Title:
Intensive Agriculture as Climate Change Adaptation? Economic and Environmental Tradeoffs in Securing Rural Livelihoods in Tanzanian River Basins
Author:
Idil Ires
Faculty of Humanities or Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
Published:
Frontiers in Environmental Science, 26 November 2021
From the abstract:
Tanzania is one of the East African countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Droughts and floods in 2015–16 had devastating effects on food production, crop failures and livestock deaths reaching record levels. One of the underlying projects of the Tanzanian government to mitigate these impacts is the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridors of Tanzania (SAGCOT), an area spanning the country’s largest river basin, the Rufiji, where it collaborates with national and transnational companies to intensify irrigated crop production. Irrigation, drought-tolerant seeds, and employment are three of the key government-advised strategies to help smallholders increase crop yield, adapt to climate change, and alleviate poverty through the corridor. However, little research is available on whether these goals have been achieved. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by assessing harvest and income levels following the 2015–16 drought.