Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
migrate seasonally throughout East Africa. Pastoral livelihoods need
access to a mosaic of vegetation types in order to provide adequate grazing
for their livestock and reduce their vulnerability to variability in climate.
In more agricultural livelihoods diversity in location with access to key
water resources, crop selection and combinations of both agricultural and
pastoral livelihood strategies have been employed as methods for dealing
with ecological variability.
This reciprocal relationship between people and the environment has
historically been central to the sustainable management of semi-arid
Tanzania. Over the last two centuries, however, long-term sociopolitical
change has resulted in a decoupling of the people-environment relation-
ship. Depopulation due to disease and war left large areas uninhabited
and allowed the spread of woodland and tsetse l y. Depopulation also
allowed successive governments to appropriate land for the state through
plantations or wildlife reserves, removing land from local control and
denying access to key resources. Villagization also encouraged settlement
of agricultural groups in traditionally pastoral areas, adding to conl ict
over important resources such as water. If agricultural groups take over
crucial water resources then pastoral communities are denied access and
can become more vulnerable, especially during drought years. Semi-arid
regions therefore represent a zone of conl ict between dif erent livelihood
strategies over access to resources, a conl ict often exacerbated by changes
in land tenure and appropriation by the state that often results in vital
resources becoming inaccessible to local communities.
Despite wider recognition in contemporary times of the importance of
this reciprocal link between people and their environment, government
policy in semi-arid regions is still broadly inl uenced by past colonial
governments and protectionist and preservationist approaches, which
perceive traditional livelihood activities as damaging to the environment.
In the next section we move on to consider the dominant paradigms
that conceptualize thinking around ecological and social problems in
semi-arid regions and demonstrate how the nature of these paradigms
dei nes whether or not resulting policy discourses recognize the reciprocal
relationship between people and the environment.
Managing semi-arid regions: ecological and social paradigms
The idea of a 'paradigm' refers to the way in which a certain issue is
perceived or understood. The paradigms that dei ne policy-makers' and
managers' understanding of the ecological and social dynamics of semi-
arid regions will also dei ne their perception of appropriate policy or
management solutions. In Tanzania, two opposing discourses dominate
policy approaches to managing semi-arid regions. One is the 'people
