Last Saturday, September 15, Rwanda was presented with an award for her outstanding contribution to Ozone layer protection at the 14th Ordinary Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment in Arusha, Tanzania.
The award is in recognition of the country's outstanding contribution to the protection of the Ozone Layer for generations to come by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Rwanda has, through different measures, prevented use of Ozone depleting substances through research and creating a database on major consumers of Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS).
It is puzzling to observe that there is no mass uprising today on environmental degradation similar to the ones in the West a few years ago on poverty reduction in the developing world. There is need for action if humankind is to avert a man-made environmental apocalypse that threatens our very existence. The consequences of climate change are already here with us. Africa is already suffering from frequent droughts and serious floods. It is estimated that by 2036 Hemingway's snows of Kilimanjaro will have no snow left on its summit!
Recent studies on energy use in Africa indicate that promoting cleaner, more efficient technologies for producing charcoal in Africa can save millions of lives and have significant climate change and development benefits.
The African continent is dependent on both wood and charcoal for cooking and heating homes. It is estimated that in 2000, nearly 470 million tons of wood were consumed in homes in sub-Saharan Africa in the form of firewood and charcoal. This is more wood per capita than is used in any other region in the world.
However, more than 1.6 million people, primarily women and children, die prematurely each year worldwide and nearly half a million of these are from sub-Saharan Africa. These people die from respiratory diseases caused by the pollution from such fires, according to previous studies by researchers from the Universities of California, Berkeley and the Harvard School of Public Health.
The conclusion made in a recent study by the said two Universities is that by 2030, smoke from wood fires used for cooking will cause about 10 million premature deaths among women and children in Africa.
By 2050, according to the same study, smoke from cooking fires will release about 7 billion tons of carbon in the form of greenhouse gases to the environment-that is about 6 per cent of the total expected greenhouses from the continent.
Africa looks to be caught up in an endless cycle of environmental degradation and poverty. What is perhaps needed is a proper international economic order in which more investment would ensure that farmers make better and less destructive use of the land. But first we must have infrastructure, notoriously insufficient, to ensure that our people stay on the land, and to transport crops to the markets.
Africa's climate is so vulnerable and fragile. And yet in today's world, less than a quarter of the world's inhabitants consume three-quarters of its resources-and these are not Africans. The rich world is said to emit half of the planet's carbon dioxide fumes, while Africa emits just 3 per cent. And the rich world continues to chase our scarce resources like fish, timber and minerals with reckless abandon.
The much-hyped Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), of which Rwanda is doing well to attain, cannot be reached unless the developed world invests in the continent so that we can transit to the use of clean charcoal without increasing pollution and decimating our diminishing, in fact vanishing tropical forests.
The many vehicles that ply Africa's dilapidated highways and roads, particularly the 4-WDs, emit gases that are equally hazardous to the health and safety of the people of our continent. Our factories, many of which are located in urban centers, happily add air pollutants, which have negative health and environmental effects when emitted into the atmosphere in large volumes on a continuous basis, as is the case.
We seriously need stringent mechanisms in form of legislation or self-regulation to monitor and control emissions.
The said legislation must involve the investigation of all the factories and where available refineries that produce emissions so that a detailed emissions inventory is established.
The escape route from extreme poverty in Africa must take environmental conservation seriously. But first we must be ready and equipped to implement legislation as well as monitor the new legislation once implemented. In the meantime, I wish to convey my congratulations to the Rwanda Environment and Management Authority for a well deserved award in their fight against environmental degradation as well as the fight against the thinning of the Ozone Layer that protects life on our mother earth!
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