The Sunday News
Judith Phiri
THE increase in illegal mining activities is heavily scarring the environment while causing problems such as water pollution, deforestation, poor soil fertility and limited access to land for agriculture productivity.
Illegal mining is also the major cause of other environmental problems such as veldfires with a recent environmental report showing that illegal mining contributed to 42,81 percent towards veldfires, land clearing constituted 2,89 percent and arson constituted 28,3 percent.
Commenting on the report, EMA education and publicity manager Ms Amkela Sidange said: “The study showed that we have over 1.5 million illegal miners in the country and over 11 100 hectares is degraded due to illegal mining. Over 1 500km of rivers have been affected by illegal mining. While, areas like Matobo district have lost about 142 livestock between 2017 and 2021 that have fallen into the pits left by illegal miners across the district.”
She said as an environmental agency, they were lobbying for a fiscal consideration from Government so that they could be able to roll out rehabilitation of decommissioned mines in the country. Nationwide, decommissioned and abandoned mine sites are said to be a threat to humans and animals.
“There is need to rehabilitate disused mines, but EMA is affected by legacy issue as most of these mines were abandoned or decommissioned before the enactment of the Environmental Management Act. As an agency we are lobbying for a fiscal consideration from Government so that we are able to roll out rehabilitation programmes of decommissioned mines,” said Ms Sidange.
She said there were ongoing programmes on educating small-scale miners through their structures on the challenges brought about by illegal mining activities. Ms Sidange said these included but were not limited to land degradation that affect tourism with unattractive land, siltation of water bodies, reduced quantity and quality of water sources that affect public health among others.
“Loss of water bodies also affects the micro climate as it then impacts on issues of climate change. The cutting down of trees and clearing land to start mining activities results in loss of carbon sinks which causes more carbon to be emitted into the atmosphere. This then contributes to climate change issues.”
Ms Sidange said to achieve land degradation neutrality, they have broken down and packaged the environmental management plan in a manner understandable to every miner.
“We thought it was best to sort of reduce the volume of that document and simplify it. Now there is just a generic simplified document that we call an environmental management plan which even any miner can study on their own,” she said.
Ms Sidange says EMA tries to reach out to most of the miners, even those who are not registered to try and make them take heed of the dangers of illegal mining to the environment. She said they were working on finding alternatives for mercury so as to improve on issues of sustainable mining practices.
“We are looking at how best we can have mining taking place without harming the environment. We are reaching out to the miners in line with the Minamata Convention on mercury, a multilateral environmental agreement which Zimbabwe is part of, that addresses specific human activities which are contributing to widespread mercury pollution. Much ground has been covered because most of the miners now realize the dangers of mercury as well as appreciating that we have to remove it from the mining sector,” she added.
Mercury is a persistent, bio-accumulative, toxic pollutant. When released into the environment, it accumulates in water laid sediments where it converts into toxic methylmercury and enters the food chain.
Ms Sidange said as they were rolling out most of their programmes, they were aligning them to key components in the National Development Strategy (NDS1) for the betterment of the country and sustainable environmental management.
Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) Matabeleland South chairman of the Small-Scale Miners Association Mr Philemon Mokuele said there was a possibility of rehabilitating unused mines through formalisation of the artisanal and small-scale miners.
“There is need for registration of all formal and informal miners, allocate them workable land for mining and take them for short courses so that they understand the importance of environment and safe methods of mining,” he said.
He said together with non-governmental organizations they managed to form the Zimbabwe Mining Safety Health Environmental Council (ZIMSHEC) meant to educate and train miners on the importance of health, safety and the benefits which comes along with good environmental practices.
Mr Mokuele said ZMF had lined up a number of training workshops for miners throughout the country with relevant stakeholders and they have already started some training in some parts of the country.
Bulawayo based non-profit environmental organisation, Greenhut Trust is working with youths in communities to come up with solutions on how to rehabilitate old unused mines under a programme called Sharpening Community-Level Youth Leaders for Environmental management Excellence (SCYLE).
The programme is meant to address challenges emanating from unsustainable mining activities. In an interview, Greenhut Trust founder and director, Ms Cinderella Ndlovu said they tailormade a programme to capacitate communities through funding from the Frederick Naum Foundation for Freedom.
“We recently carried out the SCYLE programme in Umzingwane district where 25 young people took part. The programme which is being funded by the Frederick Naum Foundation for Freedom is aimed at putting youths at the forefront of lobbying and advocating for environmental issues in the district,” said Ms Ndlovu.
She said they started off with Umzingwane district where there are a lot of mining activities being carried out, a lot of it by illegal miners resulting in deforestation and water pollution. Ms Ndlovu said youths as future leaders had to come up with solutions on how to solve and overcome the unsustainable mining activities.
“The programme is meant to capacitate young people with the various tools that they can use in advocacy to drive the issues of environmental management in their wards. They came up with community led initiatives with regards to environmental management.
“These include tree planting, rehabilitation of abandoned mines, putting in place awareness programmes to enable the youths to engage their communities and reach an understanding on the extent of the damage that illegal mining activities are doing within the area.”
Climate Change Scientist in the Climate Change Management Department in the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality, Mr Lawrence Mashungu said the mining sector was an energy intensive industry.
“The mining sector contributes to various climate change issues through the use of heavy machinery that need to be powered, the type of transport systems that they use, mining equipment that uses a lot of energy to purify the ore among others. These contribute to the issues of climate change because there are a lot of emissions that are being emitted through the mining processes,” said Mr Mashungu.
He said most of the emissions done in mining sector were a result of processes done to extract fossil fuels or burning them, thereby being among the largest sources of carbondioxide emissions. Mr Mashungu said both small-scale and large-scale miners were contributing to the destruction of carbon sinks.
“The trees act as carbon sinks in that they take in carbondioxide so if the trees are destroyed it means that the capacity to absorb carbon dioxide is limited or reduced. With small-scale miners there has been a huge indiscriminate cutting down of trees, forestry degradation which has destroyed carbon sinks,” he said.
He said there was need for organised rehabilitation of the degraded forests or lands to ensure that they were restored.
Climate Change Management Department deputy director, Mr Kudzai Ndidzano said there were other various human actions that caused climate change.
“The use of fossil-based energy such as coal, petrol and diesel products that have a lot of carbon in them. Other operations in industries such as fertilizer manufacture, oxide emissions from cement manufacture, agriculture and forestry works which sometimes through continuous tillage of the soil release carbon into the atmosphere.
“Enteric fermentation in livestock cause methane emissions, veldfires release carbon into the atmosphere, among others. These are some of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming leading to increased effects of climate change.”
