The Yaeda-Eyasi landscape is a REDD+ project which focuses on improving land-tenure rights and sustainable management in order to reduce local deforestation and support traditional hunter-gather and pastoralist communities.

Nature-based Intervention:

The project works with the local Hadza community and 12 local Datooga villages in order to protect the forest, upon which they all depend on for their livelihoods. The project does this through strengthening local land tenure tenure rights while simultaneously improving management capacity over local natural resources in order to diversify income strategies. After strengthening land tenure rights the project focused on sustainable land-use plans and strict village bylaws which will continue to reduce to reduce land incursions into protected areas. The initial project included 2 villages and covered 20,000 hectares, but when news of the success spread, 10 more villages joined bringing the total area of land protected to over 110,000 hectares.

Overview of context and outcomes:

This landscape is inhabited by both the Hadza and Datooga peoples. The Hadza are hunter-gatherers which have lived in the Yaeda Valley for 40,000 years. Their lifestyle is directly intertwined with the landscape and they are dependent on the health of the local environment. The Datooga people practice a traditional pastoralist lifestyle, and after noticing the success of the project lead by the Hadza, they collaborated with them to expand the project.