Norway and Tanzania recently signed a partnership on cooperation within areas of forestry and climate. The focus of this partnership will be to look into reducing emissions from deforestation. Tanzania and Norway will cooperate to implement activities and programmes focused on adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Support will be rendered to Vice President’s Office on Environment, and furthermore activities under the partnership will include identifying pilot areas and activities for the promotion of a national REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and ecosystem Degradation) process, review of policy, cooperation within a research programme, and promotion of investments by private sector, NGOs and research institutions.
Measuring carbon footprint of Hashi – Shinyanga
The newly signed agreement with DA is one of the first steps to initiate some of the planned activities under the climate partnership. DA will in their two-fold assignment seek to document the carbon footprint of the Hashi programme that has been implemented in the past. This project in Shinyanga has been supported by Norway for several years; under the project 500,000 hectares of ngitili (traditional village forest) has been restored or created, improving the income, diet, livelihood security, and prospects of thousands of indigenous households. Significant environmental benefits have been recorded including large increases in tree, shrub, grass, and herb cover, species diversity, increases in animal and bird lives in restored areas.
REDD roadmap – and coordination with other climate initiatives
The other part of DA’s assignment will be to prepare the process of developing a national REDD strategy, by collecting knowledge and experiences from similar processes around the world. Furthermore DA will facilitate and draft a roadmap identifying the planned consultative process towards establishing the REDD strategy, and also assist in categorizing and establishing the demonstration sites.
Finally DA will facilitate the finalization of a Country Readiness-PIN to the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), in order to link the activities under the Norwegian-Tanzanian partnership up with efforts undertaken by other development partners.
The next steps
Dialogue is ongoing between different research and higher-learning institutions in Norway and Tanzania to establish a research programme, undertaking among other things a baseline study giving information on actual biomass cover in Tanzania. Furthermore discussions are ongoing within the Development Partner Group on Environment on undertaking of a study looking into policies on climate change.
The letter of intent can be found here.