One of the most wellknown biofuel investments was that of Bioshape, which acquired approximately 34,000 ha in Kilwa District for the cultivation of jatropha.

Like many of its neighbors, Tanzania is experiencing a well-documented surge of land grabbing related to investments in industries such as agriculture, biofuels, tourism, hunting, and forestry. Land grabbing in Tanzania is best understood and analyzed as both a symptom of and contributor towards wider political economic processes of change occurring in Tanzania.

The increasing importance of the Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in Tanzania, where 17 WMAs are now functioning and 22 others are in various stages of development, begs the question of what successes have been achieved and what challenges remain to be addressed if this Community-Based Conservation model is to be sustained and even scaled up. There has not been a country-wide evaluation of WMAs since the pilot-phase evaluation in 2007 at a time when most WMAs were too new to yield firm projections for the long term.

Rights-based conservation depends on institutions that give citizens clear and enforceable rights to manage lands and natural resources. Such rights hinge on citizens’ abilities to strengthen and defend their rights and on the operation of the rule of law and impersonal forms of government for legal reforms to take place and have meaning.

In 2010, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Aichi Biodiversity Targets as part of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. Target 11 calls for ‘at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas’ to be conserved by way of ‘well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures’.

 This paper explores the development of a pilot PES scheme in the Tarangire ecosystem of Tanzania in response to specifi c wildlife declines and policy constraints. It charts the development of this initiative from its genesis based on PES experiences in Kenya. This paper specifi cally explores the questions of whether the utilization of free-market enterprise tools to achieve conservation goals infl uences Maasai livelihood diversifi cation in ways that are compatible with conservation.

The study reveals a lack of accountability and governance in managing biofuel investments in the country. As a result, biofuel investments have done little to alleviate poverty, empower villagers, and protect the environment. As villages were unprepared, hastened to make decision, and were lured by words of the investors and leaders who promoted the benefits of the investment more than its threats.

This urgent alert is based on the forceful evictions of Maasai pastoralists from their homes and grazing lands in Loliondo Division, Ngorongoro District in Northern Tanzania and the gross human rights violations that are being committed. 

The eviction operation started on the 4th July 2009 and was conducted by the notorious riot police, the Field Force Unit, with assistance of private guards from the Otterlo Business Cooperation (OBC). They entered the villages by shooting in the air and using teargas before pouring petrol on the Maasai homes and setting them on fire.

Pastoralists in Tanzania are suffering from many human rights violations, including forced evictions from their lands. This report gives a comprehensive analysis of the human rights situation of indigenous peoples in Tanzania, and documents cases of human rights violations against Maasai pastoralists during 2011. 

The information contained in this report is a result of a comprehensive survey and human rights analysis, which used both primary and secondary data collection methodologies covering a total of 10 districts and 18 villages. 

In early 2015, Maasai and Datoga citizens living in the Morogoro region of Tanzania were victims of deadly, ethnic violence. According to reports from local media, the assaults were instigated by public figures interested in acquiring land, and state authorities have not intervened to protect Maasai citizens. Police protection has instead been given to others who are illegally cultivating officially registered Maasai land. 

This paper uses the case of South Africa’s latest land redistribution strategy known as the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy, to explore whether, and how, research can have direct and positive impacts on beneficiaries of land reform. The study is situated within the practice of action research: to explore how it can generate knowledge that can be shared back and forth between stakeholders, as well as how it may ignite changes that the participants desire. The findings are that Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy is not meeting the overall goals land reform.

The report explores the evictions of pastoralists and other conflicts over pastoralists’ land in Tanzania, with focus on the past decade. 

Although most of these evictions and land based conflicts have been documented, the associated human and legal rights violations have increasingly lead to concern amongst civil society. A study was therefore commissioned to collate the available information as well as to visit affected pastoralist communities to assess the current situation faced by pastoralists in the country.