The Nature Conservancy’s priority in Tanzania is to strengthen local resource management and promote sustainable projects that help people live in balance with their environment. We are pursuing innovative approaches that link population, consumption and the environment. The project, Tuungane (Kiswahili for “Let’s Unite”) located on the shores of Lake Tanganyika is addressing community resource management, sustainable livelihoods and the health needs of underserved communities who depend on the areas natural resources.

 

We also work in the Northern Tanzania rangelands, to assist pastoralist communities conserve their natural resources by slowing unsustainable agricultural expansion and instead promote sustainable land-use practices.

 

Our projects in Tanzania seek to adapt proven conservation strategies that meet the needs of the diverse communities with which we work.

 

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Tuungane Baseline Freshwater Ecological Assessment
Stretching from the Malagarasi River to the Katavi National Park, the Ugalla River and to the center of Lake Tanganyika, western Tanzania’s Greater Mahale Ecosystem (GME) is a Key Biodiversity Area (as defined by IUCN). Weak local governance, geographic isolation, and inadequate social services leave families almost wholly dependent on the area’s natural resources to meet their basic daily needs. As a result, pressure on Lake Tanganyika’s rich aquatic diversity and its largely artisanal fishery has never been higher. Just 10 percent of GME land and only those waters within Mahale Mountains National Park are protected. Villagers are rapidly clearing forests and woodlands, causing soil to erode into the lake and decreasing fish stocks. See the ecological assessment.

Tuungane Socio-Economic Baseline Assessment.
In the far west of Tanzania along the shores of Lake Tanganyika lies the greater Mahale (GME) ecosystem. With one of the world’s highest annual population growth rates (4.8 percent), the region faces extreme poverty, disease, rampant development and associated environmental degradation. The people who reside within 24 villages of the GME make their living as fishers or farmers and although fishing is an important economic activity, farming is the dominant livelihood strategy. The assessment was designed to cover the expected components of a new Mahale population, health and environment (PHE) project that addresses fisheries, forestry and primary and reproductive health. This is a baseline assessment of the socioeconomic conditions for 10 villages, and is intended as a reference point to measure changes over time and changes in villages affected by the new PHE project compared with those that are not. Read the full report.