By Daniel Itai.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. (News of The South)- French sports-gear manufacturing company, Rossignol, has pledged to plant 25 000 trees in Tanzania.
“Our environmental progress programme requires the Rossignol Group to do better, wherever we can.
We are now embarking on a structured approach aligned with the European objectives for reducing carbon emissions,” said Bruno Cercley, Chairman of the Rossignol Group.
An assessment of global forests by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests that more than 5.86 million hectares of Tanzania’s forests were lost to deforestation and degradation between 2000 and 2015. That represents approximately 10 percent of the country’s forests overall.
“The top three factors causing deforestation are unsustainable charcoal production, shifting cultivation and illegal timber trading.
In the 1990’s charcoal was being sourced from a radius of about 60 kilometers around Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s major urban center, but in the late 90’s we saw that radius rapidly grow to about 300 kilometers,” said Isaac Malugu, World Wildlife Fund’s national coordinator for forests in Tanzania.
In 2002, as part of its environmental strategy, the government requested that every district council plant and care for at least 1.5 million trees every year. However, the rate of reforestation still seriously lags behind the deforestation rate.
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