As a sustainable development professional with over two decades of experience across three continents, I was very excited when I laid my eyes on Tanzania’s new National Development Vision 2050. There it was, clear and bold: an entire strategic pillar devoted to “Environmental Integrity and Climate Change Resilience.”
Finally, after years of floods washing away bridges, extended droughts decimating livestock, and unpredictable rains tormenting farmers, our leaders had elevated climate change to the very heart of national ambition.
For a brief moment, I smiled. I thought: Yes, at last the message has landed.
But then, as I set the pages aside, memories came flooding back. Faces from the Rufiji delta—the very people I wrote about not long ago—rose in my mind. The fisherfolk whose houses are repeatedly swallowed by floodwaters. The women bent double in the paddies, planting rice in soils poisoned by creeping saltwater. The young men and women who stare blankly at horizons, wondering if their only future is to migrate inland.
Their reality is not written in polished documents. It is written in soil, in water, in scars. And so, from their vantage point, I reflect on Vision 2050’s climate aspirations: what it promises, what it risks repeating, and what it dares not confront.
A compass worth praising
Let me be fair first. There is good news here, and it deserves celebration.
The fact that Vision 2050 elevates the environment and climate change into one of its three strategic pillars is no small achievement. It signals that those who crafted this Vision have heard the warnings of science, have perhaps seen with their own eyes the devastation of floods and droughts, and maybe even glimpsed the opportunities that a climate-conscious future could unlock. For that, I say: kudos!
The provisions are broad and inspiring: commitments to universal clean energy, sustainable land and water management, protecting ecosystems, and building resilience in the face of climate disruption. In a world where the environment is often treated as an afterthought—an appendix squeezed after industrialisation and GDP growth—this is progress.
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The Vision acknowledges that the details will be filled in later, in sector strategies and five-year plans. That’s fair. Visions inspire; policies specify.
So yes, the document sets the right compass.
But here’s the sobering truth I’ve learned from years of studying how developing countries govern their forests in a carbon-challenged world: a compass, however accurate, is useless if the hands that hold it are pulled by stronger forces than the map itself.
In this article, I speak plainly about four forces that could turn Vision 2050’s noble promises into yet another replay of our painful past mistakes: alien democratic practices; chronic mistrust among climate action actors; skewed economic incentives; and the dangerous over-reliance on market forces that caused the problem in the first place.
These are not abstract risks. They are wounds I have seen up close, carved in villages, forests, and deltas. If ignored, Vision 2050 may not become a bridge to resilience but another shiny promise that bypasses the very people it claims to uplift.
Democracy that isn’t ours
The Vision speaks eloquently of inclusive resilience. But I ask, inclusive by whose definition?
My research in Tanzania’s contested forests showed that these so-called democratic processes—village meetings designed to tick off national guidelines and donor templates—rarely capture the real voices of the people most affected.
Yes, it is a good thing that consultations happen at the village level. But let’s be honest: these meetings are not serving their purpose. Attendance is low, and real participation—asking questions, speaking up, challenging decisions—barely happens because the rules and language used feel foreign, even irrelevant.
I have sat through many of these meetings across the country and seen NGO staff and government officers struggle to explain complicated ideas—like forest carbon credits—to ordinary villagers. Most people don’t come to discuss; they come for the allowances.
Most women often stay away because the process ignores their daily routines and responsibilities. Many young people, tired of what feels like empty rituals, simply disengage.
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For those living furthest from the village centre, the barriers are even higher. Meetings usually run late into the early evening, transport back home is unreliable, and in some places, walking home means risking encounters with wild animals.
In the end, these meetings produce rules that may be legally valid, but they are democratically hollow. The majority—the poor, women, and youth—are left out, and their absence robs the process of both legitimacy and meaning.
If resilience is to mean anything, it must be rooted in the everyday democratic practices of communities—their own ways of talking, consulting, disputing, and deciding. I am not saying every village in Tanzania should invent entirely new ways of meeting. What I am suggesting is that the existing village structures and processes can be reshaped to better reflect and respect local democratic practices.
We have all seen how politicians engage with communities during campaigns—listening carefully, showing respect, speaking in ways that resonate. Yet, once elected, those same politicians often return with arrogance, dismissing the very voices they once courted.
If consultations were handled with the same respect and sensitivity to local contexts, inclusivity would be real. Without that, inclusivity remains nothing more than an empty word written on paper, never lived out in practice.
Trust that never arrives
Vision 2050 rightly acknowledges that climate action requires collaboration across government, the private sector, civil society, and communities. But collaboration is a fragile flower, and in Tanzania’s climate politics, the soil it requires—trust—is barren.
Communities mistrust government and outsiders alike—and with good reason. Decades of top-down planning and exclusionary conservation left deep wounds: forced evictions, broken promises, and benefits that never reached those most affected. Even the so-called “participatory” approaches were often cosmetic, changing the labels but not the outcomes.
Time and again, people have been displaced in the name of conservation, dams, or land deals, only to watch others profit from their losses. The result is entrenched tension and enmity between forest-dependent communities and those who claim to act on their behalf.
Trust that took decades to erode cannot be rebuilt overnight. It will require humility, truth, empathy, and above all, the consistent delivery of promises made.
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These actors often show friendships of convenience. Sometimes they trust each other and work together. Other times, partnerships collapse the moment shared work threatens their own interests.
The government often mistrusts civil society, branding them as foreign agents or unpatriotic, especially when NGOs challenge unfair decisions or push for fairer alternatives. NGOs, in turn, complain about the government’s snail’s pace in implementing agreed initiatives.
And when NGO-led projects fail to deliver real benefits to communities, they often shift blame to restrictive donor conditions or government bureaucracy—showing little self-criticism, which only weakens trust further.
The private sector mistrusts regulation, arguing that too much red tape eats into their profits and puts investments at risk. Donors, meanwhile, mistrust almost everyone’s capacity and intentions. To fix this, they parachute in expensive consultants from the Global North—who end up swallowing most of the money in fees.
The result? Paralysis. And sometimes worse. Climate projects move ahead without real alignment and end up failing both the people and the environment. These projects create injustices where affected communities carry the heaviest burdens but see almost no benefits.
At the negotiating table, community voices are the weakest. Without real power to shape decisions, whole communities are sometimes driven to use violence as their last bargaining tool.
Vision 2050 speaks the language of harmony. But harmony cannot be legislated or wished in eloquence. It must be earned through accountability, transparency, and shared decision-making. Without that, the climate pillar risks becoming just another aspirational poem recited at conferences, dismissed—or even resisted—by the very villagers it claims to serve.
When money doesn’t move
Follow the money, they say. And in climate politics, money rarely moves where it should.
Vision 2050 talks boldly about mobilising resources, including through the private sector. But let’s be honest: the structures we have now do not deliver.
Billions are pledged in global halls. Tanzania signs agreements, hosts missions, and files reports. Yet how much of that money reaches a farmer in Rufiji, struggling with flush floods in her paddies? How much help can a pastoralist in Longido adapt to prolonged droughts? Almost none.
Funds get trapped in bureaucratic pipelines, consultancy reports, and offices in Dar es Salaam and Dodoma. Pilot projects bloom and wither: they don’t scale. Meanwhile, villagers wait and become disappointed.
At international climate talks, the Global South has protested for years about how climate finance is handled. Leaders argue that channelling money through institutions like the World Bank and IMF makes it nearly impossible for the poorest to access. The procedures are too complex, the reporting requirements too heavy, and the approval timelines too slow.
Billions are pledged in halls at COP meetings, yet only a fraction ever reaches frontline communities. According to the UN, less than a third of global climate finance flows to adaptation, and even less trickles down to local actors. The promise feels grand, but the delivery is painfully thin.
And yet, here at home, Tanzania risks repeating the same mistake. Instead of building systems that truly reach farmers, pastoralists, and local innovators, we hand the money to commercial banks. These banks are cautious, profit-driven, and charge high interest rates. Smallholders are locked out. So, what have we really learned?
Vision 2050 does not fix this bottleneck. It celebrates mobilisation, but mobilisation for whom? Until financing flows genuinely reach communities, we will keep recycling the same sad narrative: abundant pledges, empty pockets, frustrated villagers.
Illusion of growth
This is where my heart sinks deepest.
For all its inspiring words, Vision 2050 leans heavily on the private sector and market-based solutions as the engines of resilience.
I do not deny it: the private sector has a role. We need their innovation, their speed, their capital. But wait, let’s be honest, that capital is not truly theirs—it is taxpayers’ money, filtered through institutions in ways that remain inaccessible to those who need it most.
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It is precisely these same market logics—profit before planet, extraction before regeneration—that have driven us to the brink. The past 150 years of industrialisation and relentless economic expansion have pumped greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at unprecedented levels, destabilising the very climate systems on which our lives depend.
To then centre them as the main drivers of environmental integrity is to ignore history. Expecting the arsonist to lead the firefighting brigade is naïve at best, reckless at worst.
And the so-called “solutions” of markets often deepen inequality and cause injustices. Carbon offset projects restrict communities from accessing forests they have lived with for generations, a phenomenon now aptly termed climate coloniality.
Green bonds float in Dar es Salaam, while a farmer in Morogoro cannot access a micro-loan to build a rainwater harvesting tank. Patented seed varieties promise higher yields and quicker maturity, but they remain unaffordable for poverty-stricken farmers, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks and perpetuating dependency.
Worse still, as these market-based solutions push for uniform patented seeds, we risk losing the vast diversity of local seeds that have sustained farmers for centuries.
Layered on top of this is the Vision’s gravitational pull toward GDP growth at all costs: envisioning an audacious 10 per cent annual growth between now and 2050.
Industrial corridors, logistics hubs, and new ports dominate the Vision’s economic pillar, while the environment pillar—though noble—risks being a mere green ribbon tied around the box of relentless expansion.
But growth without balance is no longer an option.
Every percentage point of GDP pursued without ecological accounting brings us closer to crises that will wipe out those very gains. What use is a glittering industrial corridor if its power system collapses in drought, or a new logistics hub that gets disconnected from trading centres by flush floods?
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Unless Vision 2050 integrates growth and environment—balancing them, and at times letting sustainability take precedence—its climate pillar will remain ornamental, not foundational.
Choosing 2050: Ink or soil?
When I close my eyes to picture 2050, I do not see graphs or neat indicators that Vision 2050 promises in its pages. I see faces and places. I see the Rufiji delta: will children there still plant rice without fear of floods and saltwater?
I see the savannas of Longido: will pastoralists still graze their cattle, or will they stand on cracked earth, staring at empty skies? I see the forests of Kilosa: will they still breathe life, or will they be auctioned away in the name of “green growth”?
These are not wild dreams. They are imaginations rooted in today’s realities. If inequality, mistrust, and blind faith in markets remain, this is the future awaiting us. That is the choice before us: a future written in ink—fine words, glossy documents, lofty promises—or a future written in soil—resilience lived in villages, adaptation shared equitably, sustainability woven into daily life.
The Tanzania I long for in 2050 is one where resilience is shaped from below, where trust is earned through accountability, where climate finance builds village wells, not just consultant reports. A vision not just penned on paper, but etched into soils, rivers, and the lives of our people.
So, where does that leave us?
I commend Vision 2050 for recognising the seriousness of the climate crisis. For declaring that resilience is not optional, that ecosystems are assets, and that clean energy is a right. That is no small step. I also accept that a vision is not an action plan. More details will come in long-term frameworks and five-year strategies.
But let us be clear. If those details lean too heavily on markets, if they fail to correct power imbalances, if they ignore trust deficits, if they let climate finance evaporate before reaching grassroots, then Vision 2050 will be remembered as yet another ambitious document that delivered little beyond paper promises.
Dr Baruani Mshale is the Director of Learning and Strategy at Twaweza East Africa. He can be reached at baruani.mshale@gmail.com or on X as @BMshale. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.
