AngloGold moves to promote alternative energy use

Dar es Salaam. The available data show that at least 61 per cent of Tanzania’s land mass is on the brink of becoming a desert due to human activities associated with destruction of trees for charcoal, fire-wood and also irresponsible farming and livestock keeping.

According to industry data, 88.2 per cent of households use charcoal as their main source of domestic energy and the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that charcoal is a Sh1.6 trillion industry in Tanzania.

All thisevidencecalls for immediate response from a range of stakeholders to help curb further threat to the environment.

Afterrecognising the situation, AngloGold-Ashanti Company, which owns Geita Gold Mine (GGM), is in the process of providing different groups from 16 villages in Geita with machines designed to produce alternative cooking energy by using sawdust and other crop residues including rice pods.

AngloGold-Ashanti believes that by providing machines to villagers who are the main producers of charcoal and forest-based wood, will enable them to switch to alternative and sustainable energy use.

AngloGold-Ashanti is one of the companies that sponsoredFebruary 7’s third Mwananchi Thought Leadership Forum (MTLF) that brought together a cross section of interest groups in Dar es Salaam, to explore the dangers of charcoal use onenvironment and suggest solutions to the problems.

The forum,organised by Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL), is an initiative of the media company to stimulate a debate on critical issues of national development and also designed to bring together stakeholders to discuss joint solutions to challenges in the respective topics.

The Thursday’s forum was the third in planned MTLF series, following those of the burden of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and Tanzania Industrial realisation vision.

In a special interview with The Citizen AngloGold-Ashanti Vice-President Simon Shayo said that amid the dangers brought in by the use of charcoal, they had the initiative that coordinates groups in the villages of Geita as a channel to join with other stakeholders in supporting the efforts by the government to protect the environment through the reduction of charcoal and wood use.

Mr Shayo said that his company had already done an experimental research and proved that the initiative to provide residents with machines designed to produce alternative cooking energy, would help save more trees especially at the Geita Gold Mine premises.

“We already have 16 groups consisting of rice farmers and who reside in a few metres from the GGM area.

The experiment gave us a motivationto continue mobilising more people on the best way to get rid of charcoal use and we are so far progressing well,” he said.

According to him, when the beneficiaries of the machines in Geita are ready to produce alternative energies, they will not be sold at an expensive price because the aim is to show charcoal users that sustainable energy alternatives arewere available within their day to day activities like farming. “I can assure you, this alternative energy will be sold at a price that everyone can afford. This will be the people of Geita villages’ income generating activity, which on

the other hand will help our aim of mitigating the rampant wood and charcoal businesses and thus protect our forests,” he said.

Mr Shayo also says that lack of enough alternative sources of energy and the continuous use of charcoal was one of the factors contributing to environmental degradation.

“For instance, we realised that farmers in the villages have got a lot of raw materials for alternative energy production, but they were not aware. We are also training them on how to maintain the natural forests for sustainability and we now call upon policy makers to adhere to this initiative in order to accelerate positive outcome countrywide,” said Shayo.

On charcoal policy and awareness Mr Shayo also called upon the government to come up with policies which will regulate the use of charcoal as a move to also discourage charcoal producers and rather, get them to adapt to the use of alternative and sustainable energies.

He also said that there was still little awareness of the dangers associated with charcoal usage among most producers in the villages.

“The government has an obligation to formulate policies to regulate the use of this dangerous energy. We as stakeholders are also obliged to keep making people aware of the dangers of using tree-based energies especially in residencies around forests in rural areas for the sake of our future generation,” he said.

On Mwananchi Thought Leadership Forum (MTLF)

Regarding the MTLF debate, Mr Shayo praised MCL’s initiative and said it had come at the right time as just a start of the company’s role in the protection of the environment and he believed that the discussion would come up with significant achievements.

“It’s a good start because it brings various stakeholders from all the ranks wh

contribute to shaping the policies on environment’s. This debate should make stakeholders go down to the community levels where there are sources of charcoal-businesses,” he insisted.

In addition, Shayo says conservation and respect for the environment should be among the priority areas to all companies and individuals.

He says in GGM’s mining operations, they have set up environmental management systems that ensures environmental issues are considered in their daily activities.

Among the initiatives they are doing is re-planting natural trees in collaboration with Tanzania’s Forest Services Agency (TFS), as part of supporting the government in its efforts to plant more trees.

“It’s rare to find in a mining area a natural forest but we have succeeded in making restoration of natural trees after performing our mining activities. We really appreciate MCL for giving out the best platform for people to share ideas for our environment,” says Shayo.

Other stakeholders

The executive director of Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), Mr Charles Meshack, cautioned during the MTLF that farming activities were the main destroyer of forests.

“We need to collaborate in a bid to get the best way of addressing this issue by identifying all of its root causes. We should also watch how irresponsible farming activities have had a hand in our environmental degradation and this can only be achieved if we had proper regulatory policies,” he said.