EDITORIAL: What we learn from Chemba Council afforestation

Tree-felling for whatever purpose is deforestation. This also goes for forest firesand wildfires in general. Tree-felling is‘downing individual trees, as in logging for the timber business.

Tree-felling can also be to clear space for farmland, for aesthetics reasons and for wood fuel as firewood and charcoal.

Wildfires that include forest firesare also equally destructive.

While wildfire ignitions may have natural, exotic causes like volcanic eruptions, lightning and spontaneous combustion, they can also result from human activities, both spontaneous/unintended and purposefully intended.

Generally speaking, when tree-felling and wildfires are widespread, frequent and uncontrolled, one of the more catastrophic results is deforestation.

Basically, this is the removal of a forest or standing trees where the land is thereafter converted to non-forest use or uses.

Examples of this include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban settlements and related uses.

We have deliberately gone to great lengths here on wildfires, uncontrolled tree-felling and a bazillion other human activitiesto highlight the fact that all of these result in widespread deforestation, leading to environmental degradation in most of the world’s least developed countries (LDCs) – and worse.

Most unfortunately, Tanzania has not been spared these maladies.

As of the year 2015, about 39.9 per cent of the United Republic’s land area (35,257,000 hectares) was under forest cover – a forest area being defined as ‘land under natural or planted stands of trees of at least 5 meters in situ, whether productive or not.’

This excludes ‘tree stands in agricultural production systems (for example, in fruit plantations and agroforestry systems) and trees in urban parks and gardens…’

Rate of of forestry depletion is phenomenal

But, then, the rate of forestry depletion is phenomenal. For example, Tanzania lost 14.9 per cent of its forest cover (roughly 6,184,000 hectares) to assorted causes between 1990 and 2005, according to experts.

And, the destruction is ongoing, relentlessly ‘supported and compounded’ by adverse climate change phenomena in all their hydra-headed monstrosities.

That being the case, we at The Citizen unhesitatingly call upon the government and its relevant institutions to find ways and means of adopting the measures taken by the Chemba District Council in Dodoma Region. This is if the authorities really want to effectively address the issues of wildfires and tree-felling in so far as they fuel and otherwise drive environmental destruction. The Chemba District Council has taken remedial, judicial measures against invaders of the Mtungutu Protected Area under its jurisdiction for conducting illegal human activities in that area contrary to the Environment Management legislation. The illegal activities include – but are not limited to – including tree-felling and starting forest fires, more often than not for nefarious ends.

If that approach is adopted in earnest countrywide, it could go far in finally surmounting the escalating environmental destruction.