‘Demystify global warming’

By Stephen Mpofu

http://www1.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=4448&cat=13  2 November 2010

No doubt there is a greater need now than ever before in the history of this country for environmental scientists to demystify global warming by bringing it closer to home for Zimbabweans to see its ugly face and then take concerted efforts to deal with the droughts and floods it spawns through climate change with the upshot of hunger and inverted biological diversity.

Today, Zimbabweans, and, indeed, other Africans, lamely shield themselves from blame for causing climate change by pointing accusing fingers at industrial countries in the West and emerging economies elsewhere for pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and causing global warming with climate change as a fallout that now dangerously affects almost the entire human race but with Zimbabwe and other African countries bearing the brunt of irresponsible and negligent human activity.

True, western countries have long dragged their feet, instead of acting swiftly and effectively by modifying their factory plants to curb toxic carbon gas emissions into the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat and preventing it from bouncing back from earth and so causing the globe to heat up.

Fortunately for the big offending countries, but not so for Zimbabwe and other poorer nations, the richer nations boost technology and at the same time they are able to mitigate the effects of climate change and adapt to new climatic conditions.

While Africa, Zimbabwe included, lacks the capacity for mitigation and adaptation in the fight against the climate change scourge, its people should not fold their arms, waiting for divine intervention, but should take the climate change bull by its ugly horns to improve their lot.

The tendency by some, if not most, African countries to want to perpetually walk in the shadow of the World War does not work either.

That should be a co-theme for the African Forum scheduled for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week whose main theme is “Acting on climate change for sustainable development in Africa”.

The five-day Addis Ababa Indaba, which ends on Friday, is in preparation for climate change negotiations planned for Cancun, Mexico later.

In the past, rich western nations have failed at international environmental fora to respond positively to calls by Africans for investment in agriculture which forms the backbone of the economies of most African states.

Instead, industrialised countries have insisted on increased afforestation as a way of offsetting climate change effects since trees act as sinks against global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide which is blamed for global warming and climate change, in addition to their retention of underground water.

However, African nations maintained that more tree plantations will rob them of agricultural land critical in the production of food to stave off hunger and Zimbabwe undoubtedly concurs with the rest of the continent.

Though Zimbabwe agrees as she does with other countries, she has immediate gargantuan tasks at hand, and these concern environmental protection in the urban as well as rural areas where so much has been said about the need to fight environmental degradation but with no resounding, positive responses either way.

It now seems the only way to get things moving effectively is to take recourse to the biblical prescription which is that there is a time for all things: a time to speak and a time to act: a time to be soft and a time to be hard etcetera.

Industrialists and rural folk have all heard these things about protecting the environment which forms the basis of humankind’s very existence.

Yet in Zimbabwe’s cities and towns there is an appalling, laisses faire approach to environmental protection, even a fatalistic reticence as when, for instance, Harare City Council stands accused of discharging raw sewage into Manyame Dam, the main source of the city’s water.

The time also to persuade industrialists to limit to safe levels the amount of toxic gases spewed into the atmosphere, by modifying their factory chimneys, is long gone and coercion must now come to the fore to make offenders comply with environmental regulations, where fines alone have not achieved desired results.

Other measures that should also be taken include adopting new technologies to limit or eliminate altogether carbon emissions where energy is produced by burning coal, in addition to cleaning up car exhaust fumes as well as carbon gases from refrigeration systems.

The country will obviously have to import from advanced nations the requisite technologies for necessary adaptation at home in compliance with environmental protection demands.

Environmental challenges in Zimbabwe’s rural areas appear to have assumed a state of wanton vandalism abetted by an I-don’t-care attitude, or one informed by blissful ignorant about the boomerang effects of climate change even though these have become more prevalent than ever before.

A crying need exists for a paradigm shift in the apparent perception by people in the rural areas of the country’s natural resources land, water, grass forests — as collective imperishables.

But nothing could be further from the truth as even the breath in us that came hot from the very pot, of our creator does not see the light of Heaven, but becomes extinct in the darkness of hell if it is not nurtured in preparation for eternity.

Desertification and the extinction of certain breeds of cattle under the onslaught of climatic change, are proof enough of what might befall Zimbabweans sooner rather than later if they do not handle the environment like a delicate egg.

You do not need complex foreign technology to preserve woodlands that have become so seriously depleted by people harvesting firewood for sale in urban centres, to make curios as well as for lighting homes and cooking food.

A simple technology was introduced by Germans to conserve firewood in the home but was abandoned by them in anger at the introduction of the land reform programme, before it could spread to all other parts of the country. This technology mixes mud with ash to make durable stoves that use less firewood than is used in open fires each week.

The earth and ash stoves had already been introduced to Beitbridge in Matabeleland South Province and to Mashonaland West before their abandonment.

Why not re-introduce them to other provinces to save endangered forests and medicinal plants which thrive in wooded areas and might now be preserved in laboratories if traditional healers do not form corps of environmental guards to protect the plants where these have become endangered species. This could be especially so in areas where villagers might have to use dry cow dung to make a fire after trees, including those of wild fruits that contained medicinal properties, have all been wiped out.

Chiefs and other leaders in their hierarchical structures should put action where their mouth is by making sure that veld fires — started by people to scatter seeds for fresh new grass to grow on their pastures for livestock, by hunters, or simply acts of habitual arsonists — are eradicated with stiff punishment being meted out to anyone caught in the act.

Not only do these fires destroy vegetation but also people and wildlife, as has happened in some areas recently, they spill carbon gases into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to global warming and climate change.

Although Zimbabweans probably do not realise it — and might even be reluctant to act — cement manufacturers are also blamed for polluting the air as the silica and limestone from which cement is made release carbon dioxide into the air and is therefore a pollutant.

For that reason, environmentalists internationally are recommending a suitable replacement for cement. They say the carbon gas from ash goes into the ground rather than into the air.

At the Cancun forum, African countries should not settle for piecemeal solutions by the big.

Environmental offenders, as has become their habit, are likely to sweet-talk emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and even South Africa to book proposals by them which fall far short of radically cutting on greenhouse gas emissions to much safer levels.

The Big Brother environmental offenders apparently believe that if they divide and weaken developing nations they will have dampened pressure on them to play ball in calls on them to clean up the mess they have created in the cosmos.