Physical Alteration and Destruction of Habitats (PADH) in Tanzania

The Global Programmes Action of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/GPA) Coordination Office in The Hague, The Netherlands, coordinates the tasks and activities of UNEP as secretariat of the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from land-based Activities. This GPA was adopted by 108 Governments, including Tanzania, and the European Commission in Washington D.C. in 1995.

In 2002, the GPA Co-ordination Office initiated a Programme in the Eastern African Region with special emphasis on one out of the nine focal areas of GPA: Physical Alteration and Destruction of Habitat (PADH). This initiative is a follow-up and response to the outcome of the First Intergovernmental Review meeting of the GPA held in 2001 in Montreal, Canada.

The overall PADH Project aims at supporting the efforts of stakeholders in protecting coastal and marine habitats against physical alteration and destruction. It will focus on sediment mobilisation effects by the four economic sectors that potentially pose a threat to such habitats. Those sectors include: tourism, ports and harbours; aquaculture; and mining (sand and aggregate extraction).

In July 2002, UNEP/GPA in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Nairobi Convention held the “Regional Meeting for Physical Alteration and Destruction of Habitats (PADH)”, in Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting received presentation on PADH in the Eastern African region and priority PADH issues of concern in the region were identified. The areas of concern that were pointed out included: tourism, mariculture/aquaculture, ports, mining, salt works, agriculture, urbanisation and land reclamation. These were grouped into three main priority areas namely:

• Coastal tourism – which include issues related to land use planning such as urbanisation, siting of hotels and eco-architecture and location of tourist facilities
• Mangrove destruction, due to salt works, aquaculture, agriculture and mangrove harvesting
• Mining/sediment movements, ports and land reclamation and damming of rivers.

As a follow up, the meeting urged the GPA Office in collaboration with regional institutions to organise a regional workshop in early 2003 to address the three priority areas mentioned above in order to develop project proposals that will demonstrate how to address the problems of PADH that are associated with the identified thematic areas. The proposed activities under the PADH component of the GPA will be crossreferenced with regional and national levels initiatives/activities that contribute to the objectives of the PADH project.

The objectives of this report were to:

• Review and examine national legislation relevant to the three main priority areas to be addressed
• Describe national institutional arrangements and analyse their adequacy for an integrated approach to coastal management, particularly taking into account the issue of PADH affecting marine and coastal resources;
• Assess the socio-economic importance of the three main priorities on the wellbeing of the people in the country;
• Assess environmental impacts of the three main priority PADH activities;
• Prepare the relevant conclusions and make recommendations for the necessary amendments of national legislation and adjustments of national institutional arrangements for achieving an integrated coastal management approach, particularly taking into account the issue of physical alteration and destruction of habitats affecting coastal and marine resources; and
• Prepare a set of findings, observations, conclusions and recommendations addressing the country dimension of the issues dealt with. The study was mainly conducted through literature and document review. The main documents consulted were reports by: Tanzania Coastal Management Partnership (TCMP), UNEP, SEACAM, WWF/EAME and other various related reports and literature from a variety of sources.