Traditional practices key to environmental conservation

Lazarus Sauti

Forests in Africa are disjointed and ruined due to deforestation, desertification and other factors such as increasing population pressure and since more than 40 groupings in different African countries survive on hunting and gathering, more should be done to protect them.

This means traditional leaders in the continent, since they are the custodians of culture and traditional practices, should make strong calls for the incorporation of traditional practices or methods of conserving the environment as a way of stopping widespread degradation.

Shepherd Zvigadza, Coordinator of the Climate Change Working Group, believes that different African communities have incredible indigenous knowledge that they can use in the conservation of forests and biodiversity.

“Indigenous knowledge helps preserve biodiversity, as well as the forests because these traditional practices can only work if the forest canopy is intact,” said Zvigadza.

In the old, Africans used to conserve forests in a simple way.

Forests were no go areas such that one has to ask for permission to roam in them.

Also culture forbade any member of the African community from unnecessarily cutting down trees, either for firewood or any other purpose.

Accordingly, Africans should go back to these practices and make forests part of communities, where members can have feelings for trees.

For this to be effective, traditional leaders should discourage members of the society from cutting down trees.

Furthermore, people should not be allowed to interfere with taproots or removing entire barks of trees for herbal extractions.

Zvigadza said, “African countries must respond to traditional practices and the needs of their local communities by including traditional practices or indigenous knowledge systems in local, regional and continental climate change adaption strategies.”

This means governments should put in place restraints on activities that cause environmental degradation and creating awareness of various environmental issues is one sure restraint that should be utilised.

Importantly, protection of the environment is needed due to various human activities and since environmental protection is influenced by three interwoven (legislation, ethics and education) factors, each of these factors should play its part in influencing national, regional and continental-level environmental decisions and personal-level environmental values and behaviours.

By mapping and revitalising ancestral practices that often date back thousands of years, new solutions to modern problems such as habitat loss, climate change and deforestation can be found.

Accordingly, countries within and across the great African continent should embrace traditional practices as effective solutions to environmental conservation.