Of Mount Kilimanjaro Ice Waving Us Good-bye Due to Deforesation

THE recent scientific theory linking the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro to increased deforestation on the mountain’s foothills is more than sad news as far as the welfare of the mountain’s biodiversity is concerned.

The theory is highlighted in a recent study report compiled by two researchers from Britain’s Portsmouth University -Nicholas Pepin and Martin Schaefer, who took eleven days to survey the mountain’s glaciers.

The researchers, who revealed their findings at a news conference in Dar es Salaam recently, said the mountain’s glacier surface had shrunk from 20 kilometres in 1880 to two kilometres in 2000.

They said the development was caused more by local than regional factors, with Pepin suggesting that deforestation mainly due to extensive farming as the major cause.

“Deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the most likely culprit because without forests there is too much evaporation of humidity into outer space. The result is that moisture-laden winds blowing across those forests have become drier and drier,” he explained.

This revelation is another reminder of the catastrophic effects that deforestation can cause to the environment.

Try to imagine the fate of the whole range of biodiversity that depend on flow of water resulting from the normal melting of the mountain’s ice such as forests, animals (both wild and domesticated) and other living organisms.

The mountain is known to be surrounded with huge tracts of land covered by forests which accommodate millions of different forms of life from wild animals in game parks to human beings.

I happen to have grown-up in Moshi, a town that is found right on the slopes of the mountain. It’s sad to notice that many of the rivers that we used to swim in, and whose tributaries originate from the mountain, are now full of exposed rocks with very little water flowing down the stream.

As Pepin revealed, the major factors behind the wanton deforestation is the clearance of forests to give room for farm lands though other factors such as expansion of human settlements into forest lands and industrial activities also have a share in the problem.

This problem facing Mount Kilimanjaro and its rich biodiversity is not unique to Tanzania as many other countries especially the developing ones are also confronted by a similar trend.

Though in this case the melting of ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disassociated with global warming, it’s important to note that deforestation has a substantial share in the rise of temperature on the Earth’s surface, among other environmental problems.

This is because every tree that is cut down besides being a loss to biodiversity, also contributes to global warming.

Trees are scientifically known to be capable of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon sinks) and thus check global warming that way.

For instance, writer Bryan Walsh in his contribution to a feature article titled The Global Warming Survival Guide that came out in the TIME magazine early last year, while quoting a number of scientific findings says that a tree can absorb up to a ton of carbon dioxide over its life time.

So he suggests that planting trees most especially in the tropics as the best way for mitigating global warming and climate change.

However, the sad story is that many parts of the world still experience wanton cutting down of trees for various purposes such as clearance of new lands for agriculture, urbanisation, energy supplies, and construction, among many others.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says that deforestation and forest fires that are commonplace in many developing countries of Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia greatly contribute to global warming together with other environmental negative effects.

In fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year (1.6 billion tones) is caused by deforestation, FAO says.

“We are working to solve two of the key environmental issues; deforestation and global warming at the same time,” FAO Senior Forestry Officer, Dieter Schoene, told a meeting on deforestation and global warming in Rome early last year that was attended by about 200 development experts mainly from developing countries.

The meeting was organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and hosted by FAO.

Delegates of the 46 developing countries present at the workshop signaled their readiness to act on deforestation, 80 percent of which is due to increased farmland to feed growing populations. In Africa, for example, shifting cultivation is still a common practice that also involves the use of fire to clear new lands for agriculture.

Part of the solution is to increase agricultural productivity so that there is less demand to convert forests into farmlands. But they also stressed that they needed financial help from the developed world to do the job.

According to FAO, developing nations, alongside the developed ones, have to play a key role in curbing deforestation as one of the ways of fighting against deforestation.

Schoene says that trees are about 50 percent made of carbon and that when they are felled or burned, the carbon dioxide they store escapes back into the air where they create a layer on the atmosphere that blocks heat from escaping into space causing rise in temperature on the earth’s surface.

According to FAO figures, some 13 million hectares of forests worldwide are lost every year, almost entirely in the tropics where deforestation remains to be very high.

While officially launching the FAO’s State of the World’s Forests Report 2007 last year, David Harcharik, FAO Deputy Director-General said though there were some places in the world which recorded positive changes in terms of forest management, the problem remained big in developing countries.

“…countries that are facing the most serious challenges in achieving sustainable forest management are those with the highest rates of poverty and civil conflict,” he said.Global forest cover amounts to just under four billion hectares, covering about 30 percent of the world’s land area and from 1990 to 2005, the world lost three percent of its total forest area, according to FAO data in the report.

For instance, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean are shown in the report as currently being the two regions with the highest losses. Africa, which accounts for about 16 percent of the total global forest area, lost over 9 percent of its forests between 1990 and 2005.

Latin America and the Caribbean, with over 47 percent of the world’s forests saw an increase in the annual net loss between 2000 and 2005, from 0.46 percent to 0.51 percent.

Coming to Tanzania, between 1990 and 2000, the country lost an average of 412,300 hectares of forest per year, which is an average of annual deforestation rate of 0.99 percent. The country’s forest cover stands at 39.9 percent of the total land area, which is equivalent to 35,257,000 hectares.

This means that solutions for curbing deforestation must originate from within the developing countries before looking outside for support.

So developing countries such as Tanzania should now work hard in preserving forest resources and at the same time educate her people about the importance of protecting forests. Besides, people should be encouraged to plant more trees.

On the other hand, wealthy nations could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally by paying landowners in developing nations not to clear forested land for agriculture under the existing environmental instruments such as the Kyoto Protocol.

This proves that the fight against deforestation should have a global approach instead of just leaving the burden on the poor countries whose communities are always compelled to destroy the environment to cater for short term needs.