Muyunda Lifuna
5 May 2008
Ndola — FOR Mabvuto Banda of Chongwe district, every day is a business day as he goes about cutting down trees to use for producing charcoal using a kiln (Chibili) in local dialect, made out of mud.
He is oblivious to the fact that his activities are averse to the conservation of the environment, or maybe he knows but decides to ignore it. After all it is his only source of income.
Banda's story is just one among the many and rampant environmental degradation activities being practiced in most parts of Zambia, especially in rural setups.
Many times, truckloads of charcoal or wood are seen on the roads, with one or more people precariously perched on top of the bags, underlying the extent to which the environment is being depleted. Midway to the projected time before the attainment of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the World Bank has observed that Africa is still grappling with environmental problems and still continues to practice ways that exacerbate environmental degradation.
MDGs are eight goals to be achieved by 2015 that respond to the world's main development challenges and are drawn from the actions and targets contained in the Millennium Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations. However, only 147 Heads of State and Governments signed the goals during the United Nations (UN) summit in September 2000.
Launching the World Bank report for 2008 whose primary focus is goal number seven on environment sustainability recently, lead author Zia Qureshi observed that Zambia and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa needed to integrate environmental sustainability agendas across different economic sectors. The report named Zambia among the African countries that are not saving enough to offset resource depletion and environmental degradation.
The Global Monitoring report titled: MDGs and The Environment-Agenda for Inclusive Sustainable Development, points out Angola, Nigeria, Sudan, and Zimbabwe as the other countries that were not saving enough to prevent environmental degradation.
"The region lost nine percent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2005. Agricultural land makes up 62 per cent of the region's total natural wealth of US$3,900 per capital. But the value of this single largest asset in poor countries has fallen by 31 per cent between 1995 and 2005," the report states. With high food prices and low crop yields, the World Bank says the region will need assistance to improve agricultural productivity and food security.
The World Bank states that Africa's progresses towards these goals give a mixed picture of significant strides and formidable challenges ahead. Despite that, Sub-Saharan Africa still had great potential for renewable energy use and had rich natural resources but that the region had pressing environmental-related problems such as climate change vulnerability.
The World Bnak report indicates that environment-related problems have been hindering Zambia and other Sub-Sahara African countries from fully exploiting their renewable energy resources. The other major problems faced by these countries included the unsustainable resource use and apparent low state attention to environment priorities. As the lead author of the report, Mr Quresh acknowledges that there was a clear and urgent need to generate stronger and more inclusive momentum towards the MDGs.
Mr Quresh said out of the 35 countries in the world with most solar energy potential, 17 were in the Sub-Saharan Africa with Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Namibia and Niger topping the list.
The report states that six of the top ten countries with the highest levels of deforestation rate were found in Sub-Saharan region.
With some of the countries still recovering from the after-effects of floods, Mr Quresh notes in the report that the largest agricultural losses from climate change would be in Sub-Saharan Africa, making adaptation a very high priority.
Together with soaring food prices pertaining in most parts of the world and low crop yield, the region would need assistance to improve agricultural productivity and food security.
"Environmental sustainability agenda needed to better different economic sectors such as energy, infrastructure and minerals. Poverty reduction is within reach at global level. But human development goals, child and maternal mortality, primary completion, nutrition, sanitation, are unlikely to be met on current trends," he said in the report.
Mr Quresh writes that progress was uneven across the MDGs, with human development related goals recording slower progress than those more immediately influenced by economic growth or the expansion of infrastructure networks.
He said 2008 was a critical year in which to make progress on both development and environmental sustainability.
The lead author urged donors to expedite aid delivery in line with commitments. He said sizable shortfalls loom if current outside donor aid trends persist, which would particularly hurt poor countries and fragile states.
Increased public spending on education and health was not the sole answer but that quality and equity of spending was equally important.
The report advises that African countries should sustain and broaden the growth momentum by carefully monitoring of and responsiveness to risks arising from recent financial market crisis and rises in oil and food prices.
While the agriculture sector has been a major contributing factor to the increasing loss of forests in the Sub-Sahara Africa, it remains one of the key sectors that could also help some countries in the region such as Zambia to attain some of the objectives of the goals.
It is therefore important that while the sector poses some threats to the environment, countries in the region strike a balance and ensure that every action taken is not negatively affecting any of the eight MDGs.
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