Encroachment of commercial forest saddens Tourism PS
By Abigail Chaponda in Ndola
Thu 18 Feb. 2010, 11:10 CAT
TOURISM, environment and natural resources Permanent Secretary Gladys Kristasfor has said she is saddened at the encroachment levels in commercial forest plantations and forest reserves on the Copperblet.
And Kristasfor has said Zambia Forestry and Forest Industries Corporation (ZAFICO) has
replanted 1,290 hectares of trees out of 1,300 hectares target for the 2009/10 replanting season.
During a media briefing at ZAFFICO headquarters in Ndola on Tuesday, Kristasfor said encroachment in commercial forest plantation and forest reserves was contrary to the provision of the forests Act, Cap 199 of the Laws of Zambia.
She said in order to give ZAFFICO enhanced control on commercial forest plantation, the government would consider to include within the forests Act a forest category of the commercial forest plantation whose control and management would be vested in ZAFFICO through the forestry department.
“We must realise as Zambians that deforestation often leads to increased poverty levels and accelerated degradation. The government will continue to consider degazzetion of forests when necessary and will release excise land to allow legal settlements,” she said.
“We are appealing to our citizens to cooperate with government and the should only settle in legal designated areas. This will help us to have permanence and be able to practice sustainable agriculture and subsequently improve our livelihoods while at the same time deriving benefits from our forests.”
Kristasfor also appealed to saw-millers both small and large to continue improving their processing technology and promote value addition to reduce on wastage during harvesting and processing seasons.
She said the ministry through Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) and other cooperating partners was lobbying for support to ZAFFICO by way of technology development and attract joint ventures so that it could realise maximum benefit and help improve the economy.
She also said that beekeeping at Zambia Forestry College would be revamped through the rehabilitation of the Mwekera beekeeping factory in order to support students training in beekeeping and provision of well -processed bee products.
Labels: FORRESTS, GLADYS KRISTASFOR, ZAFICO
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Malawi to host international indaba on sustainable forest management
By Tusekele Mwanyongo
29 November, 2008 11:50:00
Malawi will from December 2 to 5, 2008 host experts from 10 countries to share the findings of an innovative project that puts social justice and equity at the heart of forest management.
According to Mike Shanahan, Press officer for International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), members of the Forest Governance Learning Group (FGLG) will gather in Zomba from Tuesday to Thursday this week to assess achievements, share effective tactics and plan for a new five-year programme.
FGLG is a groundbreaking initiative of the International Institute for Environment and Development, with country-based teams in Cameroon, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Uganda and Vietnam.
“Each team brings together researchers, policymakers, non-governmental organisations, and representatives from communities and businesses to identify how to manage forests for social and economic benefit in a sustainable way,” says Shanahan, who is based in London, the United Kingdom, adding that it is expected that Malawi's FGLG will share its many success stories with teams from the other nations.
Malawi's FGLG team has been instrumental in showing that charcoal production has a major role to play in development. Their landmark report published this year showed that this is Malawi's most valuable sector after tea and tobacco, but with all 92,800 entrepreneurs involved currently classed as illegal improved policies are needed to make the sector sustainable, he says.
Director of the Centre for Development Management, Bright Sibale, will be hosting the event in collaboration with Malawi's Department of Forestry.
“Malawi's government recognises the role the forestry plays in the country's economic and social development,” says Sibale, noting that yet forestry faces governance challenges and injustices that often originate from beyond the sector.
According to Sibale, the forestry sector is poorly funded, and there are high rates of deforestation due to weak enforcement of land and forest laws. Other problems include unjust farming practices and limited community rights of access and control, he says.
The Director of the Centre for Development Management says it will be important for Malawi to address these issues before we can achieve sustainable economic and social development as outlined in the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy.
“The Forest Governance Learning Group is an ideal mechanism to address these cross-sectoral injustices, which have harmed the forestry sector over the past decade,” he says.
Malawi's FGLG has also been instrumental in assessing the opportunities and constraints facing four further forest enterprise sectors (timber, cane furniture, carving and tree fruit juices) and showed how improved forest governance can benefit communities -- if they are empowered. Their report will be launched at the Zomba meeting.
“Many forest problems boil down to questions of injustice,” says James Mayers, head of the Natural Resources Group at IIED which coordinates the FGLG.
He says more powerful interests manipulate the system at the expense of those who have the rights to access and the abilities to manage forests.
“The Forest Governance Learning Group has shown how these injustices can be worked on. It has even overturned some of them.
“As we meet in Malawi, governments are negotiating a global deal for forest-based climate strategies at the UN summit in Poland. Getting the basic building blocks of good forest governance right has never had more importance,” Mayers says.
Labels: FORRESTS
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Restructuring forestry department
By Eric Chisanga
Tuesday July 01, 2008 [04:00]
Mr Zulu’s letter in the Post of 23 June, 2008 calls for comment. There is no doubt indeed that the department is in urgent need of restructuring in order to spearhead the forestry sector's regain of its lost glory. As a practicing forester for nearly 40 years and now a peasant farmer, I have witnessed the department from being voted the best organised institution at independence, not only in the region, but in the whole Commonwealth to an era of its total loss of direction.
Zambia boasts of being fairly well-endowed with about 60 per cent of forests, but in the last 20 years, the loss of this important resource has been rapid, from a mere 10-30,000 hactares to the current 300-800,000 hactares per year through unplanned settlements and agriculture, mining activities, poor exploitation of both the wood and the none-wood forest products, illegal sales and exports of wood and non-wood forest products, etc
This has greatly and negatively impacted on the water flows of our important rivers and lakes, rainfall, soil fertility, fisheries, wildlife and generally the whole range of biodiversity and created instead potential for hunger, earthquakes, drought, storms, hurricanes, HIV/AIDS, many other diseases and disasters so devastating to contemplate, of which experts have on many occasions lamented on and alluded to.
It is not a mere dream that our future generations may be travelling to other countries and visit museums or artificial habitats to see the wonders of the world which actually existed and came from their mother countries if corrective measures are not made promptly in the sustainable management of our natural resources.
The many benefits that forests have provided to the human race such as human civilisation, food, employment, medicines, clean water, fresh air, peace of mind, carbon sink, recreation, scenery and shelter are so diverse and unlimited . etc
In Zambia, the captured contribution of the forestry sector to GDP has averaged at merely 1-3 per cent over a period of 40 years. This could be much more considering that much of the benefits amounting to over 70 per cent have not accrued to nation’s treasury as is the case in many economies that have grown, based on this resource. However, all these benefits that we take for granted are under pressure and threatened unless all stakeholders, guided by the nation’s leaders, do something about this sad situation.
I hope no one will think Mr Zulu was being emotional and ungrateful, but he should instead be regarded as a patriot who wants to see and leave Zambia a better place.
It is in this regard that I have echoed my brother, Zulu’s sentiments that all impending and pending issues to the development of natural resources in general and forests in particular, arising from technical and institutional challenges in our lovely and peace loving country, need to be addressed without further delay. We have only one Zambia, so precious and delicate let’s protect it from all angles.
Labels: FORRESTS
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Report Finds Corrupt Elite Looting Cambodian Forests
Here is a news announcement from Global Witness. Global Witness "exposes the corrupt exploitation of natural resources and international trade systems, to drive campaigns that end impunity, resource-linked conflict, and human rights and environmental abuses." Global Witness was co-nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for its leading work on ‘conflict diamonds' and awarded the Gleitsman Foundation prize for international activism in 2005.
Cambodia's corrupt political elite is stripping the country of its natural resources, according to a new report published by UK-based NGO Global Witness on June 1, 2007.
The report, ‘Cambodia's Family Trees', reveals for the first time how family members and business associates of the prime minister and other senior officials are illegally destroying Cambodia's forests with complete impunity.
Launched ahead of an international donor-Cambodian government meeting on future aid to Cambodia scheduled for June 19-20, the report calls on the donors to start using their influence more effectively.
"Despite the huge amount of aid flowing into the country, the political culture of corruption and impunity means that Cambodians are still among the world's poorest people," said Global Witness Director Simon Taylor. "When are the donors going to start addressing the asset-stripping, mafioso behaviour of the current regime?"
The report details the activities of Cambodia's most powerful illegal logging syndicate - known as the Seng Keang Company - which is controlled by individuals related to Prime Minister Hun Sen, Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Chan Sarun and Director General of the Forest Administration Ty Sokhun.
This syndicate is the driving force behind a major illegal logging racket in Southeast Asia's largest lowland evergreen forest, Prey Long. Under the guise of a government-mandated rubber plantation, it has illegally logged vast tracts of forest, yielding a timber haul worth more than US$13 million annually. Its targeting of resin trees has damaged the livelihoods of hundreds, if not thousands of families living in the area. As the report shows, leading members of the syndicate are heavily implicated not only in illegal logging, but also in tax evasion, kidnapping, bribery and attempted murder.
Illegal logging in Cambodia not only fills the pockets of the political elite; it also funds the activities of a 6000-strong private army controlled by Hun Sen. The Brigade 70 unit runs a nationwide timber trafficking and smuggling service, catering to prominent tycoons, that generates profits of US$2 million to US$2.75 million per year. A large slice of these profits goes to commander of the prime minister's Bodyguard Unit Lieutenant-General Hing Bun Heang.
Despite evidence of widespread illegal activities and human rights abuses by Cambodia's armed forces, some donors, notably the US, have resumed military assistance to the government.
"If Cambodia's donors want the country's natural resources to be managed in a way which benefits the Cambodian people, then they must confront the high-level corruption which allows groups such as the Seng Keang Company and Brigade 70 to operate," said Taylor. "At a minimum, they must link all non-humanitarian aid to reforms that will make the government more accountable to the country's citizens. They can start by insisting that a credible anti-corruption law - which the government has been stalling for over a decade now - is passed immediately."
"In a few years time, Cambodia will become an oil-producing country," added Taylor. "It is not too late for donors to insist that the government lay the foundations for transparent revenue management. Without this, however, Cambodia's projected oil billions are likely to be siphoned off by corrupt politicians and their cronies."
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Cambodia's Family Trees can be downloaded from http://www.globalwitness.org
Labels: CAMBODIA, CORRUPTION, FORRESTS
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