Towards Climate Change Resilience & Ecosystem Servises Nexus

Climate change is a lived experience in Tanzania and Dar es Salaam in particular with tremendous impacts such as floods, sea level rise and rainstorms in the city and food insecurity in peri-urban areas. However, ecosystem services are increasingly recognized to provide low-cost opportunities for building climate change resilience in cities. Despite the growing awareness on the potentiality of enhancing climate change resilience through urban and peri-urban ecosystem services, there is scarcity of context-based knowledge exemplifying how this can be realized.

In Dar es Salaam city, for instance most climate change resilience initiatives are engineering based i.e focusing on enhancing vulnerable communities through provision of public and infrustructure services and thereby contributing indirectly in addressing climate change effects. Furthermore, majority of such initiatives are biased in urban area.

However, studies in the city and its peri-urban areas are mainly focusing on assessing vulnerability and measuring the impact of climate change. None of the studies has endevoured to explore possibilities of building resilience for climate change effects through ecosystem services.

This study is therefore envisioned to investigate possibilities of deploying ecosystem services in building resilience to climate change effects using the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi socio-ecological system at the peri-urban belt of Dar es Salaam as the case.

This project is envisioned to contribute to SDG15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

Food tourism at PK-SES, Arts and Crafts at PK-SES, and Bee keeping at PK-SES.