View/Open - Sokoine University of Agriculture

What we found, was a somewhat “over-emphasis” on PFM whereas the new demandsof REDD seem to have been pushed to the background or under-estimated. Noperformance based payment mechanisms are developed yet, and the highly technicaland capacity driven need to perform MRV as well as the time consuming aspect ofthese activities does not seem to be overtly deliberated upon. The transaction costsinvolved for the NGO and for local people to perform MRV and handling thefinancial aspects of REDD is also of concern. If using NGO‟s in an overall futurestrategy for REDD with the aim of implementing REDD throughout Tanzania, thiswill then entail extremely high transaction costs to cover all of Tanzania´s 10.000villages, a lot more than what carbon credits will generate.So far, the land use planning exercises have only started in a few villages andparticipatory methods and awareness raising have been used to create acceptance andelect members to the VNRC in charge of managing REDD in the villages. Thevarious forest user groups have been identified, with particular attention given to thepoorest people in the community, and the main drivers of deforestation in each villagehave been mapped. But again, when viewing the project in terms of its ability tocreate net-carbon storage, the fact that only selected areas have been chosen and willbe measured and not entire village areas suggests that overall reduced emissions willbe hard to come by. This is particularly apparent as many households collect forestproducts from other forest landscapes than those selected for measurement. There isthus need for a clear consultant and comprehensive leakage strategy.Pastoralists in the area appear to have been left out of the project, even though insome of the villages, Masugu in particular and Nyali to some extent, they representeda substantive presence. Although stated that they were planning to discuss REDDwith them we wonder if this means actually including them in the decision-makingprocess or merely informing them of what will happen. In this case, a substantialconflict area will appear, and is an area that can lead to larger national implications.Improving the villagers agricultural conditions seem to have some emphasis and withone staff member with a pure agricultural background to provide with technicalexpertise, the farmers will in the pilot villages receive assistance in their currentpractices. We found that villagers in Masugu can in particular accrue benefit fromthis, as they had the lowest outcome from their agricultural production, fertilityseemed to be lower and they were especially affected by crop failure. This was also282