Zimbabwe loses at least 50 million trees annually to rampant felling

…as councils plunder funding

AN old man sporting a fringe of whitish-grey hair around his balding and mottled scalp, suddenly appeared from the dense woodland.
His back was hunched underneath the burden of an enormous load of freshly extracted tree bark.
As he slowly approached, his demureness told a tale of someone who has endured grinding poverty.
His once deep blue jacket, now faded to a light grey, covered a torn and sweat-stained blue golf shirt.
He wore an old pair of khaki denims, timeworn at the knees to testify that they had seen better days.
On his feet he wore some very old synthetic sandals that left almost a quarter of his cracked feet unprotected.
His eyes, filled with loneliness and despair told a story of someone who no longer saw much purpose of life.
His nose was set above a crooked mouth, with little lines at the corners, giving his face the character of someone who used to smile often. But the firm set of his square jaws revealed a portrait of a man who has been failed by circumstances.
He had the resigned look of someone who knows that at his age life was no longer giving, but only taking away; and so he only needed to do just enough to get him along till time calls.
The 77-year-old Misheck Munsaka from Donga village under chief Sikalenge is one of the many villagers in Matabeleland North’s Binga district who rely on stripping trees of their bark to manufacture makeshift fishing nets for sale to fishermen and women that illegally ply the upper shores of Lake Kariba.
The old man’s livelihood is, however, having devastating effects on the forests because the young trees being targeted for their bark are dying before reaching maturity. As a result of this and many other rampant practices, such as cutting down trees for firewood and household furniture, as well as clearing land for agriculture, the country’s last pristine forests are in grave danger.
This is despite the existence of what is supposed to be a noble programme to conserve these unique forests that skirt the Zambezi valley’s biodiversity corridor.
After realising that severe deforestation and land degradation globally was significantly contributing to carbon emissions, United Nations member States set out, in 2008, to address the problem through what became known as the carbon offset approach, mediated by carbon markets and facilitated by international accords and global climate finance.
The programme involves carrying out random tree censuses in each forest and translating them into carbon credits for sale.
In such schemes, carbon emissions in one part of the world (usually the industrialised north) are offset by initiatives that reduce emissions in another part of the world where there are plenty of forests and opportunities for new carbon trapping (carbon sinks); Africa being one of the major focus areas.
Carbon sinks are elements of the earth such as forests and wetlands that help cleanse the air of the deadly pollutant prevailing, carbon dioxide, which accounts for much of the global warming.
The projects mainly focus on poverty reduction and biodiversity protection, creating a win-win scenario whereby people who reside in sylvan areas are incentivised to conserve forests.
The UN established the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) programme as part of the collective global response to climate change by cutting production of gases that accelerate climate change.
After joining the programme in 2013, Zimbabwe identified the Zambezi escarpment and the Eastern Highlands greenbelts as prime targets for its implementation.
The carbon-based compensation for projects that would ideally result in reduced carbon emissions by preserving forests that act as key carbon sinks, became known as the REDD+ project.
Zimbabwe loses at least 50 million trees annually to rampant felling, particularly in areas where a massive army of hundreds of thousands of people were resettled in forested areas in the past decade and started cutting trees, mainly for curing tobacco.
Tobacco curing alone is estimated to be decimating about 7,5 million trees annually.
It has since emerged that attempts to sustainably manage forests, conserve and enhance forest carbon stocks in Zimbabwe is dismally failing to bear fruit as stakeholders warn that the politics of access and control over forests and the funds generated through the sale of carbon credits is challenging the conventional understanding that formed the basis for the project.
Primarily, Carbon Green Africa, the local REDD+ implementing partner, identified four rural district councils, namely Binga, Nyaminyami, Nyanga and Hurungwe as managers of the carbon credits fund.

The local authorities, that control land in Zimbabwe’s rural areas – the only places where meaningful forests still remain – would incentivise people in their areas to preserve the forests through instituting alternative ways of living that do not disturb the forests.
Such projects included beekeeping, bringing in alternative source of energy and capacitating farmers to be able to work on already available farmland through supply of soil-enriching inputs rather than have them clear virgin forests to access fertile soils.
Despite many communities having expressed great interest in the projects, very little, if anything, has been done to date.
As such, communities are losing heart and are headed back to decimating the forests.
Munsaka is one of those who had given up his trade of harvesting tender tree bark in the hope that the project would assist him in other ways.
Now frustrated and gnawed by poverty, he, like many others, has reverted to his old trade.
The Financial Gazette caught up with him recently as he made his way out of a nearby forest.
As he leaned against a contorted tree to afford us a little chat, same sticky sap from the enormous tree dripped on the old man’s clothes.
“When this programme was introduced to us, everyone was enthusiastic and hopeful, but everything is upside down now. We have no choice, but to return back to our old way of life,” he said through a volunteer translator.
He heaved a tired sigh and continued: “We have not seen any money being given out ever since the programme began two years ago. We have been very patient for no benefit.”
He did not ask for assistance as he suddenly lifted up his load and trudged off down the road without saying anything further.
The failure of the REDD+ project has partly been blamed on corruption in local authorities and general lack of understanding of the project along the entire chain.
For example, Binga Rural District Council (RDC) last year allegedly failed to account for US$109 000 of the REDD+ money raised from the sale of carbon credits.
The situation has brewed tension as councillors accuse management of misappropriating the money.
“After realising that nothing was going on in terms of the agreed projects, we made an inquiry and discovered that council had been given US$109 000 earmarked for it, but now only US$3 400 remains in the account. The rest cannot be accounted for. So we have resolved that the books be audited so that we see what happened,” said Elmon Mudenda, chairman of the Binga RDC’s environmental committee.
Binga chief executive officer, Joshua Muzamba declined to comment, saying: “I cannot respond to those allegations since I am an employee of council. I will leave it to my employer.”
Carbon Green Africa had also allied with the Hurungwe RDC and local farmers there for the same REDD+ initiative to offer a range of benefits that included carbon dividends and alternative livelihood projects in exchange for protecting forests, and planting trees.
But other powerful forces, with other ideas about resource use and economic priorities, have derailed the project. Politically-connected tobacco farmers, who migrated to the area during the 2000 land reform programme, have decided to instead harvest the forest timber to cure their tobacco.
“Carbon forestry projects, just like previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management, have not been the panacea we had expected because multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers,” said Washington Zhakata, manager of climate change in the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.
Zhakata also said there was a possibility that RDCs could be ripped off by investors.
“RDCs can enter into agreements with private players ill-informed of the deals involved and this leaves them vulnerable to investors, who can easily take advantage of their ignorance, making false promises, while reaping millions and paying very little back the RDCs,” he said.
Environment Africa regional director, Barney Mawire, highlighted yet another complication to the whole issue by indicating that Zimbabwe was finding it difficult to market its dry carbon credits, which means they could be suffering low investor uptake.
“You have to understand that these are voluntary markets which are volatile. We understand that most investors are inclined towards the tropical rainforests in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo which are better stocked,” he said.
Carbon Green Africa chief executive officer, Charles Ndondo, confirmed that they were struggling to find the market for the over three million carbon credits at their disposal.
“We remain hopeful that some of the prospective buyers we have engaged will come through,” he said.
The situation has also not been helped by ructions among stakeholders which have seen the Forestry Commission being completely frozen out, while Environment Africa was forced out soon after it completed the baseline survey on which REDD+ was modelled.
“We pulled out of the programme a long time ago,” said Mawire, refusing to state the reasons for pulling out and referring the Financial Gazette to Ndondo, who was not interested in discussing the issue either.
Forestry Commission spokesperson, Violet Makoto simply said: “We have not spearheaded any REDD+ project.”
As the war of access and control of forests rages on, making climate change mitigation through forestry harder to attain, experts say there is need for more pragmatic approaches if the country is to succeed in its efforts to avoid having its remaining lush forests turn- ed into deserts.
[email protected]