A new law in Swazi­land that tries to com­bat cli­mate change will also take away the liveli­hoods of a group of peo­ple. Those who sell fire­wood on the road­side will now need to find some­thing else to do as chop­ping down trees will become illegal.

From IPS, writer Man­toe Phakathi tells us about the mis­guided attempt at pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment, while oth­ers are allowed to pol­lute with­out fear of law.

Through the Flora Pro­tec­tion Act, 2001, the Min­is­ter of Tourism and Envi­ron­ment, Mac­ford Sibandze, has threat­ened to take legal action against peo­ple found to be cut­ting down trees for com­mer­cial gain, includ­ing fire­wood vendors.

“Although this law addresses issues of pro­tected plants, we’re also tar­get­ing those peo­ple cut­ting live trees and those har­vest­ing in large quan­ti­ties,” said Sibandze.

Although he observed that fire­wood ven­dors are cut­ting down trees on a very small scale, he said the action is nec­es­sary to pre­vent the prac­tice from spreading.

Sibandze said the crack­down is part of Swaziland’s con­tri­bu­tion to the response to cli­mate change. African coun­tries are said to be con­tribut­ing 18 per­cent of green­house gas emis­sions mainly through deforestation.

“Inas­much as we under­stand that the trees are a part of a liveli­hood for many peo­ple who are poor, we also have to ensure that we har­vest the nat­ural resources in a sus­tain­able man­ner,” said Sibandze. “This applies across the board — whether you’re poor or not.”
…

Thuli Makama, the direc­tor for Yonge Nawe Envi­ron­men­tal Group, argues that what gov­ern­ment has to appre­ci­ate is that the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment is to sus­tain human beings.

“Poverty lev­els are very high and peo­ple are exploit­ing one envi­ron­men­tal resource or another just to earn a liv­ing,” said Makama.

Makama who knows the fire­wood ven­dors well says they are not just irre­spon­si­ble peo­ple but a group with a code of con­duct which they adhere to.

“The prob­lem with our laws, like in most African coun­tries, is that they’re always tar­get­ing the small men,” said Makama. “We can’t be fry­ing sar­dines when we have sharks.”

Makama is bas­ing her argu­ment on the fact that big indus­tries in the coun­try such as SAPPI Usuthu — due to close down at the end of the month — have not been taken to task over pol­lu­tion. The paper milling indus­try has been heav­ily crit­i­cised by envi­ron­men­tal­ists for releas­ing toxic efflu­ent into Usush­wana River which runs across Mat­sapha Indus­trial Site, leav­ing down­stream com­mu­ni­ties with no water to drink.

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