Abstract

East African rangelands are seen by many as an ideal case for win-win community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). This paper presents research in progress on the social and ecological impacts of Tanzania’s centrally-driven state CBNRM programme of Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs). Our collaborative research project PIMA uses a mixed methods approach, with a view to rigorous causal attribution. We evaluate ecological (vegetation change, wildlife population trends) and social outcomes (institutional and governance change; livelihoods, natural resource use, wellbeing, disaggregated by wealth and gender), for six WMAs established since 2007 or earlier. While data collection is not yet complete (let alone data analysis), I present preliminary, broad-brush results on selected dimensions for a subset of WMAs. The emerging findings raise questions around the extent to which Tanzania’s WMAs are achieving their stated aims and objectives.