Linking Coastal and Marine Resources Endowments and Climate Change Resilience of Tanzania Coastal Communities

Abstract

This paper presents findings on the links between coastal/marine resources endowment and climate change resilience to coastal communities in Mchungu and Kivinja' A' village on the coastal zone of Rufiji District in Tanzania. The study focused on exploring the existing coastal resources and their support to communities' livelihood, climatic threats that are experienced, and the role of coastal resources in enhancing communities' resilience. It further sought to establish other enabling factors for climate change adaptation (e.g., gender, education, governance, by-laws, and membership in social networks). The study used focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and household surveys in data collection. Findings show that Mchungu village is endowed with fish, mangrove, natural canal, and floodplains as their major coastal resources, while Kivinja' A' is rich in salt and coconut production. Communities in both villages exploit these coastal resources for their livelihood activities such as fishing, agriculture, and business. The study further found that coastal communities are already experiencing the effects of climate change through temperature rise, flooding, drought, sea-level rise, and storm surges. These affect household food security in terms of fish catch and crop production. The study revealed that coastal and marine resources were important for increasing community resilience (P ≤ 0.05) to climate change impacts in the studied villages. However, household resilience to climate change impacts was also influenced by gender, by-laws, education, and membership in social networks.

Keywords: Climate change; Coastal communities; Coastal resources; Marine resources; Resilience.