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Vincent Gono, Features Editor
THE continued degradation of the environment due to human action in most parts of the country is a cause for concern to various arms of the Government mandated to ensure proper land use with calls for a more collective approach getting louder.
Although reports have shown that much of the environmental degradation is a result of anthropogenic or human induced action, little attention has been given to enforce the legislation that protects the environment as short term economic benefits that cause harm to mother earth seem to take precedence over the long term damage to the environment.
In most parts of the country the environment has been treated with reckless abandon with unregulated mining activities going on in mineral rich areas which the country have in abundance, leaving the environment bleeding with scars.
Not only unregulated mining activities cause environment degradation but pit sand mining for various construction activities in the periphery of many urban centres is a big threat to the environment while due to low and unpredictable rainfall patterns, poor farming methods such as stream bank and mountain slope cultivation have become so rampant in all areas of the country, causing untold harm to the environment.
Illegal settlements where people are apportioned land in grazing areas thereby causing overgrazing and deforestation while clearing farming land also leave large tracts of land bare and exposed to agents of soil erosion.
The sum total of all the above activities that are all caused by human action seeking to eke an unscrupulous living at the expensive cost of the environment is that it loosens the soil, making it prone to be washed away and deposited in the country’s many streams, rivers and dams.
Some of the rivers and streams are now extinct while dams are no longer able to hold as much water as they are supposed to. Agriculture, Lands and Rural Resettlement Minister Retired Chief Air Marshal Perrance Shiri expressed worry at the rate at which siltation was fast becoming a national problem, threatening the success of agricultural activities and called for a collective approach in dealing with environment issues.
He implored farmers to ensure they adopt farming practices that do not harm the environment and urged Government arms tasked to enforce the legal frameworks to ensure there was compliance at all levels.
“Stream bank cultivation is a cause for concern. The practice must be brought to an end by bringing the culprits to book because it causes siltation that has an effect on dam levels.
“In our country, irrigation has often been cited as a long term solution to food security, but siltation in our dams and other water bodies derails Government plans to make sure the country attains food self-sufficiency through irrigation,” said Minister Shiri.
He implored the Environmental Management Agency (Ema) and Agritex officers to be on the lookout for farmers who continue embarking on stream bank cultivation. Ema education and publicity manager Mr Steady Kangata in his response to questions by the Sunday News said there was a widespread trivialisation of environment issues by both the communities and the courts with no deterrent sentences to culprits.
“Trivialisation of environmental offences by the courts is among the challenges that we are facing. Some of the cases take long to be finalised. In some instances sentences for those convicted of environmental offences are not deterrent.
“Furthermore, there is pressure by communities to derive a livelihood and the environment offers a quick safety net hence over exploitation of common resources such as trees leading to deforestation. When such occurs the land will be left bare and prone to erosion and siltation sets in.”
He said the worst affected areas were catchment areas such as Manyame, Mazowe, Save, Mzingwane, Runde and Gwayi adding that it was a reflection of the land use in those areas. “Some of them, especially along the Manyame and Mazowe catchments are in tobacco growing regions where nurseries are usually done close to water sources. The rest of the catchments are areas where horticulture is a major livelihood.
“The Agency has adopted a sub-catchment approach in the management of stream bank cultivation which has affected both major and small rivers in all the country’s 10 provinces. In the year 2016, the Agency organised 883 awareness campaigns to mobilise communities to embark on establishment of consolidated gardens as a strategy to reduce deforestation and siltation of water bodies due to stream bank cultivation.
“Furthermore, rural communities have been supported to establish 64 consolidated community gardens for the benefit of 3 749 households with a combined population of
253 934 people. These initiatives have had important multiplier effects on food security, income generation and sustainable management of the natural resource base,” he said.
He added that the supported consolidated vegetable gardens have provided critical support to the usual agricultural production and insurance against drought and crop failure within the benefiting communities reducing their direct dependency on natural capital.
Ema, he said, had disbursed grants to 10 local authorities for supporting stream bank cultivation management initiatives.
Fears are that the problem of siltation due to poor environment practices is threatening the Government’s Command Agriculture initiative that has spread to include fish farming where the most important resource is water.
Siltation gives the false impression that there is much water in the water bodies when there is little or nothing thereby making planning for the said water false as much of the space would have been taken up by silt.
Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) corporate communications and marketing manager Mrs Marjorie Munyonga in her response to the Sunday News said they were worried with the levels of siltation in the country’s rivers and dams but allayed fears of command agriculture being derailed saying the country’s major dams currently hold enough water to meet the country’s domestic and irrigation needs.
She said there was no evidence so far of any compromise in the implementation of command programmes such as Command Agriculture and Command Fisheries. She highlighted that in the past season, the dams met all the water demands for irrigators who participated in the Command Agriculture Programme and those outside.
“Siltation is really a cause for concern to us as a national water authority. The country’s major rivers are heavily silted and it greatly affects water yields and water holding capacity of our water bodies and it compromises the country’s water security,” she said.
Mrs Munyonga said the major cause of siltation could be attributed to land degradation due to anthropogenic activities and poor environmental practices.
She added that strategies to minimise siltation including integrated river basin management and sustainable land use approaches were being pursued to combat the problematic issue.
“Efforts are being made to de-silt the dams and rivers. De-silting is being done at various sites in the country and so far Fanisoni Weir in Nkayi, Kenzamba and Choto Dams in Makonde and some portions of Shangani River have been successfully de-silted. De-silting is done after an analysis is carried out to determine the extent of the siltation and the attendant costs of removing the silt. All the major rivers have been affected by siltation and Zinwa is working closely with stakeholder organisations such as the catchment and sub-catchment councils to ensure that siltation is minimised. A number of factors have contributed to the siltation of water bodies in the country. Among these factors are poor agricultural practices, panning, deforestation and overgrazing,” said Mrs Munyonga.
To reduce siltation and clogging of water bodies, she said, the best practice was to maintain the riverine vegetation undisturbed. Stream bank cultivation, deforestation and illegal mining in most parts of the country are the major drivers of siltation affecting streams, rivers and dams and impacting negatively on the country’s holistic approach to mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
The trend where stream bank cultivation is rampant has been noted both in the rural and urban set up of the country and is driven by the search for wetness or water provision as well as fertile soils.
According to Ema the legislation available deals with the causes of siltation which include alluvial mining, stream bank cultivation, use of sleighs and veld fires.
All these are drivers of soil erosion which is the major cause of siltation. Alluvial mining was banned by SI 92 of 2014. Stream bank cultivation, the use of sleighs and veld fires are all prohibited by SI 7 of 2007 on Environmental Impact Assessments and Ecosystems Protection Regulations.
Environmentalist who is also Environment Africa country director Mr Barnabas Mawire said it was true that the country was faced with a problem of siltation where some of the rivers were literally disappearing.
He said if not managed carefully the country risks having fewer rivers adding that it posed serious dangers to the communities who depend on the various water bodies for domestic use.
“Siltation is a problem that most of the country’s rivers are faced with and it surely needs urgent attention from the sectors involved. It is whereby silt or soil deposits occupy the space that should be occupied by water, reducing the amount of water that the particular water body should have.
“What it means therefore is that there will be far much less water in the river or dam and it promotes growth of aquatic life and in some cases the river will just disappear. This is bad for fisheries and is usually a result of catchment area mismanagement. There is a need to come up with catchment area initiatives where the discourse of rehabilitation of catchment area should be central to the whole issue,” said Mr Mawire.
He urged Ema to enforce the legislation that prohibits stream bank cultivation and deforestation and gold panning activities.
Mr Mawire said overgrazing, veld fires and rampant cutting down of trees by new farmers should be treated as serious threats to the environment and relevant legislation should be evoked to avoid long term environment catastrophes.
“There is need for rehabilitation of catchment areas to arrest run off. People should also take seriously to conservation agriculture practises and avoid cultivating on sloppy landscapes. I think these if enforced by the relevant authorities and other initiatives such as avoiding gold panning, deforestation, overgrazing and stream bank cultivation may help preserve the country’s water bodies and enhance the Command Agriculture programme,” he said.
He also urged a multi-sectorial approach saying this was not the work of a single Government ministry but everyone should be on board including the communities from where the button starts and ends.
derick.khumalo