The Sustainable Rangeland Management Project (SRMP) aims at securing land and resource rights of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and crop farmers, while improving land management by supporting village and district land use planning and rangeland management in Kiteto, Bahi, Chamwino and Kondoa Districts in Tanzania. More broadly, it aims at influencing policy formulation and implementation on these issues.

Facilitated by financial and technical support from IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) and the International Land Coalition (through the Pastoralist Basket Fund), key partners include the District Councils of the 4 districts, the Ministry of Livestock Development and Fisheries (MLDF), the National Land Use Planning Commission (NLUPC) and civil society organisations supporting village land use planning and rangeland management including the project host KINNAPA Development Programme.

An important part of this endeavour is to introduce new ideas and suggest improvements to the village land use planning (VLUP) process in order to better contribute to sustainable rangeland management. A key challenge, for example, is ensuring the maintenance of livestock movements for optimising pastoral production systems across village boundaries. Participatory rangeland mapping proved to be a useful tool for documenting and gaining a better understanding of methods for facilitating such movements into the VLUP mapping process. In response, CARE Tanzania and the ILC technical advisor organised a five-day training and pilot process mapping in two neighbouring villages – Ng’abolo and Ndedo villages in Kiteto District.

The objectives of the participatory rangeland mappingThe participatory rangeland mapping in Kiteto served a dual purpose. First, it improved understanding of local resource use, distribution and management. Second, it was an opportunity to introduce a new VLUP mapping tool for those working within SRMP (CARE, CSO and government staff ). The mapping exercise aimed at providing information that would feed into the VLUP process. This included:
• Mapping of resources and routes taken to access them;
• Identification of those resources that are key to current livelihood systems;
• Evaluation of how access to these resources has changed and the related causes;
• Determination of current practices for accessing and managing resources; and
• Identification of methodologies for maintaining access to resources that are key to current livelihoods systems, including the option of developing cross-village agreements as part of VLUP.

The mapping process proved to be a useful addition to the VLUP investigation stage prior to negotiations over and definition of land uses, helping to establish the baseline for cross-village agreements. This project demonstrated that such mapping also provides useful input to general community development planning processes such as ‘obstacles and opportunities for development’.