•VILLAGERS preparing a charcoal kiln in Zubalinyenga Village in Nyimba District in Eastern Province. Pictures courtesy of CIFOR.

By XAVIER MANCHISHI –

THE African continent faces major environmental challenges linked to energy and climate change, but relatively little space is allocated to these issues in the media across Africa according to Matiajs Nikolas Wulff, the programme manager at the International Media Support.
For many editors, environment is a non-topic although the media can help raise awareness of the “green tech” solutions that exist and which can contribute to sustainable development.
This school of thought was one of the contentious issues during the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) media editors meeting held in Nyimba with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the theme “promoting environmental reporting in Zambia.”
While journalists hold that every story has to be of human interest to earn its space in a newspaper, scientists feel the media should cover environmental issues more because they affect the livelihoods of the global citizens.
Media consultant Enock Ngoma is of the view that the only way environmental stories can be adequately covered is by bridging the gap of mistrust between journalists and researchers so that information is readily available for the media to pass it on to their larger audiences.
This view was echoed by CIFOR communications coordinator for Africa Joan Baxter who argued that researchers and scientists must break their jargon for media personnel to disseminate.
Ms Baxter, however, does not agree with the notion that environment or climate change stories are boring.
“Our challenge as media professionals – no matter where – is to ensure that our stories reflect the dependence of our economies on the environment, and the importance of science to evaluate ecological services – and not just economic products – that forests provide,” Ms Baxter said during her presentation at the editors meeting.
She went further to illustrate that “ecology” and “economics” both make use of the Latinized ”eco” prefix, which comes from the Greek word “oikos” and connotes house and home, place of dwelling, living environment, habitat, community.
For CIFOR Southern Africa communications manager Davison Ghumbo, there is need for information sharing, repackaging of the information and the interrogation of the reporters-science interface.
Mr Ghumbo defines climate change as any significant change in the measures of climate lasting for an extended period of time and includes major changes in temperatures, precipitation and wind patterns, which occur several decades or longer.
In general, climate change will through further land use changes also shift community priorities and change economic activities resulting in contingent pathways of succession and more alternative stable states through interaction of ecosystems on the landscape.
Dr Ghumbo calls for more effective, holistic and systems-based management practices and closing the gap between current landscape management practices and emerging scientific perspectives.
In Nyimba were CIFOR is conducting a forest project funded by the USAID to the tune of US$3.1 million, villagers are slowly depleting the forest through charcoal burning which their source of livelihood.
Zubalinyenga village headman Samsom Ndhlovu who is under Chief Nyalugwe argues that his subjects have no choice but to burn charcoal to earn a living despite the business not being as profitable as the labour that goes in.
“Sometimes people sell as little as one bag of charcoal per week but they still have to be involved in the trade. Charcoal burning is our only business here despite the risks involved,” he said in an interview.
Headman Zubalinyenga who took the editors on a tour of how his people burn charcoal said if the villagers were given alternative sources of income such as livestock raring, fish-farming and bee-keeping, they would abandon charcoal burning.
Another resident Joropha Zulu said charcoal burning was labour-intensive and less profitable but the residents of Zubalinyenga have no other alternatives.
A village of 88 households and almost 1,000 can certainly do some damage to a forest if cutting down tries is their mainstay.
Mr Zulu recalls how they used to cut down trees for charcoal just in the backyard but now have to walk long distances.
“I was sent to school through this same business of charcoal burning until I completed grade 12, I am now also using the same means to raise money to send my siblings to school,” said Mr Zulu who admitted that the business was illegal.
He claims that the money demanded by the ministry of lands for licences to sell charcoal was too much and as such villagers opt to sell the mechandise illegally.
“From one bag of charcoal, we make K5 profit, how can we be expected to pay K120 to get a licence? We know there is a law that requires us to get licences but we can’t,” he announced nonchalantly.
Such practices are against the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Forest Degradation (REDD)+ which is a policy on positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.
The REDD+ spells out the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries project officer Davies Kashole saying Zambia needs to prepare a national strategy aimed at reducing deforestation and forest degradation.
Zambia is also a signatory to both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol which Government signed on 11th June 1992 and ratified on 28th May 1993.
Chief Nyalugwe who also attended the meeting in Nyimba said the forests were being depleted by demand of charcoal from urban areas.
“So the supply chain starts with the end user being the people who buy charcoal in Lusaka yet the consequences of forest degradation are hitting our people here in Nyimba,” the traditional leader said.
Chieftainess Mwape contends that while everyone else looks at the booming charcoal business as a cause of forest degradation, but never on the health risks the charcoal burners who inhale so much dust and smoke in the charcoal-making process.
Nyimba District Commissioner George Phiri is also worried about the overwhelming onslaught on Zambia’s forests and that the high level of deforestation was threatening the existence of forest resources.
According to the 2008 land use assessment conducted in Zambia, the country has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
The high levels of deforestation have been attributed to the expansion of small-scale agriculture, wood fuel production and logging for timber.
One thing is certain, something needs to be done to stop the onslaught on Zambia’s forests sooner rather than later.