Payouts too little, too late for suffering farmers the state threw off wetlands

DAR ES SALAAM: Ten years after being evicted from a vast wetland, more than 600 farmers have won their battle for compensation.

The stock farmers were removed from their villages in the Ihefu Basin of Tanzania’s southern highlands under a government programme to protect the wetlands, which act as a natural buffer for the Great Ruaha River.

The river is the country’s main source of hydroelectricity, but seasonal drying affected output and in 2006 the Ruaha National Park was expanded to protect water and wetlands, reducing the area available for farming and grazing.

Hellen-Kijo Bisimba, executive director of the Dar es Salaam-based Legal and Human Rights Centre, said the eviction was carried out by heavily armed police, game wardens and anti-poaching unit officers. Not only was farmland lost but livestock also died.

Tanzania’s Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa, said last week compensation payments to the farmers formed part of his government’s plan to resolve long-running land and water conflicts between the state and local communities.

“I have directed authorities to do a thorough assessment and compensate all whose land was reallocated,” he said at a meeting with regional commissioners.

“Land is the property of the state and when the government acquires it for other purposes, it should not be cause for any disputes.”

Tanzania National Parks chief conservationist Vitalis Urulea said $181000 (R2.5 million) had been set aside for the villagers., however community rights activists said the compensation fund was likely to be inadequate, considering the suffering of the villagers and the decade’s delay in securing justice.

“I don’t think this compensation means anything to them – most lost a lot of cattle, crops and even food,” said Andrea Ntelemo, a community leader in Mbarali district.

In 2011, a report submitted to the Tanzanian Human Rights Council documented the forceful eviction of “large numbers” of pastoralists and their livestock from the Usangu Plains over years.

It found that eight other villages in Mbarali were subsumed and made part of the Ruaha National Park on environmental grounds, despite a lack of scientific evidence to justify the eviction.

According to a 2014 study by Iringa University, herders evicted from the Ihefu wetlands when the park was expanded were forced to find new and unfamiliar ways of earning a living, including horticulture and pig farming.

The report found that the Ihefu evictions resulted in the loss of livelihoods, family break-ups and food insecurity, as crops were destroyed and animals starved to death. – Reuters LONDON: New research seems to prove the theory that brainy people spend more time lazing around than their active counterparts.

Findings from a US-based study seem to support the idea that people with a high IQ get bored less easily, leading them to spend more time engaged in thought.

The findings of the study by the Florida Gulf Coast University, published in the Journal of Health Psychology, have been described as “highly significant”. But researchers warned that the downside to being brainier – and lazier – was the negative impact of a sedentary lifestyle. – The Independent