REVIEW OF STAND FOR HER LAND CAMPAIGN TO IMPOSE CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES FOR IMPROVED RESILIENCE, ADAPTATION AND PRODUCTIVITY.
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Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF) through Ardhi Yetu Project plus (AYP Plus) which is funded by Care-International in Denmark through Care International in Tanzania implemented in collaboration with HAKIARDHI and PAICODEO conducted a Stand for Her Land (S4HL) campaign partners meeting to review the campaign strategy. The dialogue was conducted at Stella Maris hotel in Bagamoyo on 13th – 14th November 2020, where it brought together the Secretariat of the Campaign, Objective leads and the members of the Task Force from partners organizations to share lessons and evidences from gendered climate vulnerability assessment (GCVCA) for improved implementation of campaign strategy and AYP gender centered strategic focus i.e. climate change and land rights.
The campaigns strategic areas of focus/ objectives are the following hereunder;
- Address cultural norms to overcome societal barriers that prevent women to realize and claim their land rights whether through individual or joint matrimonial ownership, or through protected equal rights to communally owned land, including pastoralist communities;
- Promote women’s use of land for economic benefits e.g. sale of produce from land
- Increase women’s participation in decision-making bodies/structures and processes in land governance
- Promote women’s land rights in regions with land-based investments
The meeting adopted presentations of various issues by the secretariat and allowed discussion from members of task force. The secretariat expressed various achievements and challenges in the period of one year of implementation being conducting webinar on impacts of COVID-19 to women land rights, raised fund of about USD 5000 on response to COVID-19, formation of Sheria Kiganjani program to facilitate implementation of S4HL, preparation of monitoring and evaluation plan, selecting influential ambassadors for spreading out campaign and sending about 40,378 bulk messages.
Some of the challenges faced include; - low funds in achieving objectives of the campaign, slow or low responses in sharing success stories, reports and feedbacks from taskforce members and inconsistency membership participation.
In achieving campaign objectives, the campaign is aiming at conducting national conference to address women land rights by March 2021to address among others; - women and gender climate change vulnerability, women land rights movement and innovations, women land rights and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) motivations and youth and the land question especially women youths. Also, the conference will involve launching of the Know your rights guide which aims at explaining land acts in simple language.
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Also, the meeting aimed at mainstreaming the Climate change issues to the objective of the stand for her land campaign in recognition of the global threats of the climate change shocks. During the meeting TNRF through Ardhi Yetu Project coordinator Mr. Rogath Massay presented the study done in Simanjiro, Kiteto, Iringa, Same and Chemba districts in Tanzania on the Climate change issues. The study revealed that women are most affected with the climate change impacts because they are the one who take care of the families and perform activities which are affected by climate change including searching for water, cultivation of crops, searching for firewood and taking care of domestic animals. The presentation aimed at strengthening the need for mainstreaming climate change issues to the objectives of the campaign, hence implementation of the campaign should go hand in hand with capacitating communities especially women on the ways to be resilient to climate change effects.
Lesson Learnt
Meeting with the partners of the campaign physically was productive because it allowed discussions and solutions/suggestions to some of the issues raised right away. Also, meeting with representatives from other organizations provided the platform of each organization learning from one another on how they perform various issues in their organizations.
There is need to perform regular meetings with members of the campaign in order to be updated of the progress of the campaign and see what have been achieved among the objectives set.
Recommendations
- Climate change is real and will continue to exist if the exact causes are not properly addressed. The right to own land is also affected by climate change, the land will be useless if will be affected by climate change. Therefore, it’s important to mainstream the climate change issues to the objectives of the campaign in order to adapt and being resilient to the climate change shocks.
- Members of task force should be meeting frequently either in their clusters or generally in order to be updated on the progress of various issues of the campaign
- Stand for her land campaign should also aim at addressing customary law which affects the rights of women to own land
- Traditional ambassadors should be the part of the campaign because they are the one who are having most powerful influence especially at community level
- Campaign should find ways to be presented using the local languages because it aims at addressing problems of the people especially women at the local communities/levels.
- The campaign should have a Memorandum of Understanding that shows the responsibility and contribution of each member.