By Anne Robi
Wildlife and natural resource
experts have requested Union presidential candidates and politicians at
large to address issues related to protection of resources and
conservation of wildlife in their election campaigns to help create
public awareness for improved tourism.
In addition, they (experts) have called on journalists together with
civil society organisations to come out and dram up the agenda in order
to ensure politicians and the public in general get to know the
importance of working to conserve wildlife resources.
"Tanzania's economy is natural resources based, and for that matter
one would be excused to expect conservation would have been a major
agenda in the ongoing general election's campaigns but to the contrary
there is little in the political parties' election manifestos," said one
Adam Igucha, a senior journalist with the Nation Media Group and an
expert on wildlife conservation.
Mr Igucha was speaking yesterday in Dar es Salaam during a two-day
Conservation Media Seminar organised by Serengeti Preservation
Foundation (PSF) Tanzania. With the exception of Chama Cha Mapinduzi
(CCM), Mr Igucha pointed out two key opposition partiess ACT-Wazalendo
and Chadema to have skipped the agenda (nature conservation).
"Even CCM's elections manifesto talks much about tourism growth and
its economic importance, overlooking the conservation, as it has only
one sentence on elephants and rhino poaching," he noted.
CCM indicates that in the next five years, if elected it will double
number of tourists from the current to two million by 2020. However, Mr
Igucha noted that without conservation there would be no development in
the tourism sector.
"It is high time politicians initiate public debate in their election
campaigns in order to enable all Tanzanians work as one towards making
tourism sustainable," he added.
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