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ZambiaProef 06-07-2005 12:45 Pagina 1 WWF Living Documents DGIS-TMF Programme Managing the Miombo Economic Crisis Threatens People and Nature in Zambia’s Copperbelt • Coming home to the forest • Agriculture rides on the back of fuelwood • The strong women of Luanshya • Big influence, big polluter The Kafue River provides water and food for up to 40 percent of Zambia’s population. Any unsustainable use of natural resources in the river’s basin - like the discharge of effluent by the copper mines or the harvesting of wood for charcoal production by thousands of jobless former miners - therefore affects not only local people but also communities downstream. A new WWF project aims to contribute to improved livelihoods in the Kafue Basin through integrated forest, water and land management. ZambiaProef 06-07-2005 12:45 Pagina 2 LIVING DOCUMENTS WWF DGIS-TMF Programme Introduction The biggest charcoal consumer in Southern Africa The collapse of copper prices in the 1990s forced many officers are not in a position to stop the ongoing mines in the Copperbelt to close, leading to a massive loss encroachment of the remaining forest areas. A lack of of jobs. Having no place to go, most former mine workers funds and of transport means that they spend most of their time sitting idly in their offices. settled in nearby rural areas and tried to make a new The desperate economic situation of the living out of the area’s natural resources. The population, in combination with the poorly resourced unsustainable harvesting of wood for charcoal production government departments, has resulted in the and clearing for maize fields is likely to deal a final blow depletion of the Copperbelt’s wet miombo forests at to the Copperbelt’s already severely threatened the alarming rate of 1.9 percent per year (other estimates go as high as a 5 percent annual loss). In woodlands. the period 1990-2001, woodland loss due to deforestation caused by tree harvesting and n inventory of protected forest areas in Zambia’s agricultural expansion was 31 percent, according to a ACopperbelt area makes grim reading. Of the 45 recent WWF study. forest reserves or national forests (covering 19 Escalating demands for wood fuel (and for mining percent of the land area), six can be described as timber) are the main reasons for the drastic changes ‘intact’. Some others are ‘under pressure’, but the in the Copperbelt environment. Harvesting for majority of the Copperbelt’s forest reserves are charcoal in particular drives the dynamics of the described as ‘settled in’, ‘encroached’or ‘depleted’. woodland loss. The charcoal is sold as far field as the The list dates from 1998, and one should assume that capital Lusaka. by now the situation has deteriorated further. Recent data shows that Zambia is the biggest Take for example the Miengwe Reserve in the charcoal consumer in the region; over 40,000 people Masaiti district, according to the list one of the few are engaged in charcoal production on a full-time ‘intact’forest reserves. The Masaiti district will be basis. one of the pilot areas in the new WWF Copperbelt ‘Energy policies in this country fuel the demand project. When asked about the Miengwe Reserve, the for charcoal,’says Fortune Shonhiwa, programme responsible district forestry officer says he is not officer of WWF’s Miombo Ecoregion Conservation aware of the actual situation because he and his men Programme in Southern Africa, ‘electricity is Improved have not been able to go there for some time prohibitively expensive and beyond the reach of the charcoal kilns (although he has been told that the reserve has ordinary household. Thus charcoal production is in use in recently been given out for concession to a logging likely to continue until other energy sources are Malawi company). It is obvious that the Masaiti forest identified. In the absence of this, the best we can do is to try to make the production of charcoal in the Copperbelt more sustainable.’At the same time, she adds, a lobby should be started for a better energy policy in the country that stimulates access of the WWF-CANON / FREDERICK J.WEYERHAEUSER rural poor to electricity, rather than export it. There are several ways to stimulate a more environmentally-friendly charcoal production process, like using selective felling methods, the planting of woodlots or the introduction of improved kilns. Offering the charcoal producers a chance to develop other, more sustainable income-generating activities is also part of a strategy that aims to halt the loss of the Copperbelt’s woodland, before it is completely gone. MANAGING THE MIOMBO • 2 • ECONOMIC CRISIS THREATENS PEOPLE AND NATURE IN ZAMBIA’S COPPERBELT ZambiaProef 06-07-2005 12:45 Pagina 3 LIVING DOCUMENTS WWF DGIS-TMF Programme BUREAU M&O BUREAU Elisabeth (left) and Rose, before the beehives they have placed in the forest. A small grant allowed the women’s cooperative to have these beehives made, but the women still have to find a way to buy the wax to attract the bees. In the meantime, they use the traditional method of collecting honey in fallen trees. The women of Luanshya take the initiative Mutamba Twishala - Let’s not stay behind ‘The mines here closed in 1999. One year later, we ose Mashikinyi and Elisabeth Chishana are chair decided to form a women’s group. The situation became Rand vice-chair of the Women’s Cooperative quite desperate. We had no means to feed the children Luanshya, which also has the name of Mutamba Twishala (‘Let’s not stay behind’). We are sitting on anymore, or to pay for their schools. So we decided to go the ground on some rugs, in between the maize into the forest, to grow maize and vegetables. It was the fields. only way to survive.’ Earlier that day we had met the women, who MANAGING THE MIOMBO • 3 • ECONOMIC CRISIS THREATENS PEOPLE AND NATURE IN ZAMBIA’S COPPERBELT ZambiaProef 06-07-2005 12:45 Pagina 4 LIVING DOCUMENTS WWF DGIS-TMF Programme BUREAU M&O BUREAU offered to show us the fields in the Muwa forest fields and produce charcoal. This forest is close to the which they had established in the past years. To reach Kafue river. Further cutting will have a severe impact them, we needed to pass the mine area. Of the four on the water catchment area.’ mines that once operated here, only one is still Indeed we see many maize fields, on both sides of working. All around, over a wide area, old mine the way. We stop at a small house to try to talk to the installations can be seen, all of them rusty and inhabitants, but nobody is there. ‘These people must neglected. The canteen has been closed. The hospital have fled into the forest when they saw us approach’, was taken over by the government, and the quality of says Rose. ‘People live in fear of the mine owners, service has drastically gone down. There are several who still own all land. They do not allow people to dumpsites; in between them are compounds where cultivate it. So people are forced to go into the forest, former miners still live. There are many people on which is not allowed either.’ the streets, walking and talking. There is not much When the women of Mutamba Twishala decided else they can do. The mood is resigned. ‘Many of that they too would go into the forest, they told them accepted the offers of the mine company nobody about their plans. But nevertheless some several years ago and bought their houses’, explains people holding official functions like the secretary at Elisabeth, who also lives in a compound. ‘Now they the rural district council and the representative of a cannot go anywhere. They have houses but no jobs.’ traditional chief, discovered their plans and asked for After passing a security post (the guards search money in return for permits. ‘Afterwards it turned out our car thoroughly), we leave the mine area and after that all these people were crooks’, tells Rose. ‘Their a while enter Muwa forest. ‘This forest,’explains word was worth nothing. They cheated us. Nobody project officer Elijah Nsonge, ‘is the only one of five gives permits to work in the forest.’ former forest reserves in this area which is still When more and more people went into the forest reasonably intact. The rest have been logged. We fear for logging and the cultivation of fields, the Forest that this will happen to this forest too. There is lots of Department came into action. Rose: ‘They went to encroachments by ex-miners who establish illegal the forest and when they saw the scale of MANAGING THE MIOMBO • 4 • ECONOMIC CRISIS THREATENS PEOPLE AND NATURE IN ZAMBIA’S COPPERBELT ZambiaProef 06-07-2005 12:45 Pagina 5 LIVING DOCUMENTS WWF DGIS-TMF Programme They have already begun placing beehives in the forest, to collect honey. They would like to be given assistance for other activities like growing mushrooms and caterpillars, maybe digging a fish pond, buying a machine for knitting, etc. ‘We’ve talked about these issues within the group and the women are very enthusiastic’, says Rose. ‘The establishment of micro credit facilities would also be great, because at present nobody has any money to invest in any projects.’ While taking a stroll through the maize fields, project officer Elijah has already observed that the women could do a much better job with some advice and some input, like fertiliser. ‘They will have a bad maize harvest’, he said, pointing at the scanty and underdeveloped cobs.

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