Mission to re-green Manicaland

07 Oct, 2016 - 00:10 0 Views
Mission to re-green Manicaland

The ManicaPost

Samuel Kadungure Farming Reporter

THE initiative to re-green stressed regions of the country by planting five million indigenous trees by 2030 while protecting existing ones has been met with more enthusiasm in Manicaland.

This is coming against a backdrop of costly forest decimation that has left the environment bereft of vegetation cover.

The pragmatic campaign to halt the rate of deforestation and possibly desertification is led by Mr Never Bonde, who was recently appointed the country’s trees ambassador following his solo efforts to grow over five million indigenous trees by 2030 and save them from extinction.

The Manicaland re-greening programme was launched at Dope High School in Makoni South last Friday with communities that in the past were reclusive, embracing it after bearing the brunt of worsening weather vagaries.

Mr Bonde’s initiative is now part of a wider strategy by Government to increase forest cover, restore degraded land and protect habitats for many species including endangered birds and mammals as well as tackle climate change which has savaged the country’s major economic pillars of agriculture and tourism.

Mr Bonde has set up tree nurseries in Makoni, Chimanimani and Bulawayo where he is distributing seedlings to schools, local authorities and farmers as well as planting and protecting existing trees — with a goal not only to restore primary forests, but to also improve food security, restore soil fertility, produce fruits, nuts and medicines.

His nursery project has attracted Government, NGOs, community and schools who come to learn or collect seedlings from him. The nursery in the long term shall be his source of income, field school and research plot.

Mr Bonde, an apostolic sect member from Gandanzara, said his love for trees came out of an understanding that they are vital, valuable and indispensable to our existence.

“My love for indigenous trees started when I was in Kenya and later in Ethiopia where I discovered that people from these countries are strong and astute long distance athletes because they have as part of their diet food from their indigenous trees. When I came back home recently, I realised that the country was losing a lot of its forests due to urbanisation, land reform and tobacco curing.

“Zimbabwe is at risk of becoming a desert and it is against that background that I decided to do the right thing and committed myself to growing trees and developing forests,” Mr Bonde.

Major drivers of deforestation are agricultural expansion, fuel-wood collection, wood and timber harvesting, settlements, veld fires and livestock grazing. Its underlying drivers include high levels of poverty, low employment opportunities, brick-moulding, tobacco curing, low institutional capacity and lack of synergy among policies and legislation.

Research, however, shows that as an important resource in ecological functions, trees attract rainfall and intercept and re-distribute precipitation as well as store water reserves that act as buffers for the ecosystem during drought.

Trees are the lungs of the environment that take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis with sunlight for the leaves to produce energy and release oxygen for breathing.

They act as carbon sinks by locking carbon dioxide, which is the key global warming stimuli, in the woods, trunks, roots, leaves and also clean the air by intercepting airborne particles like carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide that pollute the air.

They clean soil by absorbing dangerous chemicals and pollutants that have entered it — they either store or change toxins into less harmful forms — and therefore help mitigate effects of climate change and global warming.

“We owe our existence to the very trees which we are wantonly and indiscriminately chopping down. There cannot be life without trees, and we are aggravating our extinction at the same pace we are accelerating deforestation. The remedy at law is minimal, and we need a mind-set transformation so that we can value the valuable,” said Mr Bonde.

Mr Bonde’s only handicap is finance and transport bottlenecks, and is therefore appealing for assistance to buy five million polythene bags to plant and raise the seedlings from.

He can be contacted on 0772 842 639.

The root system acts as a filter for the water we use and protects the land from erosion during heavy rainfall. The roots help in firmly holding soil, act as windbreakers in arid and semi-arid areas, as habitat to wildlife and insects, a source of food, medicine, firewood and beautification, aid organic content of top soil as leaves fall decomposes and assists, adding nutrients and improving soil texture. Cutting of trees, combined with climate change, has led to increasing soil erosion, disruption of the hydrological cycle resulting in high evaporation rates that disturb rainfall patterns, thereby aggravating drought and desertification — and this compromised agricultural production and socio-economic hardships.

“It is a fact that the environmental distortions have a direct link to the frequent droughts that have caused a loss of lives and livestock in arid and semi-arid regions in Zimbabwe. The 2015/16 El Nino induced drought was a consequence of the environmental crimes. We need to take remedial action to reverse such negative effects by coming together and plant trees,” said Mr Bonde.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explicitly stated that climate change will seriously affect the poorest and most vulnerable people in less developed countries and especially in Africa.

The 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris agreed on a decisive turning point on how all countries, acting together under an agreed and a transparent legal framework will set out a pathway to limit global temperature rise to less than two degrees Celsius. Without strong action, temperatures are likely to exceed 2 degrees which will result in serious consequences among them disruptions to agriculture and food production.

Climate change is more of a threat to Africa because of poverty and unavailability of technologies to cope and adapt effectively. Africa is also socially and economically dependent on agriculture yet the environmental tragedies have led to a decrease in agricultural production leading to food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition.

A recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that during the decade from 1980 to 1990, the world’s tropical forests were reduced by an average of 15,4 million hectares per year.

Another study in 2014 published in Resources and Environment highlighted the severity of this issue in Zimbabwe. The study, explored firewood consumption patterns blamed a weak infrastructure, erratic supply, maintenance issues and the unaffordable cost of electricity in the face of unemployment and low incomes for contributing to increased use of firewood, which, in turn, fuelled deforestation.

Zimbabwe relies heavily on wood fuel for cooking and heating.

Statistics from the Forestry Commission shows that 20 percent of the 330,000 hectares of natural forest lost annually was cut for firewood to cure tobacco.

The deforestation rate was high at the height of the land reform programme, which began in 2000.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 edition listed Zimbabwe among 10 countries that recorded the largest forest cover loss between 1990 and 2010.

The study says Zimbabwe had been losing 327 000 hectares of forest cover per year over the two decades.  According to Global Forest Watch, Zimbabwe lost approximately 373 000 hectares of tree cover from 2001 through 2012, representing about two percent of the country’s total forest cover.

Zimbabwe is dominated by relatively sparse forest, with Global Forest Watch data showing only about five percent of the country’s forested area is comprised of thick tree cover with canopy coverage greater than 30 percent.

Its protected areas (PAs) have not been immune from deforestation; Global Forest Watch Commodities shows that of the approximately 373 000 hectares of tree cover lost in Zimbabwe, more than 64 400 — 17 percent occurred within PAs.

In 2009 alone, more than 13 000 hectares of PA tree cover were lost.

Share This:

Sponsored Links

We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey

This will close in 20 seconds