Tanzania: Conserve Environment

The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)

27 June 2011

editorial

Tanzania is contending with an alarming rate of environmental destruction despite attempts to reverse it. Forests are massively being destroyed in search of building materials, wood fuel and clearing land for agriculture.

In some areas, small-scale miners have been polluting water sources and destroying forests.

It is understood that 55 per cent of the land could be used for agriculture and over 51 per cent for grazing.

About six per cent of the agricultural land is cultivated with the practice of shifting cultivation, which causes deforestation and land degradation on the pastoral land.

Studies estimate that wood fuel and agricultural residues account for 92 per cent of the total energy consumption in the country.

As a result, the mismanagement of fuel resources significantly contributes to deforestation and environmental degradation.

The biodiversity is lost, soil degraded and water sources dried up. Floods or dry spells have been ravaging parts of our country, destroying infrastructure and farms.

By March, at least 1.3 million people were facing a food shortage and needed assistance.

Last week’s reports that some unlicensed people were harvesting trees in Kilimanjaro Region are therefore disappointing.

We call on individual Tanzanians and authorities to brook no further environmental destruction in Kilimanjaro and elsewhere.

Treatment and disposal of waste should be properly done in urban areas to reduce pollution to a large extent.

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