ENVIRONMENT - The African Mirror

Aug

23

2024

Mozambique forest stores huge amounts of carbon: laser technique puts new value on Miombo woodlands

ENVIRONMENT

DRY, tropical forests are often overshadowed in popular and scientific perception by wet and tall rainforests. They are less obviously charismatic or exotic and so may seem less important. But dry tropical forests are vital ecosystems that support the livelihoods of millions of people. One type of dry, tropical forest in Africa is miombo woodland. These forests stretch across more than two million hectares in Africa, including Angola, Tanzania, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Their name comes from the Bemba word (miombo) for the dominant types of trees in the woodland, Brachystegia. Miombo…

Aug

22

2024

By ABEEB BABATUNDE OMOTOSO and ABIODUN OLUSOLA OMOTAYO

Climate change is a challenge for small-scale farmers – how a mix of old and new techniques produced a superior maize harvest in a dry part of South Africa

ENVIRONMENT

New research into rural small-scale farms in South Africa’s North West province has found that climate-smart farming techniques lead to a better maize yield, a more regular supply of food for the farmers, and a wider variety of crops. Small-scale farmers often produce primarily for their own consumption, but many also sell produce in local markets. Because small-scale farmers rely on their crops both to survive and as their only form of income, they are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Some of the climate-smart techniques being successfully used are: planting drought-tolerant maize seeds (a new variety of…

Jul

31

2024

By ELLEN FUNGISAI CHIPANGO and LONG SENG TO

Green energy for all: Zimbabwe will need a new social contract to roll out projects like solar power

ENVIRONMENT

THE Zimbabwean government is racing against time to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7: affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030. However, the race towards green energy is top-down and mostly privatised. New technology is being introduced or sold to individuals or small families, but renewable energy is not being made part of a decent life for the entire community. Sustainable transitions researchers Ellen Fungisai Chipango and Long Seng To have researched ways to use the communal ethic of African ubuntu, expressed as “a person is a person through other persons”, in the rollout of…

Jul

18

2024

By The African Mirror

South Africa’s new environment minister must focus on people, not profits from fossil fuels – climate ecologist

ENVIRONMENT

THERE are huge profits to be made in exploiting South Africa’s natural resources, but these come at a cost to society and the environment. Pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and depletion of natural wealth have a disproportionate impact on the country’s Black and low-income communities and workforce. South Africa needs an environment minister who will stand up for people who are threatened by pollution and the depletion of non-renewable resources. That includes future generations. But Dion George, the new minister, doesn’t inspire hope for change. George, with a background in finance, is one of six leaders of the Democratic Alliance, the…

Jul

18

2024

By MARIA POURNARA and FILIPPOS PROEDROU

Extreme heatwaves highlight climate injustice while Western countries fail to act – here’s how governments can help

ENVIRONMENT

AVERAGE global air temperatures breached 1.5°C for the first time at the start of 2024 — at least five years earlier than predicted. So, while developing countries burn, global climate injustice persists. No high-emitting country has complied with the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement. Governments in the UK and Scotland are exacerbating the crisis by reneging on their climate pledges to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, paving the way for net zero at the latest by 2050. The catastrophic effects of climate breakdown hit people in developing countries the hardest, even though historically, the highest emitters…

Jul

13

2024

By DER RICHARD BRACZKOWSKI, CHRISTOPHER J. O'BRYAN, DUAN BIGGS and ROBYNNE KOTZE

Lions in a Uganda park make a perilous journey across a 1.5km stretch of water: study suggests the drive is to find mates

ENVIRONMENT

DOMESTIC cats will do almost anything to avoid contact with water. Not so for their wild cousins, though. Lions, tigers and jaguars have had to adapt to water and sometimes take the plunge for survival. And this is what we observed on the late evening of 1 February 2024. Our research team in Uganda filmed two male lions swimming in a waterway in the Queen Elizabeth National Park. But what was unusual was the distance and the danger: the lions swam an estimated 1.5km across the Kazinga Channel, which connects two lakes in the park. The channel has a high…

Jul

04

2024

By UZZIAH MUTUMBI and SHEUNESU RUWANZA

Home solar systems in South Africa: more will be installed if households are given loans, free maintenance and security

ENVIRONMENT

SOUTH Africa is making efforts to increase the use of solar photovoltaic energy. But it’s happening at a very slow pace. Solar photovoltaic contributes less than 5% to the country’s energy mix, despite the sunny climate, which is very favourable for solar photovoltaic energy generation. So far, less than 10% of households have started using solar photovoltaic power regularly, though evidence suggests rapid uptake in the last few years with a 349% increase in rooftop solar PV capacity from 983MW in March 2022 to 4412MW in June 2023. South Africa urgently needs to change this. It is highly dependent on…

Jun

27

2024

By ROBERT KRAUSE

Shell didn’t consult communities properly about mining the Wild Coast – but how much legal protection do South Africans have?

ENVIRONMENT

SOUTH Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal recently dismissed an appeal by Shell, Impact Africa and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy to overturn a High Court judgment that halted a seismic survey off the country’s pristine Wild Coast. The High Court found that the right to carry out a seismic survey had been granted to Shell and Impact Africa unlawfully. This was because they had failed to adequately consult the Wild Coast’s affected communities, ignoring the communities’ cultural rights and their use of the land and sea for fishing and generating livelihoods. Environmental law researcher Robert Krause of the…

Jun

19

2024

By MICHELE FRANCIS

World’s oldest termite mounds discovered in South Africa – and they’ve been storing precious carbon for thousands of years

ENVIRONMENT

THE landscape along the Buffels River in South Africa’s Namaqualand region is dotted with thousands of sandy mounds that occupy about 20% of the surface area. These heuweltjies, as the locals call them (the word means “little hills” in Afrikaans), are termite mounds, inhabited by an underground network of tunnels and nests of the southern harvester termite, Microhodotermes viator. I’m part of a group of earth scientists who, in 2021, set out to study why the groundwater in the area, around 530km from Cape Town, is saline. The groundwater salinity seemed to be specifically related to the location of these…

Jun

13

2024

By ANNA PORCUNA-FERRER, LAURA CALVET-MIR and VICTORIA REYES-GARCÍA

Senegal’s remote Bassari people talk about climate change, and how their local knowledge is key to coping strategies

ENVIRONMENT

THE Bassari people, a farming community of about 20,000 people, live in an area between Senegal and Guinea. During French colonial rule, the Bassari lost part of their communal land to a national park and were subjected to poll taxes and forced labour. Senegal achieved independence in 1960 and in 2012 the Bassari area was declared a world heritage site, a change that bolstered small-scale tourism. Today, the Bassari peoples’ main livelihood comes from rainfed smallholder farming, supplemented by activities such as petty trade, crafts, wage labour, artisanal gold mining, and gathering honey and wild edible plants. They have limited…