Human activities destroying pollinators

Lazarus Sauti

Human activities are threatening biodiversity at an extraordinary pace thus affecting the provision of critical ecosystem, including insect pollination.

Forests are being cleared mainly for agriculture, which employs 60-70 percent of the Zimbabwean population, and contributes to about 40 percent of total export earnings.

The Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe (FCZ) is saying the country lost 29.4 percent of its forestry cover between 1990 and 2000, and the national rate of deforestation currently stands at more than 300 000 hectares per annum.

Approximately, 15 percent is attributable to tobacco production activities, according to the commission.

A recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) also shows that the world’s tropical forests are being reduced at a rapid rate due to human activities, with the figure of decline pegged at 0.8 percent of deforestation per year.

The study further asserted that the problem of deforestation is severe in developing nations such as Zimbabwe where more people depend on wood fuel for cooking, a fact supported by the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MISC) 2014, which indicates that 73.9 percent of the household population in Zimbabwe use solid fuels for cooking, mainly wood (73.4 percent).

Agriculture research technician, Ronald Chimunda, says insect pollinators play a crucial role in terrestrial ecosystems, supporting ecological stability and food security, but human activities such as farming, mining, hunting, housing and wood poaching are damaging the environment as well as decimating pollinators, putting the country at risk of food shortages.

He estimates that Zimbabwe’s maize production dropped by as much as 40 percent in the 2014/15 cropping season due to deforestation and pollinator depletion.

“Thanks to deforestation, poverty and drought, pollinators – a group of species whose members fly, hop and crawl over flowers to allow plants to reproduce – are facing extinction and this is affecting maize production which dropped by as much as 40 percent in the 2014/15 cropping season and forced the government to import more than 200 000 metric tonnes of grain since last year,” Chimunda says.

He adds, “Maize crops are primarily pollinated by the wind, but due to deforestation, pollen grain is now travelling long distances, limiting maize production.”

Breeder, Letwin Mudzori, says pollinators such as bees play a vital role in agriculture production, forestry and climate regulation, but the present pollinator crisis, fuelled by human activities, threatens local food diversity and worsens the problems of hidden hunger in the country.

“In Zimbabwe, as in all countries in the world, major food crops depend on insect pollination,” she says.

“This means the current pollinator crisis is not good at all for the country considering that more than 4.5 million people are in dire need of food aid.”

Pollinators are socially and culturally important as their health is directly linked to our well-being, says Dietician, Frank Makombe.

“Sadly, human activities are shortening our lives as we are losing important sources of vitamins and minerals from pollinated crops due to the disappearance of insect and animal pollinators.”

Environmental researcher, Admire Betera, says the destruction of utility indigenous trees such as the pod mahogany (afzelia quenzensis), which is known as mukamba in Shona is also greatly contributing to the extinction of bees and butterflies as well as other animals like moths, wasps, beetles, birds and bats that are important contributors to pollination.

“Remember, the sweet-scented flowers of the ‘now- endangered’ tree attract a number of important insects,” he adds.

As for ecologist, Edson Nyahwa, forest fires deliberately started by animal poachers, pollution, monoculture agriculture, climate change which can disrupt flowering seasons and the use of systematic herbicides such as Paraquat and Atrazine are major drivers of the destruction of forests and the death of pollinators.

“Forest fires alter the make-up of forests,” he says. “They also open up the forests to invasive species, threaten genetic diversity, over and above obliterating the livelihoods of local communities.”

Pollinators, affirms Diana Chirara, an information scientist, are also threatened by the decline of practices based on indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs) such as traditional farming systems, maintenance of diverse landscapes, and kinship relationships that protect specific pollinators.

“Traditional practices benefit both nature and man, but we are neglecting them; as such, mysterious diseases are wiping out wild bees, which are important pollinators and crucial for agriculture and the environment,” she says. “A strange disease is wiping out African bee colonies in Bulilima District in Matabeleland South Province.”

Chirara, thus, believes that respecting our traditional knowledge systems as well as establishing and maintaining greater diversity of pollinator habitats in agricultural and urban landscapes can effectively save our environment and reduce threats to pollinators.

Ngoni Blessing Chikowe, a smallholder farmer from Mutoko, who is also a firm believer in IKSs, urges the government to support a more diverse agriculture system that depends less on toxic chemicals in order to conserve pollinators.

He believes local communities, with the support of the government, should also embrace the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), which promotes the informed and meaningful involvement of all stakeholders, especially indigenous people and other forest-dependent communities, in preserving the forests and conserve animal and insect pollinators.

“The REDD+ project mainly focuses on poverty reduction as well as biodiversity protection, and indigenous people, as important assets to climate science and practices, should be at the forefront in informing climate solutions that not only preserve our forests, but also help in conserving insect pollinators,” Chikowe says.

The World Wide Fund for Nature, an international organisation working in the field of the wilderness preservation and the reduction of humanity’s footprint on the environment, adds that the REDD+ project, part of the global response to climate change, addresses many of the drivers of deforestation and provide incentives for developing nations like Zimbabwe to protect their forests while safeguarding the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples.

Martha Munyoro of Practical Action says bee-keeping is also effective in discouraging deforestation and protecting pollinators.

“Anyone with a backyard can help to protect insect pollinators such as bees – bellwether for environmental health,” she says, adding: “Bee-keeping is a safe bet as bees require as much vegetation in order to yield the required honey.”

Munyoro adds: “Educating citizens on the important role of bees and other pollinators to our environment is also crucial. Citizens need to see bees and other pollinators as allies rather than their enemies.”

She also says educating local communities on fire management is essential in reducing forest fires which are rampant in most, if not all, forested areas.

“There is also need for communities to adopt clean energy sources as an effective measure to save forests and converse pollinators,” says Munyoro, urging the government to promote bio-energy from oil and fats, sugar and starch crops and even algae to reduce reliance on forests and decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

Securing forest ecosystems as parks and/or protected areas, asserts environmentalist, Peace Sibanda, also proves key to the preservation of plants and pollinators.

Further, he says curbing illegal logging – harvesting, transporting, processing, buying or selling of timber in violation of the country’s laws – can save Zimbabwe’s pristine forests and conserve animal and insect pollinators.

In sync with the Convention on Biological Diversity, adds Mudzori, it is necessary to identify adaptive management practices that minimise negative impacts by humans on pollinators and conserve and restore natural areas necessary to optimise pollinator services in agricultural and other terrestrial ecosystems.

“The government, at every level, and key stakeholders in environmental and agricultural sectors should therefore not only monitor pollinator decline in the country, but assess the economic value of pollination as well as the economic impact of the decline of pollination services,” she says.