World Wildlife Fund

Illegal timber harvested and transported in northern Mozambique.
© WWF Philipp Goeltenboth

Over the past 50 years, human activity has significantly altered this once pristine paradise. The countries here are among the poorest in the world and livelihoods and human health are directly connected to the natural resources. 

Climate change
Our strategy is to enhance the resilience of coastal & marine habitats to climate change, and thereby mitigate the negative impacts. The impacts in question include sea level rise; salinity fluctuations; rises in sea temperatures; increased ultra-violet radiation; and increased levels of atmospheric and dissolved CO2. Resilience to these impacts will be enhanced by adapting management plans to take account of likely climate change scenarios and patterns of resilience and vulnerability. The process of developing adaptation strategies for specific habitats and seascapes relies on first conducting a vulnerability assessment for the relevant area. This involves integrating a variety of ecological, oceanographic, climatic and other information to predict local climate change scenarios and identify the factors that may determine the vulnerability and/or resilience of given habitats. Adaptive management measures may then be derived from such an assessment. An initiative to conduct a vulnerability assessment with respect to mangrove and associated coral reef habitats, and to develop and implement adaptation strategies is currently being implemented in the Rufiji-Mafia-Kilwa (RUMAKI) seascape in Tanzania.

The issue of climate change is one that might have dramatic consequences for the Eastern Arc Mountains – particularly as it may render the mountains unsuitable climatically for some of the endemic species that are currently found there. WWF, together with local partners and government ministries, is currently working to enhance the connectivity of the forests in the Eastern Arcs as that will allow species a better chance to move along climatic gradients as the climate changes. Further work is required in order to make the existing climate models more useful and relevant for the Eastern Arc region.

Overfishing
Overfishing for local consumption and export to commercial markets poses a major threat to the region. Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is thought to account for up to 30 percent of total catches in some important fisheries in the region. Foreigners operate large-scale industrial fisheries along the coast, exporting most of the catch, Kenya and Tanzania may have already reached a point beyond which their fisheries can be sustained.  If the trend continues, fishermen trying to maintain fish catches are likely to adopt more destructive fishing practices like using dynamite to kill or stun hard-to-catch coral reef fish.

Unregulated and unsustainable timber harvesting
Coastal forests provide a wide range of wood and non-wood products for local use, but are increasingly threatened by expanding agriculture, charcoal production, uncontrolled fires, unsustainable logging and the expansion of settlements. An estimated 60 percent of natural habitats in the EACFE have been converted over time to farmland and urban areas. Degradation and loss of coastal forests and associated habitats and the species that they support is a result of a wide range of natural and man-made causes interacting at different levels and intensities on the east African coastal forest ecosystems.

The commercial logging of coastal forest tree species occurs mainly in northern Mozambique and remote areas of Tanzania, especially to the south, and to a lesser degree in Kenya. Logging using pitsawing techniques occurs in coastal forests where timber trees remain. Many forests have already been logged to exhaustion. Particularly heavy exploitation for round wood export recently occurred in the coastal forests of the Rufiji, Kilwa and Lindi Districts of Tanzania, although this has now been stopped. Similar logging for export to the Far East continues in the northern and the central area of Mozambique. Although some of this logging is undertaken using licences obtained from the relevant authorities, some is illegal. Logging of the valuable trees is often the first major disturbance to a forest, which then progresses to fire wood collection and charcoal burning, and in the worse cases to clearance for agricultural use.

A timber report for Tanzania conducted by TRAFFIC and released in May 2007 showed that an estimated $58 million worth of timber revenue is lost each year because of governance shortfalls due to wasteful harvesting and processing practices, non-collection or under-collection of forestry product royalties and the under-valuation of forest products. Furthermore, the deleterious effects of deforestation on watersheds, hydroelectricity, fire outbreaks and biodiversity are now evident throughout Tanzania.

Wildlife trade
The countries of Coastal East Africa - Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya - function as major conduits through which large-scale ivory consignments move from the Congo Basin to international markets in Asia. This trade appears to have increased sharply in recent years. Rising demand and weak enforcement has led to increasing ivory markets and elephant poaching. We are currently conducting a nationwide study to access the scale of the ivory trade in Mozambique, the largest unregulated ivory market in Eastern Africa. In both Kenya and Tanzania, there is active suppression of domestic trading of ivory from the interior of Africa.  Tanzania, in particular, has recently been implicated as the country of export for a series of large-scale ivory seizures in 2005 and 2006.  Collectively a total of 11.5 tons were seized in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines which entered trade through Tanzanian ports.