**Abstract**

Climate change adaptation actions for mitigating desertification and improving community livelihood in developing countries have attracted numerous scholarly works. However, there have been insufficient findings on the adaptation regarding the eco-village practices in semi-arid areas in particular. This inspired a study to assess the role of eco-village practices in strengthening climate change adaptive capacity and mitigating desertification in semi-arid areas of Chololo village, Dodoma region in central Tanzania. Data were collected using mixed methods, that is, household survey (92), focus group discussions (21), key informants interviews (6), field observation and documentary review. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and content analysis were used in analyzing quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The study found a relatively high level of community awareness on the eco-village initiative; the initiative rehabilitated village forest reserve; improved land productivity for sorghum and pearl millet; increased number of planted trees; and strengthening communities' adaptation to climate change through improved households' nutrition, income and reduced water stress.

**Keywords:** eco-village, Chololo, Dodoma, Tanzania, desertification, climate change, semi-arid

## **1. Introduction**

The growing global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment and human welfare [1–4]. The impact has been manifested through changes in global average temperature that has increased by 0.8-1°C over the past 100 years and 2016 was the hottest (0.99°C) year on record [5]. Rainfall models indicate increases of precipitation near the equators, Arctic and Antarctic. The Mediterranean and Southern Africa regions have experienced precipitation drop of about 20%. Western Australia, Chile, and Central America/Mexico are likely to become around 10% drier [6]. Globally, these climate change indicators have had implications to the increased type, frequencies and intensities of extreme weather events like floods, droughts, tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) and heavy precipitation [7]. The growing impact has widely affected agriculture, water, livestock, forestry and the general ecological systems mostly in developing countries [8].

The climate change impacts in developing countries have mostly been noted through extended periods of droughts, loss of soil fertility, shortening of the

growing season negatively affecting crop yield that in turn worsen food insecurity, land degradation and desertification and subjecting many people at risk of hunger. As for the forestry sector which is resorted by more than 90% for wood fuel in Africa and Asia has recorded severe biomass deterioration through loss of biodiversity, limited forest products, ecosystem shift from forest to woodlands or woodland to grasslands and desertification [8].

The impact of climate change has compelled several interventions to redress the effects particularly in semi-arid areas of developing countries including use of Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) that aimed at commodifying forestry conservations efforts to the community owning and/or living adjacent to the managed forest(s). However, it has been reported that the initiatives inadequately embraced the socio-economic welfares of the community that were claimed to be the drivers for the deteriorating forests in the course of earning their livelihoods [9]. REDD, in particular, unsuccessfully supported alternative activities such as crop farming, domestic energy, beekeeping and brick making as means to redress shifting agriculture, exploitation of wood fuel and encroachment that were regarded as underlying drivers of deforestation and forest degradation [10].

Despite the ongoing debates on the effectiveness of CDM and REDD, the countries severely hit by the impact of climate change have embarked on the eco-village initiative as one of the renewed paradigm shifts to directly strengthen capacity of community for adaptation against negative impact of climate change. In the context of this study, eco-village means rural communities/settlements/village in a landscape devoted to increasing resilience and capacity to adapt to climate change through an integrated and multidisciplinary range of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) activities in an indefinite future.

The eco-village initiative is an integral part for enabling community to adjust to the climate change focusing on consolidating people's welfare sectors, namely crop farming, livestock, forestry and ecological systems [11, 12]. The objective of this is study is to assess the impact of the eco-village initiatives and/or practices in mitigating climate change and desertification in semi-arid areas of central Tanzania. Specifically, the chapter intends to (i) t**o identify eco**-village initiatives and/or practices for Adaptation to Climate Change and mitigation of desertification and (ii) to assess the performance of eco-village initiatives and/or practices in smallholder farmer's yields before and after the eco-village interventions.
