The Environmental change in the Lake
Manyara Basin needs immediate attention
The natural, social, cultural and economic
landscapes of Lake Manyara area highly diverse.
By C.Nguya
Lake Manyara area
is a frontier zone reflecting a social dynamism which has existing in
this part of East Africa for several centuries. Maasai pastoralists
have inhabited the plains to the east of Lake Manyara and the Northern
highlands, since the 18th century. More recently the Barabaiq
pastoralists have migrated into the area from the north due to
increasing marginalisation and land alienation. Agro- pastoralism is the
predominant mode of production among the Iraqw,Gorowa, and Mbugwe
settlers of the Mbulu and Babati districts to the south and west ,
while pockets of intensive irrigated crop production at the foot of the
Rift Valley escarpment have developed rapidly during the last 50 years,
drawing immigrants from all parts of Tanzania. Recent increases in the
region’s population have resulted in a massive expansion of cultivation
in the highland and large tracts of land previously used exclusively by
pastoral Maasai have been appropriated by the state and large and
small scale farmers. Signs are that the land frontier is closing as
land holdings, contested , consolidated and re-defined.
The natural,
social cultural and economic landscapes of Lake Manyara area highly
diverse and patterns of environmental change highly complex and
localized . The area has a long history as a frontier zone, stretching
back millennia. The rise and fall of Engaruka between 13th
and 18th centuries was a precursor to the population growth
and development of irrigated settlements in the Rift Valley today. The
ebb and flow of hunter-gatherer, pastoral and cultivation activities
within this environment over centuries have to a large extent modified
and created the landscape which the pioneers and colonialists of the 20th
century inherited. It was not a pristine wilderness or untouched “
garden of Eden” as some would like to believe. To generalize about basin
level environmental processes in inevitably to simplify and
misrepresent. The impact which humans have had upon the environment is
determined by complex factors including natural cyclic climatic events,
combined with socio-economic conditions affecting land-use practices and
marketing strategies.
There has been
very little change in the uncultivated parts of the arid and semi-arid
plains lying to the eat of the Rift Wall, which are associated with
extensively managed pastoral activity. Also , evidence of changes in
woody vegetation on the escarpment wall and its foothills demonstrates
the rapid pace of natural patch dynamics in association with pastoral
burning,. Contrary to popular beliefs, this area appears to be least
affected by increasing population pressures probably due to low and
uncertain rainfall coupled with substrate and hydrological conditions.
Undoubtedly,
there are important problems elsewhere in the Lake Manyara area related
to land degradation that in urgent need of attention. Sheet and wind
erosion, gullies and loss of soil fertility are a consequence of
unsustainable land use practices but they can also be seen as an
inevitable stage in the process of change from a predominantly
pastoral/pioneer zone to a populated agricultural landscape.
There is also
evidence of land use intensification where farmers and herders adapt to
changing circumstances in a variety of ways. Most villages councils have
developed by-
laws to protect forests and other commonly used areas, although
enforcement is often difficult. Those with a social and cultural
connection to the land attempt to conserve natural resources sustainably
in spite of the many problems they face in surviving within an
impoverished agricultural economy.
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