Integrating Insights from Social-Ecological Interactions into Sustainable Land Use Change Scenarios for Zanzibar

Small islands in the Western Indian Ocean face complex social-ecological challenges arising from climate change and anthropogenic pressures. These greatly impact the way in which people interact with their environment to meet their basic needs. Consequently, there is a need to explore social-ecological relationships and their dynamics in response to change. This project used a water-energy-food nexus lens to explore these social-ecological relationships in the two largest islands that comprise the Zanzibar archipelago, Unguja and Pemba. These insights were integrated into alternative scenario narratives to produce contextually relevant and robust models for future resource security. Key findings across the project showed land use and resource competition, deforestation, climate change and insufficient resource infrastructure caused resource insecurity. Areas further inland was found to experience a differentiated set of water-energy-food challenges currently not well represented in wider research in small islands. Spatial characteristics such as remoteness, intensity of land use and amount of natural resource capital impact the scale and strength of resource insecurity. Scenarios modelling indicated that deforestation, saltwater incursion, and a reduction in permanent water bodies was expected by the year 2030 in a Business as Usual Scenario. Three alternative scenario narratives were developed by participants, these included Adaptation, Ecosystem Management and Settlement Planning. However, the effectiveness of actions under the scenario options were predicted to differ across the islands, indicating the importance of understanding the suitability of national policies across scales. Synergies across the scenario narratives also emerged, these included integrated approaches for managing environmental change, community participation in decision-making, effective protection of forests, cultural sensitivity to settlement planning, and poverty alleviation. These synergies could be used to plan strategic action towards effectively strengthening water-energy-food security in Zanzibar.