By Henry Mwangonde , The Guardian
TANZANIA’s pledge to restore 5.2 million hectares of forest and landscape by 2030 seems to be an uphill task, the government has declared.
Angellah Kairuki, the Natural Resources and Tourism minister, made this remark when closing the 8th African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) in Dar es Salaam yesterday, noting that this initiative faces challenges like financial constraints and the absence of tools to capture data at landscape level even as deadlines loom.
The country has only managed to restore 2.4m hectares through tree planting and nature regeneration interventions, estimated at 46.3 percent of the breadth of what was pledged in 2018, she stated.
The project is a country-led effort to bring 100m hectares of land all over Africa into restoration by 2030, she stated, pointing out that there are intervention opportunities across landscapes which have not been accommodated.
This was due to financial constraints and the absence of tools to capture data at landscape level, in which case a lot has to be done to protect the remaining ecosystem and restore the degraded land. This portion is the key to climate change mitigation and conservation of biodiversity, she explained.
Climate change has increased the cost of restoration, hindering development efforts of various countries, bringing up the need for financial support and strategies to mitigate climate change effects, she said.
Even with the political will supported by robust policies, Africa faces challenges in the restoration process on account of unpredictable weather and rainfall patterns, while political instability and other impediments undermine the resilience of communities.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan has stressed the drive for Tanzania’s landscape and vegetation restoration, dedicating her birthday this year to tree planting initiatives. This led to a directive where every district is expected to plant 1.5m trees annually, the minister noted.
The minister said such meetings help to showcase and present reflections of opportunities, experiences and challenges that each country faces in the restoration processes.
Prof Dos Santos Silayo, the Tanzania Forestry Services (TFS) commissioner for conservation, said that Tanzania, like many other countries, face challenges related to climate including deforestation, thus requiring collective interventions. Tanzania is a signatory to various agreements aimed at adapting to climate change effects where in 2018 the country pledged 5.16m hectares on the Mainland and about 25,000 hectares in Zanzibar for stable conservation status, he stated.
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