Provide incentives for Tanzanians to tackle climate change, says expert

The Citizen (Tanzania): One of the challenges that will make taming climate change in Tanzania difficult is lack of socio-economic incentives to change the attitude and mindset to address the problem, according to Dr Gratian Bamwenda, an environmental engineer and researcher.

But a policy analyst says the approaches which include replacing common products with a new one to meet climatic conditions would work if farmers are assured of the market.Mr Deus Kashasha proposes that the government create market for the recommended produce in order to assure the farmers of the economic incentive they will get if they adapt to changes.

According to him, most places which adapted technologies and approaches which includes change of the plant varieties in a particular place to mitigate climate change effects, returned to the original production just to meet market demand in their places.

“I have been in some places of Dodoma where they adapted climate change from maize planting to production of yams, which is a climate friendly produce in their place. But they returned to maize planting after missing market for the yams,” says Mr Kashasha who is a Principal Meteorologist at the Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA).

He says the government should create markets for the newly alternative plants introduced in a particular place for the purpose of building sustainable climate change adaptation…

Tengeru market near Arusha, Tanzania, shot by Fanny Schertzer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic