"Pastoralists’rightsadvancement:sharedlearninganddisseminationoflessonsandbestpractices”
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On 20th June 2017, Tanzania Natural Resources Forum (TNRF) and Care International in Tanzania in collaboration with other 46 civil society organizations supported by Pastoralist Programme (PP) organized a one-day closure event in Dodoma to celebrate key achievements . The aim of event was to share lessons and wider dissemination of the hard won gains to decision makers, pastoralists programme partners, development partners and pastoralists communities for the period of Pastoralist programme implementation(2011-2017) funded by Irish Aid.
The theme of the event was ‘Pastoralists’ Rights Advancement:Shared Learning and Dissemination of Lessons and Best Practices,’ with two folds overall objectives:
- To avail stakeholders and public with an opportunity to share and disseminate experiences, lessons and best practices garnered in the course of 6 years of PP implementation
- To create a space for dialogue and discussion on sustenance of the hard won gains for the programme legacy.
About 70 high level personnel from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MoALF), Local and Central Government, Print and digital Media, Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism (MNRT), District Councils, Ireland Embassy in Tanzania, Academia, members of parliaments (Ngorongoro, Babati rural and Monduli), PP partner CSOs and other CSOs with common synergies attended the event.
The event was officiated by Hon. Dr. Charles Tizeba - Minister for Agriculture, Livestock & Fisheries. In his opening remarks he pointed out that Pastoralist rights in Tanzania are well recognized and respected and call all actors to ensure the rights are provided. He further acknowledged the contribution of livestock to the GDP; the analysis made by the Ministry showed that the presence of cows in Tanzania saved almost 18 TZs Trillions that should be required to support availability of livestock by-products in the country. The government has made tremendous efforts to deal with Pastoralist challenged, among them was recent committee formed by the government coordinated by Ministry of Land, Housing and Human Settlement Development to review all reports and land use conflicts and came with recommendations that will be taken as road map to address pastoralists’ challenges. He further advised CSOs to make pastoralists understand their roles and responsibilities while demanding their rights, and to remind all actors including the government to take action on the right ways of solving pastoralists issues.
Prior to the official opening, Care Tanzania Deputy Country Director Programmes, Ms. Gloria Cheche explained key achievements that the programme realized for the five years through supports from Irish Aid; among them include recovery grazing land, livestock routes and women empowerment. Irish Aid Head of Development, Ms. Maire Matthews explained the proud the Irish Aid feels for the programme to arrive this point to realize the objectives. She thanks Care, TNRF and Partners for being real mothers of this programme that among others contributed to change pastoralists’ women power and voices. She pointed that the embassy are still supporting pastoralists through various means including National Engagement Strategy (NES) Tanzania, and International Land Coalition. Permanent Secretary for the MoALF (Agriculture) advised pastoralists and other actors to replicate key achievements and lessons learnt to other regions of Tanzania apart from 10 regions covered by the programme.
TNRF Executive Director, Joseph Olila in his remarks, he called all actors to join together to address pastoralists issues in holistic way, they should categorize and strategize them in to four clusters: 1) issues under pastoralists capacity(knowledge, weak institutions, transparency and accountability; 2) issues outside pastoralists capacity like investment; 3)historical issues(evictions) and 4)Crosscutting issues(gender and Climate change).
Also, Deputy Ministry for MoALF, Willium Ole Nasha advised that pastoralist actors in collaboration with MoALF should organize a follow up meeting on August 2017 to jointly strategize the implementation of the deliberations from this event for sustainability.
Other activities includes traditional dances from pastoral women, testimonies from PP beneficiaries (Iringa on land rights and Meru on women empowerment), presentations from the PP programme managers made by Marcel Madubi (Care-Tz) and Zakaria Faustin (TNRF), followed by High level Discussion on key policy issues and Sustainability of Pastoralist Programme’s Achievements and Deliberations and take away messages in form of Panel Discussion.
The following are some of key issues and recommendations made during the event:
- Land use planning from national to local level is effective way of addressing pastoralists challenges
- Actors should strategize on rehabilitation of pasture in dry lands
- Recommendations from Committee that made review on land use conflict in Tanzania should be implemented including recovery land for grazing and farming
- The government should establish inventory of Grazing Resources throughout the country and allocate grazing areas for pastoralists
- The government should allow pastoralists to graze in forestry and reserves areas during prolonged drought
- The district council and MoALF should survey grazing lands like forestry survey done by MNRT
- Strengthen pastoralists unions, SACCOs, networks and groups to invest into entrepreneurship
- The government should continue to promote pastoralism in budget allocation, and vat exemption for importation of equipment’s for processing, and animal feeds, like in 2015 where we have exempted and the section was removed in 2016.
- Universities should establish curriculum on pastoralism as a way to address knowledge, improve performances in services delivery to livestock keepers that keeps their livestock in a traditional way.
- Co-existence should be studied and taken carefully in line with traditional practices with consideration of population growth.
- Need for policy review to harmonize policies across ministries/sectors
- The carrying capacity should be considered as the livestock keepers with large group of cattle enters the protected areas and destroy the natural resources in the destination places
- Ministry responsible for livestock development has been doing good in requesting the budget to finance the livestock projects, the Ministry of Finance has not been fairly releasing the requested amount in a timely manner
- Women consideration should be taken on board to give them rights to own land which is very important resource for every citizen
- The IUCN stating that “the protected areas should be not more than 10% of the country`s landmass” but in case of Tanzania more than 28% of the landmass is saving as a protected area. The stakeholders also questioned about the 28% as from 1970`s some of the national parks and game reserves has expanded to nearly two times from the original size
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