HASHI, Shinyanga Soil Conservation Programme
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Empowered lives. Resilient nations. SHINYANGA SOIL CONSERVATION PROGRAMME (HASHI) Tanzania Equator Initiative Case Studies Local sustainable development solutions for people, nature, and resilient communities UNDP EQUATOR INITIATIVE CASE STUDY SERIES Local and indigenous communities across the world are advancing innovative sustainable development solutions that work for people and for nature. Few publications or case studies tell the full story of how such initiatives evolve, the breadth of their impacts, or how they change over time. Fewer still have undertaken to tell these stories with community practitioners themselves guiding the narrative. To mark its 10-year anniversary, the Equator Initiative aims to fill this gap. The following case study is one in a growing series that details the work of Equator Prize winners – vetted and peer-reviewed best practices in community-based environmental conservation and sustainable livelihoods. These cases are intended to inspire the policy dialogue needed to take local success to scale, to improve the global knowledge base on local environment and development solutions, and to serve as models for replication. Case studies are best viewed and understood with reference to ‘The Power of Local Action: Lessons from 10 Years of the Equator Prize’, a compendium of lessons learned and policy guidance that draws from the case material. Click on the map to visit the Equator Initiative’s searchable case study database. Editors Editor-in-Chief: Joseph Corcoran Managing Editor: Oliver Hughes Contributing Editors: Dearbhla Keegan, Matthew Konsa, Erin Lewis, Whitney Wilding Contributing Writers Edayatu Abieodun Lamptey, Erin Atwell, Toni Blackman, Jonathan Clay, Joseph Corcoran, Larissa Currado, Sarah Gordon, Oliver Hughes, Wen-Juan Jiang, Sonal Kanabar, Dearbhla Keegan, Matthew Konsa, Rachael Lader, Patrick Lee, Erin Lewis, Jona Liebl, Mengning Ma, Mary McGraw, Gabriele Orlandi, Juliana Quaresma, Peter Schecter, Martin Sommerschuh, Whitney Wilding, Luna Wu Design Oliver Hughes, Dearbhla Keegan, Matthew Konsa, Amy Korngiebel, Kimberly Koserowski, Erin Lewis, John Mulqueen, Lorena de la Parra, Brandon Payne, Mariajosé Satizábal G. Acknowledgements The Equator Initiative acknowledges with gratitude the Shinyanga Soil Conservation Programme (HASHI). All photo credits courtesy of HASHI and Charlie Pye-Smith, World Agroforestry Centre. Maps courtesy of CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia. Suggested Citation United Nations Development Programme. 2012. Shinyanga Soil Conservation Programme (HASHI), Tanzania. Equator Initiative Case Study Series. New York, NY. SHINYANGA SOIL CONSERVATION PROGRAMME (HASHI) Tanzania PROJECT SUMMARY KEY FACTS The Shinyanga Soil Conservation Programme, better known by its Swahili acronym HASHI (Hifadhi Ardhi Shinyanga) ran EQUATOR PRIZE WINNER: 2002 from 1986 to 2004, with the aim of restoring the degraded Shinyanga region of northwest Tanzania. Christened FOUNDED: 1986 the “Desert of Tanzania” in the mid-1980s by President Julius Nyerere, the region’s miombo woodland had been LOCATION: Shinyanga Region, Tanzania decimated by decades of forest clearing (partly for tsetse fly eradication) and forced resettlement under Tanzania’s BENEFICIARIES: 833 villages “villagisation” programme. BIODIVERSITY: 145 bird species, 152 tree and shrub species The intervention brought together an array of government and international partners, but recognized that the key to the area’s reforestation lay in putting local communities at the forefront of these efforts. A traditional system of enclosures, or ngitili, was reintroduced, and Sukuma agro- pastoralists were given responsibility for conserving forest plots. The result was that by 2004, at least 350,000 hectares of ngitili had been restored or created in 833 villages across the region. TABLE OF CONTENTS Background and Context 4 Key Activities and Innovations 6 Biodiversity Impacts 8 Socioeconomic Impacts 8 Policy Impacts 10 Sustainability 12 Partners 13 3 Background and Context Lying south of Lake Victoria, the Shinyanga Region of northwest Loss of an indigenous resource management system Tanzania is dominated by a semi-arid landscape, home to almost three million people, with a high population density of 42 people per These trends led to the erosion of an ancient system of land square kilometre. Shinyanga is one of Tanzania’s poorest regions, its management that the Sukuma had used to conserve livestock low hills and plains characterized by long dry summers with only 700 fodder for the dry season. This system, known as ngitili, entailed mm of rainfall a year on average. The predominant tribe in the region enclosures of fodder reserves for use by individual households or is the Sukuma, agro-pastoralists whose major crops include maize, communities by maintaining an area of standing fodder until the sorghum, millet, cassava, cotton, and rice. Over 80 percent of the next rains. Ngitili are divided into sections; each section is completely population owns and manages livestock on communal rangelands. grazed before the next is opened. Family or individual reserves are established on an individual’s land; communal reserves can be made Between 1986 and 2004, the region was the setting for the Shinyanga on any land suitable for dry-season grazing. Communal ngitili are Soil Conservation Programme, better known by its Swahili acronym often found along riverbeds and hill areas. Under the traditional HASHI (for Hifadhi Ardhi Shinyanga.) HASHI was initiated by land system, ownership and management of land tenure rights over President Julius Nyerere after he visited the region in 1984 and ngitili and land in Shinyanga were governed by local by-laws. The was shocked by the extent of deforestation. By the mid-1980s, introduction of the Villages and Ujamaa Villages Act in 1975 meant Shinyanga had become known as the “Desert of Tanzania’. Decades of unsustainable land management practices had exacerbated the region’s environmental decline, but the roots of this degradation lay in a pre-Second World War forest clearing program. Shinyanga had previously been extensively covered in miombo and acacia woodlands, which provided fodder for livestock and fuel for Sukuma agro-pastoralists. These forests also acted as a reservoir for the tsetse fly, however, which transmitted a parasitic disease, trypanosomiasis, to both humans and cattle. In the 1920s, the colonial authorities instituted a programme through which local people were paid to cut down large areas of woodland. This was largely successful in eradicating the tsetse fly, and also opened up new grazing land for the Sukuma, but vastly impacted the ecological health of the region. As populations of human and livestock rapidly increased in the latter half of the twentieth century, demand for fuelwood and cropland also increased. This led to the overgrazing of pasture and woodland, while large areas of land were devoted to growing cash crops such as cotton and tobacco, leaving little land for growing food crops. Additionally, President Nyerere’s 1970s “villagisation” programme forced families to abandon homesteads and move into newly created settlements. 4 household assets – including houses, farms, and ngitili – were often Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the abandoned by households moving to collective settlements. The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). The striking success of the project new village pattern, although administratively advantageous, made stemmed from the rich ecological knowledge and strong traditional traditional adaptation to local ecological conditions more difficult. institutions of the region’s Sukuma agro-pastoralists, however. In These conditions were simultaneously worsening due to continued 2004, the programme was officially succeeded by the Natural Forest population growth and the expansion of cultivated areas. In turn, Resources Management and Agroforestry Centre (NAFRAC), but the these factors resulted in two distinct challenges: rapid deterioration ngitili system remains in place. Ngitili are currently thought to cover in soil condition, and a shortage of wood for fuel. Many households as much as 500,000 hectares of land. had to travel more than ten kilometres to gather firewood, a task typically carried out by women. Benefits of ecosystem restoration resulting from the HASHI project include higher household incomes from agro-pastoralism, better HASHI: a lasting legacy in Shinyanga diets, and greater livelihood security for families in the region. Biodiversity has benefited too, with increases in tree, shrub, grass, By the mid-1980s, only 600 hectares of documented ngitili remained. and herb varieties, as well as bird and mammal species. Many herb Beginning in 1986, Hifadhi Ardhi Shinyanga revived this system to varieties have been harvested for sale locally for their medicinal uses. promote the restoration of vegetation in protected enclosures. By Farmers have also benefitted from improved agroforestry practices, the close of the project in 2004, at least 350,000 hectares of ngitili, such as planting nitrogen-fixing species that have helped to increase including private woodlots, had been restored or created in 833 agricultural productivity. The HASHI project and its international villages, encompassing a population of 2.8 million rural dwellers. partners also trained more than 150 teachers to help raise awareness The programme was run and mostly funded by the Tanzanian of environmental issues in the region’s village schools. government, along with significant