Indigenous coping and adaptation strategies to climate change of local communities in Tanzania: a review

Climate change has major impacts to the livelihoods of the rural communities. In order to counteract the situation communities have developed various means for coping and adapting to the impacts. This paper reviews the various adaptation strategies by which different local communities (fishermen, pastoralists and farmers) in Tanzania have developed and discusses the sustainability of some of the strategies. It has been documented that farmers in Tanzania use traditional practices such as terracing (matuta), ngolo, tree planting, and construction of locally based water reservoirs (nkunisa), mixed cropping and crop diversification. Pastoralists use strategies such as ngitiri, rain water harvesting in ditches (malambo), check dams and engagement in alternative economic activities; and fishermen use methods such as change in fishing time, deep water fishing, scheduling particular time for fishing and engagement in other alternative economic activities. Based on the ability of the strategy to improve the capacity of the communities to respond to climate change effects, ease of implementation, the affordability, the strategies have been categorized as sustainable or not. It has been noted that the use of the sustainable indigenous strategies can improve the management of climate change effects provided that the underlying limitations are overcome. The limitations to the effectiveness of some of the documented coping and adaptation strategies may arise for instance from failure to fit the local context. It is therefore concluded that the analysis of a number of scenarios need to be undertaken prior to replication of any strategy.