Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu
“BETTER late than never,” is a saying that is often heard when people who had lost hope welcome positive action against a negative development or society as a whole.
Today Zimbabweans in both rural and urban areas quietly or openly repeat that saying in welcoming a joint move by this country’s Forestry Commission and development partners to reduce continuous destruction to forests by domestic users and business dealers in firewood so much so that was nothing to be done to stop the rot, as it were, many parts of our country if not all of it would become deserts with people and livestock facing the demises of hunger.
Today our country is gripped by droughts which decimated crops, leaving many families across the nation in need of food aid.
Yes, the Government is digging boreholes across the country for irrigation purposes to try to save lives in the event that the drought continues unabated.
Which is most undoubtedly likely to happen should global warming which is responsible for spawning droughts across many parts of the world remain unabated.
The destruction of woodlands/forests has a detrimental effect on ozone, the layer that protects earth and human beings from dangerous rays of the sun which are responsible for warming the globe dangerously and causing droughts that decimate food crops, causing suffering to people.
Trees are a shield as it were, for humanity against those dangerous rays of the sun that find their way down to earth as a result of dangerous carbon gasses from veldfires, coal plants as well as from the smoke from unmodified factory chimneys bellowing high up into the sky and destroying the ozone as a result.
Trees absorb and sink the dangerous carbons, thereby neutralising them as it were so that it is no exaggeration by this pen to suggest that fires with which some Zimbabweans hunt as well as those used to clear land for agriculture contribute to thinning the ozone layer to the extent that we now experience the bitter taste of global warming — the drought, the end time of which no one is known to have prophesied.
In that respect it is most survival hope-inspiring to learn from the Forestry Commission in an article published in this paper on Wednesday this week that the commission has joined hands with development partners to train villagers in Matabeleland South province, which is drought-prone, in producing firewood-saving stoves as part of efforts to protect forests.
Briquettes are small blocks or bricks made from compressed materials, often waste materials, that can be used as fuel or in other industrial applications and common types include charcoal briquettes made from charcoal dust and other binding agents, used in barbecuing and grilling, biomas briquettes made from agricultural waste such as crop waste and wood chips, used as a sustainable fuel source, coal briquettes made from coal dust and binding agents used as a fuel source in various industries and peat briquettes made from compressed peat also used as a fuel.
A Forestry Commission spokesman said: “Briquettes offer several benefits which include convenience, easy to handle and store, consistency, uniform size and quality, energy efficiency, burn more efficiently than loose materials, reduced waste, made from materials that would otherwise be discarded.”
The Matabeleland South province training programme, to run for a month, is so important to Zimbabweans in the countryside as well as in urban areas who should conserve forests which are important in both human and wildlife existence as everyone should know, and should therefore be extended countrywide to preserve God’s nature bequests for His creation’s existence.
The Forestry Commission source, pointed to Nyanga district which he said did not experience droughts like other parts of the country because of thriving forests there and that statement gave emphasis to the important role that trees play in drawing rainfall to a country.
According to the Forestry Commission, 90 percent of rural households and 67 percent of urban households rely on firewood as their primary cooking fuel.
In order therefore to preserve and increase forests that have survived the axe and new woodlands, authorities in our country might wish to import bats credited with Brazil’s dense forests as the birds are known for dropping the seeds of fruits they eat for re-germination and re-afforestation.
Hooray to the Forestry Commission and partners for their bold move to save Zimbabwe from the scourge of global warming and droughts that have repeatedly neutralised the otherwise known resilience of small grains such as sorghum, pearl-millet and rapoko on which millions of Zimbabweans in dry regions of the country rely.
Online Reporter