Abstract:
Access to water and land resources underpins the socio-economic fabric of many
societies in the Southern Africa region, which is characterized broadly as
underdeveloped with widespread food insecurity, exacerbated by persistent droughts,
erratic rainfalls and increasing human populations. The availability of land and water
resources is increasingly diminishing and becoming a stumbling block to the
development of the agrarian societies in the region. The poor households have in turn
adopted new livelihood coping mechanisms but little research has been done to assess
the effectiveness of these ‘instruments’. Consequently, the concepts of sustainable
water resources management and agricultural development have remained elusive and
poorly understood by policy makers as well as by water resources planners and
managers. Recognizing this, a study was conducted between 2002 and 2005 under the
RIPARWIN (Raising Irrigation Productivity and Releasing Water for Intersectoral
Needs) project to assess the spatial dynamics of livelihood capital, vulnerability and
coping strategies for the poor agrarian households in the Upper Great Ruaha River
Catchment (GRRC) in Tanzania. The results of analysis showed an array of livelihood
platforms and institutional contexts that act to shape the existing livelihood typologies
in the GRRC. In addition, the results showed a gradual increase in household
vulnerability from upstream to downstream, particularly in terms of access to physical
and natural assets. Vulnerability was found to be directly associated with the number
of dependants. The female–headed households were relatively more likely to be
vulnerable than the male-headed households (c.f. probabilities of 27% and 21%
respectively). The value of collective arrangements and drawing on social networks
crosscut all social strata and ranked as the most common livelihood strategy. This
suggests that the scope for reducing vulnerability among the poor households in the
GRRC critically depends on the existing institutional arrangements and mechanisms.
Of paramount importance is perhaps the need to facilitate the establishment and
empowerment of Water Use Associations and Apex bodies. This appears to be
promising enough to build ‘strong’ institutional platforms through which water and
land resources would be managed sustainably.
