TANZANIA: The Restoration Initiative (TRI) has embarked on an alternative water resources project aimed at reducing landscape degradation in the Great Ruaha and Lake Rukwa basins.
Through the project, three deep wells with the associated infrastructures including tank-stand, water reserve tanks, power supply system and distribution points were constructed in Mbarali District in Mbeya Region, Wanging'ombe District in Njombe Region and Tanganyika District in Katavi Region.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Country Programme Officer, Mr Doyi Mazenzele told the 'Daily News' that the TRI through the Tanzania Child project is positioned to contribute to the realisation of country goals and targets while generating scalable lessons and best practices on landscape restoration, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience.
He said the project constructed water supply infrastructure with a length of 6,350 meters and seven distribution points constructed in Mpimbwe District which benefited 1,750 households from Ntibili, Iziwasungu, Ikulwe and Igalukilo Villages.
"As well we conduct surveys to identify suitable areas for the construction of Charco Dams to reserve water for domestic, irrigation and livestock.
"The overall objective of the Tanzania child project is to strengthen integrated natural resource management and restoration of degraded landscapes for resilient socio-ecological systems in Tanzania," Mr Mazenzele told 'Daily News' recently.
Meanwhile, the Tanzania TRI child project also capacitated 2,459 farmers training on conservation and Climate Smart Agriculture among 1,281 men and 1178 women.
In addition, 31 farmer field schools were established across seven district councils and 15 micro-irrigation schemes were surveyed.
"Smallholder farmers capacitated to cope with the impacts of climate change through agroforestry," said Mr Mazenzele adding farming is highly dependent on weather conditions including temperature, rainfall, wind, pollinators as well as a reliable market and many other factors to sustain their crop and livestock production.
The National Project Coordinator from the Vice-President's Office, Dr Damas Mapunda said that the Child Project is being implemented in Iringa, Mbeya and Rukwa regions.
Moreover, he said the overall objective of the project is to strengthen integrated natural resource management and restoration of degraded landscapes for resilient socio-ecological systems in Tanzania.
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The project aims to enhance the national enabling environment and capacity of actors for sustainable landscape restoration (SLR) efforts.
It also intends to improve landscape management through the implementation of restoration plans and integrated landscape management and to share knowledge, disseminate good practices, and appropriate monitoring and evaluation systems as well as financing arrangements that support adaptive management of SLR interventions and strategies.
He said one of the factors of the project is to establish national landscape restoration governance and regulatory structure, and mainstream landscape restoration and sustainable land management into policies, regulations and strategies.
"Another component is to implement SLR which is designed to aggressively engage communities and local authorities in identifying and implementing feasible restoration options at the landscape level, and monitoring and evaluation, knowledge management and resource mobilization," Mr Dr Mapunda elaborated.
The component aims to place effective monitoring and evaluation and data management systems that would enable the project to gather gender-disaggregated data, disseminate lessons learned, facilitate learning and scaling up good practices, and identify financing opportunities for SLR.
This is a five-year project being implemented by the Vice President's Office with technical support from the IUCN with financing from Global Environment Facility (GEF) worth 11.2 million US dollars and Co-financing from government and partners worth 64.2 million US dollars
