Let us save forests for our children

Today is World Environment Day, an annual event aimed at highlighting and celebrating positive environmental action. This day was first celebrated in 1972, but has grown to become one of the main vehicles used by the United Nations to stimulate environmental awareness. The United Nations Environment Programme’s efforts are geared towards personalising environmental issues, and enabling everyone to realise their responsibility and power to become change agents for sustainable development. In other words, at a personal level, we all have a role to play. As an individual you can organize a neighbourhood clean up exercise, stop using plastic bags, or plant a tree among other activities. The encouraging development is that in Rwanda, all those suggestions from UNEP are actually government policy here. Every last Saturday of the month there is a general cleaning exercise (Umuganda), plastic bags were banned (effectively) and one day every year is dedicated to tree planting. As a member of the East African Community therefore, Rwanda has a lot it can teach fellow member states like Uganda and Kenya where the ban on plastic bags has only remained on paper as the environment continues to be degraded. Now that our own Dr. Sezibera is at the helm of the EAC, my prayer is that he pushes for some of these Rwandan efforts to be made East African. We can for instance have the same day dedicated to planting trees in all the five countries. The theme for this year’s World Environment Day is: Forests: Nature at your service. And India has been chosen to be the global host of World Environment Day 2011. The theme draws attention to the intrinsic link between quality of life and the health of forests and forest ecosystems. The theme also supports the declaration by the United Nations general assembly that 2011 be the International Year of Forests. India is currently having an estimated population of 1.2billion and this creates enormous pressure on the country’s forests. However this is pretty much the same situation in many countries even here in the East African Community. We have had stories of forests under threat in Kenya (Mau), and in Uganda, tree cutting in search of wood fuel and land for extensive farming have seen the forest cover dwindling at a high rate. This augments the need to increase rural electrification and tree planting efforts. A week of activities aimed at raising awareness on environmental issues was kicked off on Friday by students of Green Hills Academy. The students together with the school’s administration, organised as awareness walk from their school to Kimihurura with placards calling on people to protect the environment. The walk by students was very significant because they are the leaders of tomorrow and they need the forests or the environment in general more that the rest of us. A wise man once said that we do not inherit the earth from our fore fathers but that we borrow it from the future generations. Issues like global warming are no longer environmental myths but reality. What all this implies is that if indeed we love our children then we are compelled to look after the environment. We cannot claim to love them yet we are destroying where they will live when we are gone. And when I talk of children I do not only mean human beings. Just the other day a mountain gorilla gave birth to twins. These primates live in forests and so if we still want them to be a major part of Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo’s tourism package then we need to protect the forests where they live. Bird watching which is a new trend in tourism circles is largely dependent of good environmental practices. Birds love forests and wetlands not deserts. We therefore need to conserve forests for our own quality of life as well as that of many other animal species. All the numerous things that we get from forests should also be accessed by our children for generations to come. Forests provide timber, fuel, rubber, paper and medicinal plants. They also help to sustain the quality and availability of fresh air as well as fresh water supplies. Current statistics from UNEP show that 36 million acres of natural forest are lost each year. This shocking statistic begs the question? Will your children get to see forests anywhere other than in photographs? Before you do anything that can lead to deforestation or degradation of forests think about that question or precisely, your children. ssenyonga@gmail.com