Smucker, Thomas A.; Wisner, Ben; Mascarenhas, Adolfo; Munishi, Pantaleo; Wangui, Elizabeth E.; Sinha, Gaurav; Weiner, Daniel; Bwenge, Charles; Lovell, Eric
Description:
This paper interrogates the framings and priorities of adaptation in Tanzania’s climate policy and
examines the implications for the role of local institutions and differentiated rural populations in climate
change adaptation. Although Tanzania lacks a ‘‘stand alone’’ climate policy, Tanzania’s National Adapta-
tion Programme of Action (NAPA) and National Climate Change Strategy (NCCS) provide the most com-
prehensive statements of the central government’s framing of adaptation and its priorities with regard to
adaptation. In assessing discursive framings of adaptation, we find that the dominant policy discourse
constructs an anti-politics of adaptation through its framing of climate change as an urgent and general-
ized threat to development while failing sufficiently to address the complex governance and social equity
dimensions of climate change adaptation. The technocratic prescriptions of Tanzania’s NAPA and NCSS
converge with similar prescriptions found in Tanzania’s national development policies, such as the major
agricultural development initiative Kilimo Kwanza. Adaptation challenges identified by communities in
Mwanga District demonstrate complex local institutional and resource tenure questions that are not
addressed in climate policy but which require policy attention if social equity in climate change adapta-
tion is to be achieved.