Stop charcoal burning

REPORTS from Pemba district highlight a disturbing trend my many rural dwellers who have opted to focus their energies on illegal charcoal burning instead of other productive money making activities.

The demand for charcoal in urban centres is as a direct result of alternative fuel for cooking due to the sporadic electricity supply, which ironically has been caused by low water levels at the Kariba Dam – a direct consequence of climate change.

Unfortunately, many of these charcoal burners are ignorant of the effect of their short term wealth. It takes many years to grow a tree and without the forest cover, there is an immediate impact on the availability of water and the fertility of land.

The sacks of charcoals piled on trucks are a sure death knell that requires immediate address.

Pemba District Commissioner Reginald Mugoba has expressed worry with continuous indiscriminate cutting down of trees in the district.

Mr Mugoba said that the situation was worrying and appealed to the people of Pemba to stop the vice, saying that if not controlled, the scourge would affect the rain pattern in the district which would affected the crop harvest.

Mr Mugoba wondered why people were engaging in charcoal burning when Pemba was producing enough food for both consumption and selling.

He told The Sun that the trend of cutting down trees for charcoal must be discouraged at all cost.

Mr Mugoba appealed to the traditional leadership in the district to help Government raise awareness on the dangers of deforestation.

“People are cutting down trees anyhow. We know last when they were doing so, they had an accused of being hungry because of poor rains we experienced but this time around surely….no we need to stop that because they have enough food.

“Probably, if we use Ubuntu to those who don’t have enough to eat, we can share. Otherwise if we continue cutting down the trees, one day we will not have rains both people and animals will suffer.

“Therefore, my appeal to the chiefs in the district is to help us talk to their subjects about the dangers of this behaviour,” he said.

Indeed traditional leaders must consider introducing strict punishment to those charcoal burners who are slowly depleting the natural resources of future generations.

Government has seen it fit to invest in supporting the agricultural sector but with the rampant chopping of trees, drought and crop failure are guaranteed.

By now, it should be public knowledge that climate change is real and severely impacting on everyday life. Dried up streams and dry boreholes now haunt many communities and this will only get worse if the trend of cutting trees indiscriminately continues.

As the Pemba DC has alluded to, it is not only humans that are affected but livestock too.

The rampant charcoal burning is literally a self-inflicted stab in the back because the few coins today to buy food will soon push the same rural communities into urban settings to look for a livelihood when their crops fail and animals die.

There is an option of turning to small scale farming and contributing to the national bread basket and even elevating Zambia to be a regional agricultural giant. It is very much within our reach.

In fact, many districts have continued to score impressive crop production in the past year.

We require community action in changing the mindset of looking for fast wins, let us turn our energies to more productive activities. Instead of burning charcoal let us plant more trees and grow more food.