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The potential of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process to respond to climate change impacts of development projects can only be realized with the support of policies, regulations, and actors' engagement. While considering climate change in EIA has become partly mandatory through the EU revised Directive in Europe, African countries are still lagging. This paper assesses Tanzanian policies, laws, regulations, and EIA reports to uncover consideration of climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation measures, drawing from the transformational role of EIA. The methodology integrates content analysis, interpretive policy analysis, and discourse analysis. The analyses draw from environmental policy, three regulatory documents and three EIA reports in Tanzania using a multi-cases study design. The aim was to understand how considering Climate Change issues in EIA has played out in practice. Results reveal less consideration of climate change issues in EIA. The policy, laws, and regulations do not guide when and how the EIA process should consider climate change-related impacts mitigation and adaptation. The practice of EIA in the country is utterly procedural in line with regulations provisions. Consequently, environmental impact statements only profile the climatology of the study area without conducting a deeper analysis of the historical and future climate to enhance the resilience of proposed projects. The weakness exposed in the laws and regulations contributes to the challenges of responding to the impacts of climate change through the EIA process. It is possible to address climate change issues throughout the project life cycle, including design, approval, implementation, monitoring, and auditing, provided the policy and regulations guide how and when the EIA process should consider climate change issues. Additionally, increasing stakeholders' awareness and participation can enhance the EIA process's potential to respond to the impacts of climate change., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

The Lake Victoria basin's expanding population is heavily reliant on rainfall and river flow to meet their water needs, making them extremely vulnerable to changes in climate and land use. To develop adaptation and mitigation strategies to climate changes it is urgently necessary to evaluate the impacts of climate change on the quantity of water in the rivers that drain into Lake Victoria. In this study, the semi-distributed hydrological SWAT model was used to evaluate the impact of current land use and climate changes for the period of 1990–2019 and assess the probable future impacts of climate changes in the near future (2030–2060) on the Simiyu river discharge draining into Lake Victoria, Northern Tanzania. The General Circulation Model under RCPs 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 predicted an increase in the annual average temperature of 1.4 °C in 2030 to 2 °C in 2060 and an average of 7.8% reduction in rainfall in the catchment. The simulated river discharge from the hydrological model under RCPs 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 revealed a decreasing trend in annual average discharge by 1.6 m3/s from 5.66 m3/s in 2019 to 4.0 m3/s in 2060. The increase in evapotranspiration caused by the temperature increase is primarily responsible for the decrease in river discharge. The model also forecasts an increase in extreme discharge events, from a range between 32.1 and 232.8 m3/s in 1990–2019 to a range between 10.9 and 451.3 m3/s in the 2030–2060 period. The present combined impacts of climate and land use changes showed higher effects on peak discharge at different return periods (Q5 to Q100) with values of 213.7 m3/s (Q5), 310.2 m3/s (Q25) and 400.4 m3/s (Q100) compared to the contributions of climate-change-only scenario with peak discharges of 212.1 m3/s (Q5), 300.2 m3/s (Q25) and 390.2 m3/s (Q100), and land use change only with peak discharges of 295.5 m3/s (Q5), 207.1 m3/s Q25) and 367.3 m3/s (Q100). However, the contribution ratio of climate change was larger than for land use change. The SWAT model proved to be a useful tool for forecasting river discharge in complex semi-arid catchments draining towards Lake Victoria. These findings highlight the need for catchment-wide water management plans in the Lake Victoria Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is expected to profoundly affect key food production sectors, including fisheries and agriculture. However, the potential impacts of climate change on these sectors are rarely considered jointly, especially below national scales, which can mask substantial variability in how communities will be affected. Here, we combine socioeconomic surveys of 3,008 households and intersectoral multi-model simulation outputs to conduct a sub-national analysis of the potential impacts of climate change on fisheries and agriculture in 72 coastal communities across five Indo-Pacific countries (Indonesia, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, and Tanzania). Our study reveals three key findings: First, overall potential losses to fisheries are higher than potential losses to agriculture. Second, while most locations (> 2/3) will experience potential losses to both fisheries and agriculture simultaneously, climate change mitigation could reduce the proportion of places facing that double burden. Third, potential impacts are more likely in communities with lower socioeconomic status. Responses of agriculture and fisheries to climate change are interlinked, yet rarely studied together. Here, the authors analyse more than 3000 households from 5 tropical countries and forecast mid-century climate change impacts, finding that communities with higher fishery dependence and lower socioeconomic status communities face greater losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most mitigation scenarios compatible with a likely change of holding global warming well below 2 °C rely on negative emissions technologies (NETs). According to the integrated assessment models (IAMs) used to produce mitigation scenarios for the IPCC reports, the NET with the greatest potential to achieve negative emissions is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Crucial questions arise about where the enormous quantities of biomass needed according to the IAM scenarios could feasibly be produced in a sustainable manner. Africa is attractive in the context of BECCS because of large areas that could contribute biomass energy and indications of substantial underground CO2 storage capacities. However, estimates of large biomass availability in Africa are usually based on highly aggregated datasets, and only a few studies explore future challenges or barriers for BECCS in any detail. Based on previous research and literature, this paper analyses the pre-conditions for BECCS in Tanzania by studying what we argue are the applications of BECCS, or the components of the BECCS chain, that are most feasible in the country, namely (1) as applied to domestic sugarcane-based energy production (bioethanol), and (2) with Tanzania in a producer and re-growth role in an international BECCS chain, supplying biomass or biofuels for export to developed countries. The review reveals that a prerequisite for both options is either the existence of a functional market for emissions trading and selling, making negative emissions a viable commercial investment, or sustained investment through aid programmes. Also, historically, an important barrier to the development of production capacity of liquid biofuels for export purposes has been given by ethical dilemmas following in the wake of demand for land to facilitate production of biomass, such as sugarcane and jatropha. In these cases, conflicts over access to land and mismanagement have been more of a rule than an exception. Increased production volumes of solid biomass for export to operations that demand bioenergy, be it with or without a CCS component, is likely to give rise to similar conflicts. While BECCS may well play an important role in reducing emissions in countries with high capacity to act combined with existing large point sources of biogenic CO2 emissions, it seems prudent to proceed with utmost caution when implicating BECCS deployment in least developed countries, like Tanzania.The paper argues that negative BECCS-related emissions from Tanzania should not be assumed in global climate mitigation scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a complex and wicked problem, which needs to be addressed through relevant climate change education. However, the preconditions for combatting climate change differ in different parts of the world, depending on physical, cultural and social circumstances. The diversity of circumstances also influences the implementation of climate change in education. Therefore, in this article we have chosen to examine climate change education (CCE) based on an interview study in two distinct school contexts. More specifically, the cases aim to explore Finnish and Tanzanian primary students' views on climate change. A hermeneutical approach guided the analysis, and a significant result was that most of the students understood the severity of climate change. Nevertheless, some misconceptions regarding both causes, consequences and mitigation of climate change were also obvious. In addition, the analysis revealed interesting variations in the students' reasoning, which relate to their different contexts. Unquestionably, the sample size in this study is limited, and further research is needed for a more detailed picture of Finnish and Tanzanian students' views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]