Acknowledgements

factor among women and children, and also created pressure on biodiversity because of

Reflections in FGDs showed that communities received food aid from the local governments and non-governmental organizations particularly World Vision Tanzania during food insecurity months. Food relief seemed to increase in the previous 15 years, in which was provided almost each year. This is translated to increased climatic hazards like droughts that affected crop productivity. Some women relied on doing small scale businesses, food and money borrowing from relatives and friends in coping with droughts, food insecurity and famine. Borrowing had increased in the previous 20 years. This is not new, but borrowers returned without interest in the past, suggesting strong social capital and a culture of self-help in the communities in the past. However, FGDs commented that an interest had been introduced since the 1990s following increasing incidence of food borrowing largely due to re-occurrences of crop failure and famine. This implies that climatic hazards had weakened social networks and trust in the communities and that it had increased vulnerability among borrowers, in most cases, women who borrowed when men were away. Reflections in FGDs showed that, while men could get some money and food for selling labor when they were away from their families, it was a challenge for women, who left at home, to support family members through small scale businesses without proper skills and also through "sex for money and food." The strategies adopted by women were not reliable and sustainable given that they prevailed during hardship periods in terms of food insecurity, famine and lack of income, in which everybody in the community including men, who contracted "sex for food" and or "sex for

Climatic hazards have complex and overlapping outcomes in semi-arid environment in Tanzania. They have negative impact on natural, social, financial, physical and human capitals that are critical for community livelihoods. The trends of the hazards had increased over time, in the previous 30 years, concurrently with famine and disturbances on communities' livelihoods. Communities, men and women, had differently adopted coping and adaptation measures in dealing with vulnerability. Men's strategies took place outside the home while women's strategies were mainly conducted at home. The major coping and adaptation strategies for men were related to mobility. Interestingly, women's adaptation and coping strategies were not reliable and sustainable such that they were not effectively working resulting into more vulnerability among women relative to men counterparts. These results have policy implications calling concerted efforts from development actors to address the situation. To that

• Development programmes implemented by different stakeholders like the central and local governments should make sure that women are given skills and involved in environmental management interventions like tree planting, water projects and soil moisture and fertility conservation because they are main users and agents of environmental management. This can rehabilitate the degraded land to improve food security.

concentration of livestock in the conserved areas.

70 Arid Environments and Sustainability

money" with women, was a victim.

5. Conclusions and policy recommendations

effect, the chapter recommends the following:

This study was conducted under the auspices of the Enhancing Pro-Poor Innovations in Natural Resources and Agricultural Value Chains (EPINAV) Programme, which was implemented by Sokoine University of Agriculture for the period between 2011 and 2016. The author is therefore thankful for financial support from EPINAV without which the study could not have been possible. Many thanks are also extended to the smallholder farmers and agropastoralists in the villages of Mwashata, Mwamanimba and Kidaru for the valuable information shared and time spent during Focus Group Discussions.
