Read at : Google Alert – desertification
WHY WE NEED TO SUSTAIN TREE-PLANTING CAMPAIGN
Replacement of trees felled massively in the country must be promoted and made a continual exercise as a matter of life and death. As one prominent local enthusiast of nature often points out, trees can do without men, but not vice-versa.
Trends so far indicate massive losses of the domestic forest cover, as the country loses an estimated 400,000 hectares of forest annually, which is over 1% of the total available estate.
Rampant tree felling is obvious for any observer. Apart from abating the impact of other environmental threats, such as desertification, pollution, soil degradation and loss of diversity, it makes conservation activities more challenging and difficult.
As population increases, so is the demand for trees required for construction, fuel wood, charcoal and many other human needs. The pace of tree felling, coupled with its concomitant environmental challenges, also increases with population growth, forcing clearance of large tracts of land annually to pave the way for agricultural land and other human activities, including new settlements.
Of late the problem of tree felling has been exacerbated by the liberalisation of trade, which has seen tonnes of high-value timber being freely shipped daily to lucrative markets overseas. The timber is often harvested in an unsustainable way, and always at the expense of the environment.
Apart from human activities directly contributing to forest cover loss, there are also exogenous factors, such as those associated with so-called climate change, which are blamed for uncertain rainfall and temperature patterns, droughts, food and water shortages.
Experts have already warned that Tanzania is set to lose its entire forest cover within the next ten to 60 decades, if more is not done to reduce the current rate of deforestation. Better natural resource management strategies are therefore not only required, but necessary to mitigate situation.
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DESERTIFICATION 