Linking livelihood improvement and environmental conservation: Case of east Uluguru mountains in Tanzania

Abstract

Livelihoods improvement and environmental management need to be linked. In order to attain sustainable livelihoods and environmental management, it is important to empower natural resource users with skills on the interdependencies between livelihoods and natural environment. Among the strategies to achieve this is through an action research wherein various resource use options are tested and the interplay among the tested options is determined. In this paper, we present and analyse results obtained from an action research that focused on participatory improvement of farming practices and rehabilitation of watershed through tree nursery management and tree planting in Nyachilo village situated in the East Uluguru Mountains. In the farming trial, we tested conventional ridges, ngolo, contour, and traditional slash and burn flat cultivation (the control) technologies on the basis of their potential to improve yields and control soil erosion. The findings indicated that ngolo ranked the first whereas conventional slash and burn technology ranked the last; farmers showed a desire to learn about useful technologies to improve their traditional farming system. As for tree planting, there existed internal heterogeneities as reflected in the heterogeneous participation of local people in tree nursery management implying that in order to thoroughly understand the community, it is necessary to unpack it and analyze its constituent parts. We concluded that a though analysis of the dispersion of a given community is imperative as such scrutiny may lead to an accurate determination of the practical mix of the community strata for effecting the desired ends.