shloboe boe
Stephen Mpofu
THAT is the virtuous message to Zimbabweans from the Friends of the Environment Trust (Fote) — a call which clearly underscores the Government’s devolution programme which should see the greening of our country to counteract the vanishing of trees now rapidly taking place as though we citizens are competing to turn our beloved motherland into a desert where life for people and animals becomes a nightmare, as it were.
That Fote has planted 400 million trees since 2022 clearly demonstrates that with unflinching determination fuelled by the love of our country, the target of 500 million trees by 2026 can be achieved.
This supports the view by Mr Kennedy Dube, Nyaradzo Group’s Hwange manager, that the suggested targeted trees tally can be achieved.
What this suggests, in this writer’s view, is that traditional and political leaders in the country should spread the importance of planting and conserving trees in order to sustain an environment conducive to food production as well as water and vegetation conservation for both human beings and animals. These essentials of life do not exist in a desert into which our people are turning our country due to ignorance and hindsight.
Trees play a critical role in the fight against global warming by absorbing and sinking dangerous carbon gases from unmodified factory chimneys, and coal plants, as well as from veld fires which some people use for hunting game.
The gases combine in the higher atmosphere to erode the ozone layer that protects Earth from the sun’s dangerous rays causing global warming and resulting in droughts and food shortages, as currently being experienced in our country.
In these circumstances, widespread education on environmental conservation becomes as important as the very lives that we live, and schools must be encouraged, among other institutions and organisations, to play leading roles in tree planting activities.
Schools in Matabeleland have in the recent past been lauded for their role in tree planting and this behoves all other educational institutions and various organisations to emulate what the Mat-South schools have done, and will no doubt continue to do.
This pen also believes that the devolution funds, should truly devolutionise, or green the countryside, under the leadership of political constituency leaders together with traditional leaders with the country’s top Government leadership overseeing the process for the survival of Zimbabwe’s environment upon which people and wildlife depend, courtesy of our Creator.
In the final analysis, the survival of our country’s environment as well as that of our own lives remains entirely in our hands and on God’s grace if we act responsibly.
Otherwise, there’s no other country to which we can run for refuge if we completely destroy our own country’s environment.
If prizes are awarded as incentives to the best performers in environmental protection, we will no doubt see wonders in Zimbabwe’s environmental conservation and better lives.
So far, kudos, kudos to Fote in its endeavours in milking life giving liquid from the clouds when due
through trees planted.
mbulelo smpofu
