The Sunday News
Locadia Mavhudzi, Features Correspondent
WIDE and deep gullies, massive land degradation and extensive soil erosion as a result of perennial cyclones have left Gokwe – Chireya area inaccessible as roads have become impassable and untrafficable which has somehow slowly isolated the people of Gokwe North not only from key social and economic activities but from the rest of the country.
The gullies have been developing so fast over the years due to lack of vegetation turning part of the expansive district into a desert and the cash strapped Gokwe Council has not been quick to respond through reclaiming the gullies that are now threatening homesteads and key infrastructure such as roads and other buildings.
A ray of hope to save the environmental torn district however, flickered after the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), with support from the World-Wide Fund for nature (WWF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) implemented a US$6. 4 million project aimed at addressing environmental challenges in the north-western parts of the country since 2015.
The project is known as the Hwange – Sanyati Biological Corridor Project and it also covered the famous Gokwe gullies with emphasis on more sustainable solutions to combat land degradation key among them being the restoration of Africa’s drylands as the country joins the rest of the world in commemorating desertification and drought day on Thursday with a particular focus on turning degraded land into healthy land.
Drylands generally refer to arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid areas that are home to more than 2 billion people and are key to global food and nutrition security for the whole planet, with research saying up to 44 per cent of the world’s cultivated systems are located in drylands.
Drylands also support important ecosystems ranging from rangelands and grasslands to semi-desert, and host 1.1 billion hectares of forest – more than a quarter of the world’s forest area. Rangelands support 50 per cent of the world’s livestock and are habitats for wildlife, while livestock production and croplands dominate in more arid and dry subhumid areas, respectively.
Further research by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicates that drylands, despite their relative levels of aridity, contain a great variety of biodiversity, with many animal and plant species and habitats found only in drylands and playing a vital role in the livelihoods of many dryland inhabitants.
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, they are also important for climate regulation where total dryland soil organic and inorganic carbon reserves make up 27 per cent and 97 per cent, respectively, of the global soil organic and soil inorganic global carbon reserves.
Climate Change Management Director in the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Mr Washington Zhakata recently said efforts were being put in place to combat desertification and urged local authorities in the Midlands province to incorporate climate change factors in their budgets.
“Climate change poses a risk to development and achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) hence you find that the government has factored that out in the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1). Rural and urban authorities must clearly mainstream their adaptation and mitigation strategies into their budgets. Gokwe and Mberengwa have suffered the worst through agricultural losses and infrastructure damages. It is imperative that new infrastructure should be compatible with climatic changes,” said Mr Zhakata.
The urgent need for rehabilitation of drylands was recently highlighted during the African journalists online training session ahead of the forthcoming Global Landscape Forum (GLF) conference for Africa. The forum explored how restoration can positively contribute to the lives of millions who are threatened by drought, livelihood loss and hunger – and are too often driven to perilous migration.
Sustainable environmental practice advocates have called for the intensification of proactive and conservative measures to reduce the pace of land ruin. Mr Peter Minang, a principal scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), explained that Africa was among the most vulnerable and most affected continents by land degradation, and that about 500 million hectares of land have already been impacted so far.
“Desertification affects around 45% of Africa’s land area; 55% of these areas are at high or very high risk of further degradation, while Africa loses at least 56 billion Euros annually,” he said.
He said land degradation was majorly triggered by the intensification of land use, and that in drylands, land degradation, if unabated, mostly leads to desertification.
Ms Birguy Diallo, a senior project officer with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), stated that the aftermath of food losses is one of the greatest drivers of land degradation in Africa. “Adopt improved farming methods and install water harvesting technologies that can be managed on a small scale. This will improve land ability to hold water for plant growth,” she said.
She also emphasised the need for strengthened science and research for sustainable land management to give farmers incentives to invest in sustainable management practices and the right tools that enable them to restore degraded lands.
“It is also about the right habits and attitudes of the local people. You can plant a billion trees but if you do not have a good sensitisation system, those trees will not grow or they will be cleared again,” she added.
According to a report shared with journalists during the training, approximately 340 million hectares of woody vegetation in Africa’s dryland zones have become degraded through overgrazing, agricultural expansion and overexploitation for fuelwood and timber.
