich in natural resources, which its people depend upon — from water and soil for agriculture, to a healthy marine environment for fishing. The highland regions, such as the land that feeds the Great Ruaha River, are well-watered, but mismanagement has resulted in this mighty river running dry at certain times of the year.

Petro Masolwa, a man born with a smile on his face, is WWF’s man in Ruaha.

“Thirty years ago, the government identified this region as suitable for irrigation and invested in large state farms as well as created irrigation canals and ditches for small farmers,” he explains. “People flocked to the area, but their poor farming practices have led to water shortages and conflict.”

Since the 1990s, misuse of water upstream caused the river to stop flowing at the peak of the dry season, putting severe pressure on the wildlife — including including lions, hippos, kudus and crocodiles — within the Ruaha National Park further downstream. Visiting the nearby village of Maniega, I find that it severely affects man as well as beast.

In heat so intense I could taste the dryness, women were collecting water from the Kioga River — a tributary of the Great Ruaha — by scooping it into buckets. The water can only be found at the bottom of a 1.5m hole in the dry river bed. Perversely, in the wet season, the level of silt causes the river to burst its banks.

Finding shade under a bridge across the silted up river, I speak to Haule Leodgar, a government trainer who is working with WWF.

“Villagers remember the deep river,” he says. “Now they ask me what has gone wrong. The problem lies 150km upstream, where poor farming practices result in sediment being eroded from fields into the river.

To address the situation, WWF is working with the local communities, creating and training water users associations to manage the river better. These associations are spreading across the whole catchment area, bringing communities together to offer training on fair distribution and efficient water use. In addition to cutting the use of water for irrigation, they are also helping to improve crop yields and incomes of farmers. Crucially, they also help people to understand one another’s needs, which is vital in reducing localized conflicts.

Haule is right, there is room for optimism. The number of conflicts has already been reduced. What’s more, this year the Great Ruaha River is still flowing at the peak of the dry season, providing water for wildlife and people.

Down by the coast
My next destination is Mafia Island. It’s also in Tanzania, but feels like it’s a world away from the sunburnt landscape of Ruaha. Mafia — a group of islands off the Tanzanian coast on the the Indian Ocean — offers white sandy beaches and translucent seas that fit the stereotype of how a tropical island should look.

Here, one finds Tanzania’s world-renowned Mafia Island Marine Park, a group of five small islands whose coral reefs, sea grass beds, and mangroves host some of the richest life on the east African coast. Marine turtles, humpback and sperm whales, 400 species of fish, and the the occasional dugong, all claim the waters as home. Some 15,000 people also call the islands home, with most earning their living from harvesting coconuts and fishing the turquoise seas.

But there is a flip side to paradise. While there, I witness the ups and downs of this abundant marine life — from the thrill of watching turtles hatch and spying a whale during an aerial survey, to the sad sight of a dugong drowned in fishing nets, and the sinister glimpse of a suspected illegal fishing vessel. These foreign ships take advantage of the region’s limited capacity to enforce fishing restrictions, and target the wealth of fish here.

Over the years, the park has won the battle against the most damaging form of fishing — using dynamite to stun or kill fish. Better still, conservationists and local officials are now on the threshold of another milestone —ridding the park of seine net fishing, which involves fine-meshed nets being dragged through shallow waters, causing damage to corals and seagrass beds. The nets also indiscriminately catch small juvenile fish that are useless to the fishermen but important for the productivity of fisheries.

To understand the scale of this latest achievement, I examine a 2003 fisheries census. At that time four villages located within the park’s boundaries that had not stopped seine net fishing were using 225 nets, with a staggering combined length of more than 10km. Since then, WWF has worked with the local communities to ensure that the majority of seine nets are handed in, or at least exchanged for less damaging types of net.

“WWF is helping fishermen and local communities to diversify away from their dependence on natural resources,” says Thomas Chale, an enterprise development coordinator for WWF.

To achieve this, WWF has created two schemes: a cooperative credit and savings scheme, similar to the COCOBA in Ruaha; and a loan scheme to encourage seine net fishermen to adopt alternative, sustainable livelihoods.

Creating alternatives
The beneficiaries of the loan scheme are typified by Mr Mbaraka, a local fisherman. With two fishing boats he was once one of the most powerful seine net fishermen operating in the marine park. But last year he swapped his nets for a two tonne truck, using a WWF-supported loan, to fulfil a transportation contract with the fish-processing factory in nearby Kilindoni. As he repays the loan, the money will be reinvested to develop more sustainable alternative livelihoods.

Not far from the marine park headquarters, I meet 20-year-old Juma Abdallah tending his garage. He and his two partners also used to be seine net fishermen but swapped fishing to open up a petrol station, the only one on the east side of Mafia that services the communities as well as the marine park headquarters and tourist hotels. Each of the partners now has a respectable salary of 45,000 Tanzanian shillings a month (about US$35), which is above the national average.

“We talked to WWF about new businesses and decided on the fuel station,” says Juma. “After we gave up fishing, WWF helped us with business training such as marketing and financial management. Our business is going well and we want to expand.”

Travelling in Tanzania, I’m struck by the ease with which Petro, Thomas and other WWF staff connected with the communities and their problems. But it is not surprising. They live in these projects, they meet these people every day, share their frustrations and happiness. They want them to have better lives in an improved environment and they believe passionately in the work that WWF does to conserve wildlife through supporting the development of sustainable livelihoods.

* Anthony Field is Deputy Head of Press at WWF-UK.

END NOTES:

• Tanzania is the largest East African country, and the catchment area of the River Rufiji, in the south and southwest of the country, accounts for nearly 20 per cent of the country's area. The Great Ruaha River supplies 22 per cent of the total flow of the Rufiji catchment system. From its headwaters, also in the Kipengere Mountains, the Great Ruaha River descends to the Usangu plains, a critically important region in Tanzania for irrigated agriculture (mostly rice) and livestock. The wetland system of the plains is also important for the households around the area and for the adjacent Usangu Game Reserve. The river eventually reaches the Mtera reservoir and then flows south to the Kidatu dam. These two dams together generate about 50 per cent of the Tanzania's electricity. The Ruaha continues southwards and cuts across the Selous Game Reserve before feeding into the Rufiji. The mangrove forest on the Rufiji delta is the largest in Africa.

• WWF was very involved in the creation of Mafia Island Marine Park, which was established in 1995. The global conservation organization currently assists in the management of the marine park so that the ecosystem and biodiversity are maintained for the benefit of the people of Tanzania, and particularly the Mafia Island community. In particular, WWF is facilitating the development of economic activities to reduce pressure on the park's natural resources and address the high levels of poverty on the islands of the marine park. WWF is also promoting environmental awareness and education, and working with local communities to explore sustainable livelihood activities, such as aquaculture and beekeeping, and to establish credit facilities for the communities.