Browsing by Author "Noe, Christine"
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Item Between dependence and deprivation: The interlocking nature of land alienation in Tanzania(Wiley Online Library, 2018-02-16) Bluwstein, Jevgeniy; Lund, Jens Friis; Askew, Kelly; Stein, Howard; Noe, Christine; Odgaard, Rie; Maganga, Faustin; Engström, LindaStudies of accumulation by dispossession in the Global South tend to focus on individual sectors, for example, large‐scale agriculture or nature conservation. Yet smallholder farmers and pastoralists are affected by multiple processes of land alienation. Drawing on the case of Tanzania, we illustrate the analytical purchase of a comprehensive examination of dynamics of land alienation across multiple sectors. To begin with, processes of land alienation through investments in agriculture, mining, conservation, and tourism dovetail with a growing social differentiation and class formation. These dynamics generate unequal patterns of land deprivation and accumulation that evolve in a context of continued land dependency for the vast majority of the rural population. Consequently, land alienation engenders responses by individuals and communities seeking to maintain control over their means of production. These responses include migration, land tenure formalization, and land transactions, that propagate across multiple localities and scales, interlocking with and further reinforcing the effects of land alienation. Various localized processes of primitive accumulation contribute to a scramble for land in the aggregate, providing justifications for policies that further drive land alienation.Item Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation in Namtumbo District, Tanzania(Elsevier, 2012) Kangalawe, Richard Y. M.; Noe, ChristineThe emergence of community-based conservation across the world has been associated with ecological, political and socio-economic benefits. However, lack of active involvement in planning and limited access to conservation areas makes the economic prospects of initiatives like the Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) rather questionable. This study was undertaken in the Mbarang’andu WMA in Namtumbo District, Tanzania to assess the contribution of community-based conservation approaches such as WMAs in enhancing conservation of wildlife resources and poverty alleviation around protected areas. The study methods used included participatory rural appraisal, key informant interviews, direct field observations and household survey. A sample of 10% of the village households was selected for interview. LandSat images from 1995 were used in mapping the physical resource base and land use/cover types of the district. Household data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Findings from the study indicate that much of the village land has been allocated for biodiversity conservation in form of forests and/or WMAs. However, there is little evidence to show the results of such interventions in terms of poverty alleviation, which constrains other local livelihoods while benefiting distant resource users such as private investors. The article argues that to enhance local involvement in conservation of biodiversity while addressing poverty issues, mechanisms for accessing wildlife and forest resources would need to be reconsidered. In particular, this study establishes that the hunting quotas to the villages surrounding the WMA need to be increased to enhance community access to animal protein.Item Celebrity and The Environment: Fame, Wealth and Power in Conservation(Taylor & Francis Group, 2011-11-03) Noe, ChristineCelebrity and the Environment is among the first major works that give a critical analysis of political ecology of the celebrity industry. Drawing on a thorough media research and extensive readings, the book takes a critical stance on the role of fame industry in shaping global environmental politics. The main issue of this book is not only the identification of how fame, wealth and power works to influence environmental movement but also what celebrity conservationism might signify. On this, Brockington argues that celebrity is an art, and the rules for its production can be taught. Meanwhile, biological nature that celebrity seeks to conserve is a social construct. Humans are central to both nature construction and they are also part of it, a point reinforced through the exclusion of humans from nature by other humans in the process of producing images of nature congenial to human consumption. The book therefore answers important questions of how and why celebrity is brought into conservation to pursue certain agendas. These questions are pertinent because conservation agendas are not given but are instead created by people on behalf of nature. So, in whose image and interest are conservation agendas pursued? Who wins, who loses from celebrity’s support for conservation causes? In answering these questions, the book provides counter-narratives to common explanations of environmental causes such as the noble goal of saving the planet from global warming and loss of biodiversity. In this way, Brockington aligns his work with critical scholarship that seeks to provide nuanced perspectives on the relationship between nature and society under capitalismItem Challenges in Groundwater Resource Management in Coastal Aquifers of East Africa: Investigations and Lessons Learnt in the Comoros Islands, Kenya and Tanzania(Elsevier, 2016) Cassidy, Rachel; Obando, Joy; Robins, Nicholas; Ibrahim, Kassim; Melchioly, Simon; Mjemah, Ibrahimu; Shauri, Halimu; Bourhane, Anli; Mohamed, Ibrahim; Noe, Christine; Mwega, Beatrice; Makokha, Mary; Join, Jean-Lambert; Banton, Olivier; Davies, Jeffrey; Comte, Jean-ChristopheStudy region Coastal areas of Kenya (Kilifi County), Tanzania (Kilwa district) and Comoros (Ngazidja island), East Africa. Study focus Research aimed to understand the physical and societal drivers of groundwater accessibility and identify critical aspects of groundwater access and knowledge gaps that require further monitoring and research. Interdisciplinary societal, environmental and hydrogeological investigations were consistently undertaken in the three areas considered as exemplars of the diversity of the coastal fringes of the wider region. This paper focuses on the hydrogeological outcomes of the research, framed within the principal socio-environmental issues identified. New hydrological insights Results confirm the fundamental importance of coastal groundwater resources for the development of the region and the urgent need to match groundwater development with demographic and economic growth. Hydrogeological knowledge is fragmented, groundwater lacks a long-term monitoring infrastructure and information transfer from stakeholders to users is limited. Current trends in demography, climate, sea-level and land-use are further threatening freshwater availability. Despite possessing high-productivity aquifers, water quality from wells and boreholes is generally impacted by saltwater intrusion. Shallow large-diameter wells, following the traditional model of these areas, consistently prove to be less saline and more durable than deeper small-diameter boreholes. However, promoting the use of large numbers of shallow wells poses a significant challenge for governance, requiring coherent management of the resource at local and national scales and the engagement of local communities.Item Contesting village land(2013) Noe, ChristineThe continuing struggles for land in Africa and the recent and dynamic academic debates about conservation as land grabbing calls for the critical analysis of the complexity besieging land deals that disempower local resource owners in different social‐economic and political settings. This paper considers Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in Tanzania as a new category of protected areas with potentially continuing effects on rural community land rights. Using an example of uranium mining and hunting concessions in the Mbarang’andu WMA in Namtumbo district, the paper demonstrates how WMAs have served to release village lands for different kinds of private sector investments in both nature‐based and extractive industries. Conceptually, the paper draws from the body of literature on idle/waste land and the power relations to demonstrate how the existing legal framework and the relations of power work to the detriment of local land users. Qualitative techniques were the main thrust of data collection both in Dar es Salaam and during the fieldwork in Namtumbo district. The main argument of the paper is that the change of village land into conservation has entailed an irrevocable change of land and other resource tenure. Yet, the use of WMAs and the economic gains from investments in them are not determined by community members, but the relations of power at higher levels – the government ministries, investors (who are often foreign to the community) and local elites. In particular, the circumstances in Mbarang’andu suggest that the mining law lacks complete recognition of WMAs, which pre‐empts any possibility for negotiations for community rights to mining investments or the associated social‐ economic impacts. Instead of empowering local communities, therefore, WMAs may continue to serve the interests of those with the necessary capital and political influence, which engenders new social regimes of power and inequality.Item The Dynamics of Land Use Changes and Their Impacts on the Wildlife Corridor between Mt. Kilimanjaro and Amboseli National Park, Tanzania(2003) Noe, ChristineThis paper examines the dynamics of land use changes in Kitendeni wildlife corridor and their impacts on biodiversity. Data on land use/cover changes were obtained through interpretation of aerial photographs for 1952 and 1982 and satellite imagery for 2000. The field survey was conducted on the Tanzanian side of the corridor in Lerangw'a, Kitendeni, Irkaswa and Kamwanga villages, which border the corridor. The survey involved observations, interviews and discussions with indigenous people, previous researchers ...Item Economic growth, rural assets and prosperity: exploring the implications of a 20-year record of asset growth in Tanzania(Cambridge University Press, 2018-07) Brockington, Dan; HOWLAND, OLIVIA; LOISKE, VESA-MATTI; MNZAVA, MOSES; Noe, ChristineMeasures of poverty based on consumption suggest that recent economic growth in many African countries has not been inclusive, particularly in rural areas. We argue that measures of poverty using assets may provide a different picture. We present data based on recent re-surveys of Tanzanian households fi rst visited in the early s. These demonstrate a marked increase in prosperity from high levels of poverty. It does not, however, follow that these improvements derive from GDP growth. We consider the implications of this research for further explorations of the relationship between economic growth and agricultural policy in rural areas.Item Entailments of Large-Scale Land Investments on Agriculture and Food Security in Mufindi East, Tanzania(2013) Kangalawe, Richard Y. M.; Noe, Christine; Luoga, Emmanuel; Olwig, Mette F.Item Inverting the Moral Economy: the Case of Land Acquisitions for Forest Plantations in Tanzania(Taylor & Francis Group, 2015) Olwig, M. F.; Noe, Christine; Kangalawe, R.; Luoga, E.Governments, donors and investors often promote land acquisitions for forest plantations as global climate change mitigation via carbon sequestration. Investors’ forestry thereby becomes part of a global moral economy imaginary. Using examples from Tanzania we critically examine the global moral economy’s narrative foundation, which presents trees as axiomatically ‘green’, ‘idle’ land as waste and economic investments as benefiting the relevant communities. In this way the traditional supposition of the moral economy as invoked by the economic underclass to maintain the basis of their subsistence is inverted and subverted, at a potentially serious cost to the subjects of such land acquisition.Item Land Based Investments for Forests in Tanzania(2014) Olwig, Mette F.; Noe, Christine; Kangalawe, Richard Y. M.; Luoga, EmmanuelItem Partnerships for wildlife protection and their sustainability outcomes: A literature review(NEPSUS, 2017) Noe, Christine; Budeanu, Adriana; Sulle, Emmanuel; Fog Olwig, Mette; Brockington, Dan; John, RuthThe rhetoric of a ‘win-win-win’ situation – which represents simultaneous achievement of economic growth, environmental protection and social development – is central to the emergence of community-based wildlife protection efforts that involve new partnerships between actors such as local communities, businesses and government agencies. The win-win rhetoric furthers the logic that the more partners, the more wins – yet the current knowledge base lacks clear criteria for evaluating partnerships. This working paper uses political ecology as a conceptual lens to propose such criteria. We suggest examining partnerships not only based on their complexity, but also how they are formed and gain legitimacy in different contexts and how various partnership configurations engender particular kinds of ecological and socio-economic outcomes. Based on a review of the literature about partnerships and their impacts, and drawing on insights from Tanzania’s wildlife sector, we establish three groups of literature that emphasize the benefits of partnerships: one focusing on landscape conservation, another on governance reforms and the last on tourism related businesses. In these three groups of literature, partnerships are claimed to improve the effectiveness of biodiversity governance by securing land, facilitating local developments and by creating business links. Building on critiques from political ecology we conclude by questioning this win-win-win rhetoric arguing that partnerships only lead to wins for specific actors thereby indirectly aggravating local power struggles. They do so by supporting rent seeking and the rise of local elites while simultaneously concealing the marginalization of other actors and thereby effectively contributing to the continued loss of local land rights.Item Reducing Land Degradation on the Highlands of Kilimanjaro Region: A Biogeographical Perspective(Scientific Research, 2014) Noe, ChristineIn 2012, governments across the world adopted “The Future We Want” outcome document in Rio De Janeiro as a commitment to achieve a land-degradation-neutral world. This document reasserts the importance of sustainable land management in the top of the debates on sustainable development. This paper provides an overview of Tanzania’s preparedness towards achieving these global objectives. The paper is based on a keynote address which was presented in the conference on reducing land degradation on the highlands of Kilimanjaro Region in Tanzania. Using a biogeographical perspective, the paper assesses challenges of adopting programmatic approach to sustainable land management in Tanzania. It also presents some opportunities that exist through Global Mechanism of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, which promote actions leading to coordination, mobilization and channeling of financial resources to assist member countries to coordinate and sustain sustainable land management projects.Item Scalar Thickening: Wildlife Management Areas and Conservation Scales in Southeast Tanzania(2012-04-25) Ramutsindela, Maano; Noe, ChristineThe debate on scale in geography has yielded nuanced concepts that have enhanced scale analysis and methodologies for scale-related research. Despite this advancement, questions still linger on the value of scale as a geographical vocabulary, partly because scalar analyses remain predicated on hierarchies, which have limited explanatory power. In this paper we draw on insight from political ecology to affirm and expand on the usefulness of scale for geographical inquiry and for engaging with contemporary people–environment relations. In particular, the paper appreciates that ecology is at the core of methodological questions pertaining to the explanation of these relations and is increasingly involved in the construction of biodiversity discourses and strategies that rely heavily on conceptions of, and pronouncements on, scale. We use the concept of scalar thickness as a way of thinking about how spaces of conservation are organized and the propensity of scales to coalesce at various stages of scale-producing processes. We argue that wildlife management areas in Tanzania have played a pivotal role in the thickening of the micro scale in the southeast region. These areas constitute the scale at and though which global conservation agendas are implemented and natural resource rights and benefits are contested.Item Scaling-Up Tourism in East and Southern Africa: The Role and Impacts af Transfrontier Conservation Areas(2015) Noe, ChristineTourist destinations that are transfrontier in nature have marked the latest tourism innovation in East and Southern Africa. Owing to the emergence of borderless notion that supports the establishment of transfrontier conservation areas, the industry benefits from supra-national green destinations that increase free movement of tourists and services across state borders. This paper adds to an important literature on scale construction and its spatial implications for transfrontier tourism. It examines how the borderless notion is used to support scaling-up of tourism and the establishment of transfrontier destinations in East and Southern African regions. The main argument of the paper is that scaling processes that promote borderless tourism are necessarily a means of producing space for private projects of actors who are involved in facilitating these processes. The paper draw lessons from the East African Community and Southern African Development Community to demonstrate how these regional blocks are used differently to mobilize political support and legitimacy for ‘borderless tourism initiatives’. Subsequently, this discussion shifts towards examining how ecological and economic claims made of borderless destinations are directly associated with creating space for private investments of conservation organizations.Item The Selous-Niassa Transfrontier Conservation Area and Tourism: Evolution, Benefits and Challenges(2015) Noe, ChristineAbstract The chapter demonstrates how transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) favor international tourism but also how its effectiveness in promoting local development has remained a subject of critical debate. The chapter contributes to this debate with specific focus on the process that creates TFCAs and how that process generates conditions for economic empowerment or disempowerment. The experience of the Selous-Niassa TFCA is used to examine how evolution and promotion of tourism has differentiated impacts on different actors. Most of the communities on the edges of TFCAs are struggling with the loss of basic rights to land, which is their main source of livelihoods. Tourism as an economic activity has mainly remained in few powerful hands as benefits are hampered by the capital tendency of the industry for which TFCAs are not immune. Conclusively, transfrontier conservation may be a flagship project for the southern African region, but mainly for what conservation is called to serve: nature protection.Item Spatiality and ‘Borderlessness’ in Transfrontier Conservation Areas(Taylor & Francis Group, 2010-11) Noe, ChristineThis article offers a critique of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) by focusing on the conception of borders in the proposition of these areas. It claims that the conception of borders as fences that should be removed masks the actual process of bordering that accompanies the creation of TFCAs in different socio-economic and ecological settings. Using the local realities in southern Tanzania where the borders of neither the state nor the protected areas are marked by physical fences, this paper demonstrates how proponents of TFCAs engender new borders that affect the livelihoods of local residents. The assumption that TFCAs follow natural borders is problematic, in that borders are a human creation that are also spatially bounding. This paper draws on conceptual insights from border studies to engage with narratives in transfrontier conservation. Empirically, it uses the experience of the ongoing process of establishing the Selous–Niassa wildlife corridor, which is a cog in the creation of the Selous– Niassa TFCA across Tanzania–Mozambique border.Item Tanzania’s partnership landscape: Convergence and divergence in the wildlife sector(NEPSUS, 2017-03) Noe, Christine; Sulle, Emmanuel; Brockington, DanTanzania’s endowment of diverse biodiversity, wildlife resources and prime natural attraction sites put the country at the center of many debates about conservation, human welfare and development. As approaches for wildlife protection have evolved over time, so has the need for redressing the gap between nature and people through different kinds of partnerships. Based on are view of the existing literature, we examine the context in which partnerships have emerged in the wildlife sector in Tanzania, the processes that support acquisition and maintenance of legitimacy, as well as the sustainability outcomes of these partnerships. Specifically, the paper examines the historical trajectory of these partnerships and the influence that different actors have historically maintained hence determining how the public and private sector engagements evolved over time. We draw insights from the Selous game reserve with specific attention to the role of Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) as a converging point for many actors. The paper suggests that partnerships for wildlife protection have increased in number and scope. However, the assessment of their impacts has mainly focused on how much land has been secured for the protection of wildlife. Livelihood impacts of these partnerships have been largely assessed against the background of unequal terms of local community engagement with private investors, recentralization, the rise of local elites, corruption and the limitations that they place on local land use. We suggest that documenting how partnerships are formed, their different configurations and impacts should be an important step towards the analysis of the relations of power among different actors and with local communities, as well as a nuanced understanding of their ecological and livelihood outcomes.Item Understanding of Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Institutions on Sustainable Land Management in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania(Scientific Research, 2014) Kangalawe, Richard Y. M.; Noe, Christine; Tungaraza, Felician S. K.; Naimani, Godwin; Mlele, MartinThe paper is based on a study whose objective is to provide an understanding of the extent to which traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions for natural resource governance remain relevant to solving current land degradation issues and how they are integrated in formal policy process in Kilimanjaro Region. Data collection for this study combined qualitative and quantitative methods. A total of 221 individuals from households were interviewed using a structured questionnaire; 41 in-depth interviews and 24 focus group discussions were held. Findings indicate that the community acknowledges that there is traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions regarding sustainable land management. However, awareness of the traditional knowledge and practices varied between districts. Rural-based districts were found to be more aware and therefore practiced more of traditional knowledge than urban based districts. Variations in landscape features such as proneness to drought, landslides and soil erosion have also attracted variable responses among the communities regarding traditional knowledge and indigenous practices of sustainable land management. In addition, men were found to have more keen interest in conserving the land than women as well as involvement in other traditional practices of sustainable land management. This is due to the fact that, customarily, it is men who inherit and own land. This, among other factors, could have limited the integration of traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions in village by-laws and overall policy process. The paper concludes by recommending that traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions for sustainable land management should be promoted among the younger generations so as to capture their interest, and ensure that successful practices are effectively integrated into the national policies and strategies.Item Understanding of Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Institutions on Sustainable Land Management in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania(Scientific Research, 2014) Kangalawe, Richard Y. M.; Noe, Christine; Tungaraza, Felician S. K.; Naimani, Godwin; Mlele, MartinThe paper is based on a study whose objective is to provide an understanding of the extent to which traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions for natural resource governance remain relevant to solving current land degradation issues and how they are integrated in formal policy process in Kilimanjaro Region. Data collection for this study combined qualitative and quantitative methods. A total of 221 individuals from households were interviewed using a structured questionnaire; 41 in-depth interviews and 24 focus group discussions were held. Findings indicate that the community acknowledges that there is traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions regarding sustainable land management. However, awareness of the traditional knowledge and practices varied between districts. Rural-based districts were found to be more aware and therefore practiced more of traditional knowledge than urban based districts. Variations in landscape features such as proneness to drought, landslides and soil erosion have also attracted variable responses among the communities regarding traditional knowledge and indigenous practices of sustainable land management. In addition, men were found to have more keen interest in conserving the land than women as well as involvement in other traditional practices of sustainable land management. This is due to the fact that, customarily, it is men who inherit and own land. This, among other factors, could have limited the integration of traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions in village by-laws and overall policy process. The paper concludes by recommending that traditional knowledge and indigenous institutions for sustainable land management should be promoted among the younger generations so as to capture their interest, and ensure that successful practices are effectively integrated into the national policies and strategies.