URGENT ACTION NEEDED TO STEM DEFORESTATION
What you need to know:
- The fight against deforestation is a war for all of us in both the developed and developing world,
Forest ecosystems are a critical component of the world’s biodiversity, as many forests are more biodiverse than other ecosystems.
As of 2020, forests covered some 4.1 billion hectares of the total global land area of about 5 billion hectares, but the annual rate of deforestation between 2015 and 2020 was estimated at ten million hectares – down from about 16 million hectares a year in the 1990s.
This may sound good, that the deforestation rate is dropping. But, we thing it rather early to start celebrating – let alone rest on what are in fact very thinly-spread laurels.
Much of the deforestation is still the result of human activities, more often than not necessitated by the need to survive through farming; livestock-keeping using thitherto heavily-treed forests; sourcing wood products (including timber, firewood, charcoal fuel, etc); mining; new and extended urban settlements and socioeconomic infrastructural development.
Deforestation can also result from natural calamities – such as hurricanes, forest/wild fires, floods – or from sheer wantonness by humans who then fail to undertake meaningful and sustainable reforestation and afforestation.
The importance of forests as an effective tool in the fight against climate change that could lead to total climate breakdown cannot be overemphasised. After all, trees in dense forests are the most cost-efficient and reliable form of extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, replacing it with oxygen.
Yet, increasing pledges by governments and global corporations to significantly reduce deforestation have not been particularly effective.
In the event, natural forests continue to (be made to) disappear, with little or no evidence of their replacement in time – let alone in full.
The fight against deforestation is a war for all of us in both the developed and developing world, whereby efforts must be intensified against the slash-and-burn method of agriculture, soil erosion and continued use of fuelwood and charcoal, and replace the same with renewable sources of energy.
YES, BOOST AGRO-FINANCING
Agriculture in Tanzania is generally considered a “risky business”, and has never really been on at the top of lenders’ and potential investors’ priority lists.
Hopefully, this negative mind-set will change for the better, but only if the government follows up its promise to oversee increased funding for agriculture with concrete action on the ground.
Finance and Planning minister Mwigulu Nchemba is on record saying the government is working on plans to transform and otherwise improve agriculture funding.
Responding to a question several months ago as to why agriculture’s share of funds from the commercial banks is a measly 8.3 percent despite the sector engaging about 70 percent of the working population, Dr Nchemba said the government is working to make agriculture creditworthy.
This is by promoting good farming practices to make farming highly profitable and therefore also making the sector creditworthy in terms of performing loans.
