Improve ecological and environmental services and functions

Musoma District has a considerable diversity of environmental resources, including fishery resources, good fertile soils, forests, minerals, fish, wildlife, and an extensive network of mountain ecosystems and wetlands. Despite income poverty challenges, the forests and environmental sub-sector play an important role in maintaining ecological balance, protecting soils from erosion, and conserving water and wildlife. For instance: - Forests (and the expansive woodlands, wooded grasslands, and bushlands) are sources of domestic energy and also provide a range of goods and services, including timber for furniture, useful non-wood products mainly honey, beeswax, and medicine, and are habitats for a variety of flora and fauna. Wetlands produce important goods for rural communities such as raw material for handicrafts; Support for fisheries, grazing and agriculture, and outdoor recreation as well as ecosystem services, including buffering the negative effects of excess nutrient loads and sedimentation by absorbing nutrients and pollutants. Many future climate-change impacts are predicted to accelerate multiple challenges across the district, affecting nearly all of the population. These impacts are expected to include profound changes in water availability and temperature stresses to humans, livestock, and crops, changes in farming practices, incomes and food security, ecological disruption, and human health-related impacts such as changes in disease vectors and ranges, spatial expansion of malaria and water-borne diseases. Hence, it is imperative that robust, technically-sound and multi-disciplinary, integrated concepts need to be developed and sustainably implemented urgently in Musoma district, especially in the critical water, agricultural, and public health sectors recently the Musoma district, forests, and woodlands are overexploited to produce charcoal, firewood, and house construction materials. Likewise, forests in the area are threatened by illegal harvesting, firewood, charcoal burning, and destructive agricultural activities due to population growth and lack of alternative sources of income. The ongoing deforestation has reduced the coverage of forests and woodlands and the availability of associated goods including accelerating land degradation. Deforestation is mainly undertaken to provide firewood, charcoal, and timber. For example, over 97% of households use charcoal and firewood for cooking. Across the district, wetlands have been severely degraded due to inter alia: a) intensive cultivation of crops such as sweet potatoes and horticultural crops; b) excavation of sand and clay for brickworks; and c) grazing activities. Natural and traditional water sources such as seasonal rivers and springs are no longer reliable. Drinking water quality and quantity have been impaired by both anthropogenic factors and environmental issues including climate change-related factors.  

The project will specifically target the most vulnerable groups who have fewer resources to adapt to climate change in Musoma and is built on the principles of local empowerment through the engagement of vulnerable and grassroots communities such as farmer groups and village governments and community groups. Therefore, the overall objective of this project is to enhance resilience and adaptive capacity to the effects of climate change while reducing the vulnerability of selected communities in Musoma District. Specifically, the proposed project will address the following objectives;

i) Enhancing Climate resilience for improved access to rural water supply system in selected drought-prone agro-pastoral communities of Musoma district;
ii) Improve agricultural productivity, livelihood, and agro-ecosystem resilience through Climate Smart EVA practices;
iii) Promote paradigm shift of small-scale fishers for sustainable income and climate-resilient rural livelihood through aquaculture innovations in selected villages of Musoma district;
iv) Improve ecological and environmental services and functions to sustain climate-sensitive rural livelihoods in selected rural communities of Bunda District;
v) Strengthen market value chain of agricultural products to enhance climate-resilient livelihood systems in the district; and
vi) Strengthening institutional capacity and knowledge management on climate change adaptation

The project targets a vulnerable rural population in Musoma district who are already vulnerable and impacted by the adverse effects of climate change. The target groups include smallholder farmer families living in poverty with a special focus on women, youth, and children, who are members or potential members of democratic farmers’ organization's areas vulnerable to climate change in the Regions. 60 % of small-scale farmers participating in the program are women. The women face higher risks and greater burdens from the impacts of climate change in situations of poverty. The programme creates societal changes to enable the realization of human rights and economic empowerment of women small-holder farmer families through market-led, sustainable agriculture based on agroforestry.

The Executive Director will be the executing  this project.He will be  the lead Implementing Actor actual and will cordinate all activities  at village, Ward and Division levels.The Executive Director  will establish a dedicated project implementation unit (PIU) based at the District with core technical and support staff comprising: Project Coordinator - responsible for ensuring that the project produces the expected results specified in the results framework to time and budget. The PIU will carry out the day-to-day implementation of the project, and will be responsible for the operational and financial management and reporting. The PIU will liaise closely with the District Administrations in Musoma district to maximize opportunities and to integrate the project within the district development planning processes.

Monitoring and Evaluation Officer - responsible for all project monitoring and reporting including baseline and other field surveys, annual impact assessments, collection and collation of data for quarterly reporting, risk monitoring and reporting, 

The techniques used in these pre-consultation visits were mainly expertise judgment, meetings with village administrators and community members, Focus Group Discussions, and cross-departmental meetings at the village level and district level. 

1.How to develop implementation plans that include clearly defined policy goals, strategies, action plans, monitoring mechanisms, and operational guidelines.

2.Integrate best practices and successful approaches to overcoming barriers into organizational and decision-making processes 

3.Leverage multispectral partnerships and resources to collectively address complex barriers at the appropriate level and facilitate implementation (national, district, facility, etc.

4.Provide training, technical assistance, and mentoring to other organizations 

 5,Building a strong corporate culture internationally

 6.Developing a common technical or professional culture worldwide
 7.Relying on strong financial or planning systems

Reversing the ongoing degradation of environmental and ecological systems and enhancing adaptation activities through EVA practices, is expected to contribute over 50% of forest regeneration and cover including woodlands and water resources availability, compared to the baseline scenario in the project sites. The proposed restoration and tree planting activities under component four will contribute to climate resilient of rural communities directly and indirectly through improved ecological functions and services such as weather amelioration, protect soils from erosion, control land degradation and as well as forest products. Promotion of planting activities for fruit plants and wood plants for timber including beekeeping activities in pilot villages may yield excellent reduction of income poverty and will contribute significantly to climate  resilience of vulnerable communities specially women and girls

1.SUWOFA  intends to promote Sustainable Land Management through policy influencing and tree planting through agroforestry interventions, creating a green belt in the Region for improving the biodiversity and ecological system thus providing basis for economic development, food security and sustainable livelihoods while restoring the ecological integrity of Mara region.

2.SUWOFA will achieve sustainable land management for improved livelihood by:

Creating an enabling environment for mainstreaming Sustainable Land Management (SLM) into sectoral policies and planning by strengthening legislation mechanisms for effective implementation and enforcement at the local level and support the National Sustainable Land Management Policy and ensure there is a clear dialogue in partnership with Stakeholders

Strengthening the Government and Civil Society organizations (CSO) to coordinate and mainstream Sustainable Land Management and Natural Resources Management into district development strategy and plans by ensuring that the government and CSO’s plan and execute sustainable land management interventions enhanced through these interventions.

We always have regular and an ongoing farmer trainings, farm, home and field visits, demonstration(both method and results) ,exchange visit, excursion, and field days to all farmers done by the team of Program Officers in our office but also we work together with the government staff in sectors of agriculture, forestry and natural resources management who are located at the field  ground and respective villages to support farmers engaging in tree planting, agroforestry and agriculture, we build their capacity and share different programme approaches, implementation plan, reports on achivements,success and challenges and targets .We use the community volunteers and progressive farmers as well chosen from each farmers group or organization within the villages to make the follow up, collect information and give  the feedback on weekly basis on every friday by submitting every farmers tree progress and reporting any challenge experienced  and encountered including survival rate, nursery progress and management, tree seedlings transplanted. Different community/group meetings are held every month to discuss key topic of their interest on tree planting including other social issues like microfinance, environment conservation and protection and livestock management. High level government personnel like Ministers, Regional Commissioner pay their visit to farmers for assessing and giving them more energy and encouragement in making sure trees are well cared and surviving. 

The objective is improve ecological and environmental services and

functions to sustain climate sensitive rural livelihoods Bunda District
The indicator will be the number and type of ecosystems maintained and improved to enhance their functions and services under climate change and variability induced stress. At least more than 500 people benefited as direct beneficiaries and 4,000 benefited as indirect beneficiaries from restoration and rehabilitation of at least 100 acres of the degraded ecosystems in the project sites, At least 20 community groups involved in tree planting activities of which 50% are women groups

The outcome  will be: 

1.The Increased adaptive capacity within relevant development and natural resource sectors,

2   increased ecosystem resilience in response to climate change and variability

3. Diversified and strengthened livelihoods and sources of income for vulnerable people in targeted areas

 4.Increased adaptive capacity within relevant development and natural
resource sectors 

We will have an ongoing training programme to all small holder farmers who are engaging in the project activities on tree management before and after the transplanting exercise for making sure there is a high survival rate of transplanted seedlings in the field. These trainings are field based and practical in nature, the topics covered are weeding, watering, tree management like pruning, pollarding, coppicing, tree protection against livestock, soil and water management, fertilizer and manure application. There is also a continuous field follow up and visit and monitoring basically for provision of immediate technical support to farmers who are experiencing some challenges and for data collecting.

The proposed project will ensure early sensitization of all key decision-makers and communities to the need for and benefits of women’s equal participation in activities;

specify targets for male/female participation at meetings and training events in order for the meeting/training to be quorate, the target for women/men ration should be encouraged to no less than 50%; and develop implementation plan which ensure targets for male/female participation in project activities be at least 50% women. 

1.ecological restoration and rehabilitation plans (hills, mountainous and woodland restored and conserved) in selected Wards (Bugwema,Buhemba,Bukima,Bukumi,Buruma,Butiama,Nyakatende and Tegeruka wards)

planting 100,000 tree seedlings in 5 Wards ecosystem-based income generating activities at Bugwema,Buhemba,Bukima,Bukumi,Buruma,Butiama,Nyakatende and Tegeruka through (a)improved bee keeping activities in
woodland, hills and mountainous systems and (b) fruit plants farming

2 Engage farmers in tree planting on surrounding residential areas, along streets and roadsides and degraded landscapes and establish ecological schools (3 secondary and 3 primary schools)and villages (4 villages) in selected wards

The organization will continue engaging various potential investors  and stakeholders  including government and those external to an organization. The organization also has a fundraising plan that include income generating activities: selling cooking stoves that minimize the use of firewood.

1.Received fund from We forest $60,000

2.JRS Biodiversity Foundation $20,000

3.Albertine Rift Biodiversity Conservation (ARCOS) $25,000