Is the Zimbabwean government doing enough to address climate change?
My recent visit to Nyanga left me wondering if we still have a pleasant and refreshing atmosphere in the eastern highlands. The evergreen mountainous places of Nyanga are now characterized by smoke caused by veld fires. Lately there has been an upsurge in uncontrolled burning in both urban and rural areas causing massive amounts of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.
People are starting fires for no apparent reason. If you travel from Harare to Beitbridge and from Mutare to Harare both sides of the roads are burning. During this time of the year some people in farming areas are burning their fields in preparation of the new farming season. Due to the fact that firewood is now being used as a substitute for coal when curing tobacco most farmers who cannot afford to buy coal on the local market resort to cutting down trees. Most of these trees are indigenous trees, which take many years to grow.
In recent years Zimbabwe has been experiencing droughts and floods in some parts of the country, mostly being caused by changes in weather patterns and also global warming. It does not make sense for one to start a fire, which destroys hectares of land in pursuit of a buck.
In Zimbabwe we have the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and also environmental management agencies that can assist in information dissemination and advocacy for best practices on managing our environment. A lot has to be done in educating our folks both in the rural and urban communities on the effects of global warming and climate change. The Government needs to take issues of climate change seriously and provide a budget to assist local authorities and agencies
The time to act is now or else we will find ourselves importing timber, or even grass for thatching. I am a Zimbabwean who loves an open-air braai but I don’t want to be seen coming from the north of the Zambezi or the south of Limpopo with a truckload of charcoal and firewood for my braai.
Lets not wait for the worst to happen to convince us that the climate really is changing. And we all have to do something about it.