adminJeffrey Gogo Climate Story
WE are now in the fire season and vast lands of valuable forests and grasslands have already been reduced to ashes. It is now common knowledge 330 000 hectares of forests or 50 million trees are lost mainly to uncontrolled veld fires each year in Zimbabwe. The causes are predominantly agriculture related. However, the process of burning plantation forests and grasslands, clearing out land for developmental projects and cutting down of trees for energy purposes produces multiple environmental problems.
Pollution
An immense amount of dangerous carbons are being pumped into the atmosphere, vegetation is being destroyed and the country’s carbon sink capacity is reducing rapidly.
These processes feed into the global cycle of climate change and global warming, but there are increasing trends worldwide for cutting greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions through sustainable forest management practices. The carbon sink, in this instance, refers to Zimbabwe’s ability to remove from the atmosphere GHG emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2), produced locally. Trees perform that function excellently, sucking in CO2 and emitting precious oxygen.
The Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) programme of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change is emerging as a part of the international climate change regime which holds the potential to dramatically affect forestry practices across the globe.
The REDD+ scheme is a carbon-based compensation for projects that result in reduced carbon emissions or enhancing carbon sinks or both in tropical forests.
With 40 percent (66 percent in 2000) of Zimbabwe’s total land area occupied by forests, the country has great potential to developing and implementing beneficial strategies under the REDD+ umbrella, which may stabilise emissions and climates at micro-level.
Unfortunately, that has not happened yet, at least at the desirable national scale. Only a mature private sector-funded programme in Kariba covering four rural district councils stand prominent, as a REDD+ initiative in Zimbabwe. Other NGO-funded REDD+ programmes going on in other parts of the country are strictly small. The Kariba project is now expected to sell its credits on the Voluntary Carbon Markets, an international UN platform where companies or organisations can earn money by selling their carbon credits — essentially a payment for the green work they are doing back home that reduces carbon emissions.
The carbon credits system is an entirely independent complex topic in the climate change and global warming war, which summons intense discussion on a different day.
REDD+ in Zimbabwe
Some work evaluating the potential of Zimbabwe’s forest sector to effectively control emissions while simultaneously contributing to national economic development has begun.
The Bio-Hub Trust, a coalition of six local and international environment-centred organisations, in conjunction with the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate are spearheading that project.
Earlier this year, the two hosted the first Zimbabwe REDD+ Stakeholders Consultative Workshop.
The outcome was predictable: the country has still not boarded the REDD+ train. It may still be kilometres away from the station.
The private sector, communities and political leaders are still very much confused about the REDD+ initiative. Private companies are concerned about the sustainability of such projects going forward. Communities remain indifferent, unsure whether REDD+ will knock off incomes from forests-related activities, raise them or are being tricked by project implementers.
But it was clear Zimbabwe needed to develop a National REDD+ Plan to function alongside other key national policies such as the National Climate Change Response Strategy, which is now entering its final stages of completion.
This plan will be crucial in directing the country’s thrust on sustainable forest management practices and could open the way to accessing international REDD+ funding, which other countries like Mozambique and the DRC are currently benefiting from.
There is over US$1,2 billion REDD+ support money from different financiers across the world waiting for applicants, Bio-Hub Trust said.
But first Zimbabwe needs to establish a functional multi-stakeholder institution comprising national and international institutions, Government and non-government as well as academia.
This would be essential for designing and implementing a robust roadmap that establishes the necessary steps for the REDD+ process at national level.
The country will also need to build capacity among key economic and political agents and increase access to the technical capacity of international bodies such as the UN Environment Programme.
“A unique opportunity to potentially address climate change and rural poverty while conserving biodiversity and sustaining vital ecosystem services. Previous approaches failed to meaningfully address deforestation and forest degradation,” Bio-Hub said in a brief of one of the opportunities that REDD+ programmes could bring to Zimbabwe.
Challenges are many. These include lack of awareness and understanding of REDD+ and carbon trading, an unsuitable governance framework as well as continued loss of forests from a variety of activities such as use of timber for tobacco curing.
“Clearly, given the relatively extensive woodland cover across the country, Zimbabwe has the potential to be a carbon sink,” according to the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate’s Second National Communication, a wide-ranging report documenting the country’s climate actions, which is presented to the UNFCCC.
“However, the current pressures for more agricultural land for wood for various purposes, including fuelwood reduces the carbon sink potential of the country.”
Zimbabwe’s forests generate a wide range of both timber and non-timber products, sustaining over 7 000 jobs.
Nearly 21 million hectares of the forests land are indigenous trees and 156 000 hectares under plantations. Last year, the Standards Association of Zimbabwe announced plans for unveiling a standard for the forestry industry.
The standard was expected to help promote sustainable forest management practices as well as support and strengthen the framework of policy and regulation that delivers improved economic, social, environmental and cultural outcomes from well managed forests.
God is faithful.
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