Abstract:
The World Wide Fund for Nature-Tanzania Country Office (WWF-TCO), with financial
support from the European Union (EU), is implementing a Ruaha Water Programme with
the aim to ensure that by 2010 the people of the Great Ruaha River Catchment Area
(GRRCA) are planning, managing and utilising their water and related natural resources in
sustainable ways, alleviating poverty and improving livelihoods.
• Accordingly, Water Users Associations (WUAs) have been established to empower
communities to play more active roles in managing and using the water resources in
sustainable ways through containing the problems related to the use of water resources. The
problems include decline in water flow in rivers, destruction of catchment areas, cultivation
up to river banks, diverting water without permission, and presence of water unfriendly
plants at river sources, just to name a few.
• However, there were no clear guidelines on how to form the WUAs, albeit the basis was the
National Water Policy (NAWAPO) of 2002 statements including the ones that water
resources management has to be participatory and that water staff will have the mandate to
form water users associations where deemed necessary.
• Therefore, WWF-TCO saw a need to document the processes through which the WUAs
were formed, with intent to improve the steps of WUA formation in future. Therefore, it
commissioned this study to be done, with the overall objective to document WWF’s and
other stakeholders’/actors’ experiences in Sub-catchment Water Users Associations
formation and develop guidelines that could be used to guide future formation of Sub-
catchment WUAs in the GRRCA and in Tanzania at large.
