Eight Village Councils Endorse a Resolution on Community Bylaws
A Policy Action for Enforcing Agroecological Practices at the Landscape Scale in Kongwa District, Tanzania
ResComm has been effectively promoting community-based agroecological practices in eight villages in the Kongwa area since 2021. Later, the program was extended to three communities in the Mpwapwa region. Agroecological practices like Fanya Juu (FJ) and Fanya Chini (FC) contour terraces, Post Emergence Tied Ridges (PETR), Chololo pits, intercropping, and improved sorghum and pigeon pea varieties practiced at the farm and landscape scale have gained traction and support from local communities and district authorities in the second phase of ResComm. Agroecological approaches have been adopted by approximately 8,600 farmers.
The approach extends the application of agroecological methods by building on the robust network of lead farmers in each village. The agroecological transition necessitates regulatory reinforcement to sustainably transform farms and landscapes. It takes greater effort to implement agroecological practices and restoration plans on communally degraded lands; this includes shared visioning, ownership of the actions, equitable benefit sharing, and legal enforcement to prevent resource misuse and inequality.
Actions driven by community needs
First-hand knowledge of the need for enforcement measures to implement agroecological practices and collective action on the landscape management plan was gained via a focus group discussion conducted in 2024 involving key opinion leaders from communities throughout the project villages in Kongwa district. The challenges that the communities found demonstrate the extent of the problems, which go beyond farms and necessitate community and governmental measures to scale at the landscape level. The importance of seeking institutional measures, legal provisions, and regulatory enforcement actions to prevent the widespread deterioration of the environment and the misuse of land uses and vital natural resources like forests, pasture lands, and community assets is reiterated by additional testimonies with the district council director and village executive officers. The implementation of the bylaw enhances the project's commitment to sustainable landscape management and expands the agroecological practices throughout the target districts' villages.
Bylaw formulation processes
To create an acceptable and useful legal provision, the bylaw formulation process involved several participatory steps. To ensure the bylaw is need-driven and in line with district and national government acts, a series of stakeholder discussions and a review of local government acts were conducted. A district environment officer and a district legal officer oversaw the procedures, which included thoughtfully planned and agreed-upon procedures to formulate the bylaw.
First, they consulted technical experts in the field of the area to establish a common understanding of the driving constraints, translating the issues into the local language to establish facts and simplify them so as to determine whether the cause is real. Second, review of the Local Government Act to learn about the legal authority of the village council to formulate bylaws. Third, provide capacity building to about 120 village council members on the entire formulation process. Fourth, participate village council to know their understanding of the constraints, perception, and needs of the bylaws, and then engage them in formulating the bylaw. Fifth, the legal officer engaged the general village assembly, including farmers, women groups, livestock keepers, Ward Executive Officer, Council Management Team, Finance and Planning Department, and the full District Council to gather insights on community needs of the bylaw. Sixth, review and approval of the draft bylaw by the Council Management Team, the finance and planning committee, and the full district council. Finally, the bylaw is endorsed by the village council and district council as a binding legal framework.
Lessons learned during the bylaw formulation process
The bylaw formulation process, which engages village to district councils, provides insightful lessons that inform future improvements to bylaw formulation and the operation of village bylaws. The key lessons drawn from the process are:
- The process involves cross-sector (forest, livestock, natural resources management, environment) and cross-disciplinary integration for bottom-up legal provision processes, as well as integration of local knowledge and community aspirations.
- A community participatory approach for bylaw formulation, facilitated by legal experts and technical experts, supports the identification of key factors for resource conservation and management.
- The process gives an insight that village council members proposed and codesigned action areas and strategies for addressing common issues, which were later translated into bylaws.
- Cohesion of technical expertise between sectoral experts and legal officers for technical narrations and descriptions of terminologies, clauses, etc., provides a simple bylaw.
- Engagement of district-level sectoral technical committees to review and agree on the process and technicalities of the bylaws.
- Testimonies of the district level environment, finance, and other committees, and later endorsed by all council members, will stimulate similar processes in other villages.
- District-level councilors, security personnel, and the commissioner actively engaged in the process and encouraged them to do a similar process for other villages.
Ways forward
The resolution of the bylaw is uniquely positioned to target the districts that can be served as a learning ground for other villages and neighbouring districts. As a way forward, the next steps will be 1) organizing sensitization events for communities and government entities, 2) facilitating support in developing operational plans and identifying investment cases for community actions, and 3) showcasing at national policy events.
Authors: Gizaw Desta (ICRISAT) and Elirehema Swai (ILRI)
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