According
to the World Bank, (1990) as quoted by Biermann and Moshi, (1997:156) Poverty
is inability to attain a specific (minimum) standard of living. The definition
focuses on the absolute economic well-being of the poor people, in isolation
from the welfare distribution of the entire society. Poverty is indicated by
elements such as poor infrastructure, unemployment, hunger, lack of balanced
diet, diseases, life expectancy, dependent economy, poor social services
(water, education and health). In Tanzania, there introduced the strategy of
dealing with poverty (National Strategy for Growth and Poverty Reduction)
MKUKUTA – Mpango wa Kukuza Uchumi na Kuondoa Umaskini Tanzania. This strategy
aimed at dealing with poverty reduction in the country.
Natural Resources are stocks of materials that exist in the natural environment that
are both scarce and economically useful in production or consumption either in
their raw states or after a minimal amount of processing (World Trade Report, 2010). Robinson defines Natural resources as any materials that exists in
natural independently of human industry and that is utilized in some way by
humans. Natural resources include water, petroleum, minerals, land and forest.
Tanzania
with a population of 44.9 million people and with population growth rate of
2.9% (URT, 2012) is endowed with a significant variety of natural resources
including land, rivers, lakes, ocean, forests, woodlands, wild animals and
wetlands. Also Tanzania is rich in a variety of non-renewable natural resources
including minerals such as gold, iron, Nickel, Tanzanite, diamond, Uranium, and
Natural gas.
Despite
the rich endowment of natural resources, the country’s failure to realize the
full potential value of natural resources and environment to increase economic
growth and the livelihood of population has contributed to Tanzania standing as
one of World’s poorest country (URT, 2013; World Bank, 2014). Poverty levels are
high in rural areas where 80% of the population lives. This is due to the
following reasons:
Lack of a good Leadership
A
committed leader encourages innovation with creating ideas. The leader that inspire
others to share in common vision, sets a good examples and support others.
Tanzania lacks committed leaders in its system of leadership who can control
fully the utilization of natural resources available in the country to ensure
equal distribution of services in both rural and urban areas. For instance,
Geita region which is rich in Gold but its population is still poor in terms of
social services like water, hospital (health services), education, electricity
and infrastructure. This is because the profit from Gold is beneficial to other
places and people outside Geita. Also for the case of Mtwara where natural gas
is available but the region is still poor.
Poor policies over the
natural resources
Policy means
authoritative or sanctioned decisions by public authorities. It is the cause of action within which one
tries to realize a specific goal (Roos, 1973:12). The good policy show all
different ways of dealing with different anomalies arise during the program
implementation. Many Tanzania natural resources policies are poor since some
fail to show the ways of dealing with the problems and those who goes against
the law and legal acts made by the government.
For
instance the forest policy shown or declared illegal to cut trees for firewood
and charcoal but it failed to show the alternative source of energy to be used
by the people (local community).
According
to Milledge et al (2007), the government efforts to reduce the illegal timber
trade, which by 2003 was estimated to account for over 95% of all timber trade
in Tanzania and to be costing the government lost revenue of up to US$ 58million annually.
Another
example is the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2008 which replaced that of 1974.
This Act is not favorable to increase local income from Wildlife or Local
participation in Wildlife management. This is because the terms of the Act will
likely to increase conflicts between local communities and the government over
the tenure and management of land and resources where Wildlife is found as
recently occurred in Loliondo- Arusha.
Poor implementation of
policies
In
Tanzania, there are various policies which are based on the natural resources
such as Wildlife policy, Land Policy, Water policy, Mineral Policy, and Forest
Policy but these policies are poorly implemented. This means that there is no
clear information or document which the government makes in order to be
understood for everyone in the country concerning the natural resources. Also
there is no proper changes in the policies, and the population in both rural
and urban continue to grow and the large amount of natural resources are
exploited silently making residents stay poorly.
For
example, Amani Forest in Tanga, the Natural Forest Policy states that, “the
ownership of land and natural resources, access and the right to use them are
of fundamental importance, not only for more balanced and equitable
development, but also to the level of care accorded to the environment. It is
only when people can satisfy their needs have control of the resource base as
well as has secure land tenure that long-term objectives of environment
protection can be satisfied (MNRT, 1998a)”. The policy is clearly stated but
poorly implemented since few people are benefiting from the forest. So the
policy for specific natural resources should be implemented accordingly.
Excess Corruption in
the Country
Corruption
is dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people such as
government officials or police officers. Those who are in powerful position
have control over the natural resources and usually have easy access to money.
Tanzania has not been successful in managing its natural resources in a
suitable and equitable manner because the management and staff in the Ministry
together with politicians and people from the local population have plundered
the resources and exploited the resources in a way that is not suitable. For
example, Wildlife sectors and fisheries, the government allows these resources
to be plundered by the national and international companies, provided that they
obtain a share of the profit made by the companies. Therefore, corrupt
representatives of the government earn huge amounts of money that should have
gone into the treasury (Brockington, 2008).
Laziness and
irresponsibility of the People in the Country
Despite
Tanzania have a lot of resources; the rate of poverty is still very high. This
is contributed much by laziness and irresponsibility as well as lack of
self-motivation to perform duties. Most of the people are lazy on the
utilization of resources available. For example, availability of water
resources like rivers and lakes can support irrigation system but due to
laziness people are depending much on rainfall. Also some leaders are
irresponsible in their duties such as the implementation of policy. Therefore,
if every person could do productive work and strive for self motivation,
poverty could be eradicated.
Poor Technology
Tanzania,
despite of having plenty of natural resources but still its people are very
poor especially in rural areas where large number of population live. One of
the cause of this state is poor technology among the people in the country thus
various natural resources are present but due to poor technology, the resources
are poorly utilized or cannot totally be utilized. For example, Natural gas in
Mtwara delayed to be utilized due to poor technology. Also various regions have
different types of minerals such as Uranium in Dodoma and Morogoro, Diamond in
Shinyanga, Gold in Geita and Tanzanite in Manyara, but extraction of these minerals depend much on the people from
outside the country who inturn export the minerals to their countries living
Tanzanians remain poor.
Loans and aids with
pressure condition (debt burden) and big interest from the World Bank and IMF
Tanzania
has loans with big interest that cannot pay in the expenses. The country cannot
pay such loans with such big interest and when fails to pay, the debts
increases. This cause the country invite outsiders to invest in various natural resources with little benefit or profit to avoid from being asked to pay the
required debts. So this make the country remain poor with its people as some
resources (such as fishes and minerals) are taken to repay the debt.
Generally,
despite that Tanzania is a resource-rich nation, key policy and legislative
decisions made since MKUKUTA was adopted have not always supported the
objective of using natural resources to reduce poverty in rural areas where 80%
of the population lives. For resources such as wildlife, rural citizens
effectively continue to subsidize national agencies and private investors by
bearing the costs of living with wildlife without receiving a significant share
of economic benefits. In the forestry sector, while PFM continues to expand,
blockages which are preventing local communities from benefiting from forest
products trade need to be overcome. These weaknesses in natural resource
governance work to undermine the core objectives of MKUKUTA to improve good
governance and strengthen macro-micro linkages. The lack of progress in
strengthening these linkages contributes to the relatively limited reductions
in rates of rural poverty that have been achieved in the country, as documented
by the last Household Budget Survey.
For
the next MKUKUTA or Poverty Reduction Strategy to be more effective in terms of
the implementation of its targets and objectives, more effective mechanisms
need to be applied to ensure implementation and coordination. These measures
will need to ensure that sectoral laws, polices and strategies do not include
provisions which will undermine MKUKUTA’s aims and targets. Without more
effective coordination, monitoring and better implementation measures, poverty
reduction targets are unlikely to be met, no matter how valid the strategies
and objectives which are put in place.
REFERENCES
Biermann,
W. & Moshi, H. P. B. (1997). Contextualizing
Poverty in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: Dar
es Salaam University press.
Brockington,
D. (2008). Corruption, Taxation and
Natural Resources Management in Tanzania. Journal
of Development Studies.
Milledge,
S. A. H et al (2001). Forestry Governance
and National Development. Dar es Salaam: Tanzania
Development Partners group. Ministry of Natural Resources, Tourism.
Roos,
J. P. (1973). Welfare Theory and Social
Policy: A study in policy science. Fermica: Socientianim.
The
United Republic of Tanzania (2013). 2012
Population and Housing Census: Population Distribution
by Administrative Areas. Dar es Salaam: National Bureau of Statistics Ministry of Finance and Office of Chief
Government, Statistician President’s Office, Finance,
Economy and Development Planning Zanzibar.
The
World Bank (2014). Tanzania Economic Update.
United
Republic of Tanzania (2013). Post -2015 National Priorities.
World
Trade Report (2010). Natural resources:
definitions, trade Patterns and Globalization.
No comments:
Post a Comment