The Sunday News
Roberta Katunga, Senior Business Reporter
PLATINUM miner, Mimosa Mining Company, has partnered with other stakeholders in ensuring land degradation as a result of mining activities is reversed through re-greening the environment amid revelations that 60 000 trees are set to be planted during the campaign.
Mimosa executive chairman Mr Winston Chitando said the company has partnered with Friends of the Environment (FOTE) for the seventh edition of the 500 million tree by 2026 Walkathon, dubbed the 2016 Mtshingwe Walkathon.
In an interview, Mr Chitando said ensuring environmental sustainability was important as the company seeks to demonstrate that zero harm to the environment is possible.
“We have partnered with other stakeholders in ensuring environmental sustainability through reversing the loss of environmental resources, in line with the millennium development goal on the environment. The 2016 Walkathon will culminate in the unveiling of Mtshingwe Nursery, a reforestation project located at Mtshingwe Primary School in Zvishavane that we have so proudly supported over the years,” said Mr Chitando.
The Walkathon, according to the organisers will begin in Gweru on 29 November and end at Mimosa Mine on 2 December with a distance of 142 kilometres being covered. Mr Chitando said the unveiling of Mtshingwe Nursery, a greenhouse in Zvishavane run by the local community, will coincide with the National Tree Planting Day on 3 December.
“This nursery is run by the local community on a self-sustaining basis and in ways that support livelihoods as well as promote collaboration by stakeholders to achieve common objectives. Seedlings grown on the nursery are sold to individuals and parties who in-turn have begun building their own orchards, with the result that they not only enhance their income levels but also contribute to saving the environment,” he said.
FOTE Founding Trustee Mr Philip Mataranyika said this year’s Walkathon along the Great Dyke area was significant as the place has become world infamous for land degradation.
“Mining by its nature has a tendency of destabilising the environment so a comprehensive land reclamation programme is required and FOTE already has a fully functional tree seedling nursery in the district to address that need,” said Mr Mataranyika.
Mr Mataranyika said FOTE was targeting to plant
60 000 trees during the four-day walkathon from Gweru to Zvishavane.
He said in order to sustain the cause after the walkathon campaign, FOTE would empower traditional leaders to drive this initiative in their designations.
Mr Mataranyika revealed that eight chiefs in Shurugwi and Zvishavane namely Chief Nhema, Chief Ndanga, Chief Banga, Chief Masunda, Chief Mapanzure, Chief Mafala, Chief Mazvihwa and Chief Wedza will have orchards and plantations of varying sizes created at their homesteads.
“One of the questions we often encounter during the walkathons is how this worthy cause will be sustained after the walkathon campaign has come and gone. FOTE believes that the knowledge of the natural world is not confined to science.
This knowledge centres on traditional leadership knowing the importance of the sustainable exploitation of natural resources that are in one way or the other useful to humankind. The setting up of plantations and orchards at the traditional leaders’ homesteads is FOTE’s deliberate effort to empower the chiefs before the programme can be cascaded to wards and households as well as any community woodlots,” he said.
According to FOTE, plants — particularly trees, are the most abused resources but under the prevailing spell of climate change and global warming, forests deserve protection both now and in future and for different purposes.
