Essay On Environmental Issues In Tanzania

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The Tanzanian Vision 2025 notes Tanzania’s problems with donor-dependence, corruption, and faulty implementation. But the IMF’s poverty reduction report for Tanzania related two more issues that Tanzania itself didn’t touch upon, inflation and the environment. The IMF’s Poverty Reduction Report goes into detail on the issue of the depreciating Tanzanian shilling, supposedly since 2005 the inflation rate for the Tanzanian shilling has been increasing and as of 2009 it sits at 12.1 percent. This is due to poor handling of natural resources which leads to higher production costs. Also since exports have failed to match up with the import bill the trade deficit has increased, to make up for it Tanzania has been relying gold as its most valuable …show more content…

Deforestation is one of the largest environmental issues in Tanzania, in fact it has the world’s highest rate of deforestation at 1.1% annually, the rapid consumption of wood by Tanzanians to heat homes and cook food is leading to the desertification of arable land and the loss of crops (ippmedia). Relying on forest as an energy source for the country, more than 90% of the country’s energy source is supplied by it, impedes Tanzania’s economy as it is a crutch that prevents Tanzania from achieving its maximum agricultural output. It exacerbates the effects of climate change in the country and leads to irreversible environmental damage that may hurt future economic …show more content…

Supposedly, Tanzanian senior officials siphoned off the money from the country’s energy contracts to private accounts overseas. At this point, $1 million was paid out and the rest was awaiting action from the Tanzanian government. It is truly disappointing because Tanzania is facing issues with electricity for the past 20 years, among those who funded the now suspended Tanzanian general budget is African development Bank, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the World Bank (Mark Anderson). Then only a month later the Tanzanian Prime Minister Mzengo Pinda came under fire for the loss of nearly $120 million from the country’s energy budget, he and the country’s most senior ranking officials, including that the minister of energy and the state-owned energy provider “Tanesco”. Pinda feigned ignorance he said the extreme desperation of the country caused them to reach out to shady foreign contractors, they assumed all transfers were valid. Which is interesting, because nearly 20% of all of Tanzania developing funding is thought to have been embezzled, and Tanzania is gearing up for the launch of natural gas sales (Mark Anderson). This incident cost many jobs in, and credibility of, the Tanzanian government. It 's is not far leap to say that corruption poses a much

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