Knowing and understanding Tanzanian smallholder farmers' attitudes towards nature: from theory to their realities of life

The paper contributes to understanding rural communities' relations to their rural environment. It aims at identifying and analyzing Tanzanian smallholder farmers' attitudes towards nature, as there is a lack of knowledge in the literature.   

Original research has been methodologically restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, the field has been approached with a coupled method particularly designed for this situation. As a first step, I conducted a literature analysis and distinguished three types of attitudes towards nature in texts that represent smallholder farmers' opinions, values, and topics affecting them. The three attitudes towards nature as ideal types are the Human benefit type, the Sustainable society type, and the Harmony type. In a second step, I conducted qualitative online research consisting of interviews and questionnaires. My goal was to find out if the three types of attitudes towards nature can be found in Tanzanian smallholder farmers' realities of life. Online fieldwork was conducted with international academics, representatives of the German fair-trade sector as well as members of Tanzanian NGOs and Tanzanian farmers' associations. 

The results show a surprising outcome: there is a discrepancy between the results of step one and two and between the answers of the online research. The Harmony type is not represented in the answers of the smallholder farmers themselves, but in those of their representatives and in the literature, while the other two types are represented in all answers. 

This finding is finally discussed using the aspect of rights of nature as an entry point: There is evidence, that in some countries of South America and the Global North, the Harmony type plays an important role on the political, legal, and activist level. I discuss possible reasons for Tanzanian NGOs to incorporate the ideas of the Harmony type in their agendas, which explain the discrepancy of the results. There is a need for further research, as the Harmony type is strongly represented in the discourse on Sustainable Development in the Global North within discussions on sufficiency and strong sustainability. However, among smallholder farmers in Tanzania, there is little evidence for the existence of ideas supporting the Harmony type.