PROTECT- ADVOCACY TRAINING

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Protect (Protecting Tanzania’s Environment, Conservation and Tourism project) is a five-year intervention project funded by the USAID and implemented by International Resources Group (IRG). The objective of PROTECT is to address the ever changing characteristics in Tanzania that threaten biodiversity conservation and constrain private sector-led tourism growth.

Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF) under Protect Project has a role to implement one of the activities under this project which is policy, research and advocacy through “Engaging Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Private Sector in developing Advocacy Agendas”. Among the activities that TNRF is implementing include; i) Conducting a rigorous analysis of Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) economic viability/inviability and develop options for inviable WMAs. ii) Building capacity of civil society and private sector to develop advocacy agendas around conservation and tourism. iii) Facilitating a series of meetings between civil society, private sector and the appropriate government institutions to identify conservation issues of concern and find areas of convergence around which action plans and advocacy will be developed.

In implementing its activities today 1^st to 2^nd June, Tanzania Natural Resource under Protect project is holding advocacy training in Arusha which has been participated by more than 30 participants from Civil Society Organizations (COSs) and Private sectors. The purpose is to enable the two groups to pursue relevant policy issues that undermine conservation of natural resources, investment and benefit sharing in Community Based Natural Resource Management.

The training main objectives are; to define and describe advocacy, the advocacy situation in Tanzania concerned districts and wards, the different advocacy mechanisms used in the concerned districts and wards, analyze the building blocks of advocacy and the key dimensions, reflect/identify and link Natural Resource Management and Tourism issues at local and national level, to come up with the way forward for the advocacy in Natural Resource Management and Tourism arena.

The training workshop commenced and among the topics that the participants have been trained on included;

• Right- based approaches to Natural Resource Management , Community  development and policy reforms
• Community Based Natural Resource Management  initiatives and the RBAs
• Discussion on Community Based Natural Resource Management  initiatives in Tanzania
• Principles and advocacy practices for policy reforms
• Advocacy through strategic litigation
• Strategic advocacy communication
• Planning session/ way forward