Josephine Christopher is a senior business journalist for The Citizen and Mwananchi newspapers
Mwananchi Communications Limitted
Dar es Salaam. As Tanzania joins the rest of the world to mark World Environment Day on 5 June, the conversation on nature can no longer remain at the level of conservation alone.
For a country whose economy is deeply tied to land, water, forests, coastal systems, and agriculture, the bigger question is whether nature can be positioned as Tanzania’s next economic growth frontier.
World Environment Day has become one of the world’s largest platforms for environmental action, observed annually on 5 June to mobilise governments, businesses, and communities around urgent environmental issues.
In 2026, the global theme is linked to climate action, a timely focus for Tanzania as climate shocks increasingly affect agriculture, water systems, coastal livelihoods, and infrastructure.
For Tanzania, this is not an abstract environmental discussion. Agriculture remains one of the country’s most climate-sensitive sectors, supporting livelihoods for a large share of the population.
Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, floods, and dry spells continue to expose the vulnerability of communities and enterprises that depend on natural resources.
Climate projections also point to more variable rainfall, with fewer rainy days but more intense rainfall events, increasing the risk of both droughts and floods.
This is why nature-based solutions are gaining attention, as practical tools for resilience, productivity and income generation.
According to the Baseline Survey of Scaling-up Nature-based Solutions for Climate Change Resilience in Tanzania under the RESOLVE-NbS programme by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), awareness of nature-based solutions within the intervention areas stands at 80.6 per cent. However, this awareness has not yet translated into adoption at scale.
The survey further shows that only about 27 per cent of respondents in the intervention areas reported having access to credit, much of it through informal mechanisms such as Village Community Banks, indicating a financing gap that could limit investment in nature-based solutions.
Commenting on the issue, the Executive Director of Repoa, Dr Donald Mmari, said mobilising private finance will depend on creating an enabling business environment around green and nature-linked opportunities.
“The most important factor is to make the business and investment environment friendly, robust and predictable so that investors can find feasible green projects,” he said.
His point reflects a wider shift that Tanzania may need to make. Nature-based solutions cannot remain dependent on donor projects alone.
They must be structured as investable opportunities with clear revenue models, bankable value chains, and measurable returns.
For projects with clear commercial value but high early-stage risks, Dr Mmari said targeted incentives may be necessary.
“Where the benefits are clear, time-bound incentives can be introduced to reduce initial capital expenditures,” he noted.
This is particularly important as global climate finance remains heavily tilted toward mitigation, while adaptation and resilience, where many nature-based solutions sit, continue to receive a smaller share of financing.
Globally, climate finance has grown, but adaptation finance still lags behind the scale of need, especially for climate-vulnerable countries.
For Tanzania, the opportunity is to prepare a stronger pipeline of investable nature-based projects. This includes bankable projects in climate-smart agriculture, sustainable forestry, coastal restoration, blue economy enterprises, watershed protection, eco-tourism, carbon markets and sustainable value chains.
An agricultural economist from the University of Dodoma, Dr Mwinuka Lutengano, said Tanzania’s natural capital remains underutilised, especially along coastal regions where opportunities linked to the blue economy are still emerging.
“There is huge potential for our coastal resources. We have only begun to explore a fraction of what is possible in developing a sustainable blue economy. The main barrier is not resource scarcity but value creation,” he said.
He added that sustainability must be integrated into production systems, not treated as a separate environmental agenda.
“These solutions are not only conserving the environment; they are also improving efficiency and resilience, which can lead to higher productivity and income,” he said.
This is where the economic argument becomes important. Tanzania’s natural systems already support agriculture, fisheries, tourism, water supply and rural livelihoods.
But in many cases, these systems are not valued, financed or managed as productive infrastructure.
For biodiversity expert and climate activist Mr Ghaamid Abdulbasat, the shift required is both economic and conceptual.
“We have for years been dominated by engineered solutions that often turn out to be too costly and unsustainable.
Nature-based solutions provide a new paradigm, one that is regenerative by design,” he said.
Under this approach, ecosystems are viewed as infrastructure. Forests regulate water flows.
Coral reefs and coastal systems support fisheries and tourism. These are not only environmental services; they are economic functions.
“The beauty of nature-based solutions is that they are often self-regenerating systems while still providing services that create value if properly managed,” Mr Abdulbasat added.
As Tanzania marks World Environment Day, the opportunity is to move from awareness to implementation by turning natural assets into bankable projects, stronger livelihoods and resilient value chains.
This will require the right financing, technical capacity, market linkages and policy incentives to position nature not only as something to protect, but as productive infrastructure for Tanzania’s future growth.
