The Minister of Land and Environment shared the country’s experience in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the implementation of actions to control deforestation and forest degradation and to increase forest cover and carbon reserves, within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other regional and international commitments.
Minister Ivete Maibaze was speaking on Friday 5th July, representing the Mozambican President, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, at the Meeting of Heads of State and Government as part of the First International Conference on Plantations and Reforestation, taking place from 2nd to 5th July in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.
The Minister referred to the drafting and implementation of various instruments that contribute to achieving this objective, highlighting the National Strategy for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), the aim of which is to promote integrated multisectoral interventions to reduce carbon emissions associated with changes in land use and cover, through the adoption of principles of sustainable and integrated management of natural and planted forest ecosystems.
According to Maibaze, the country has set itself the target of reducing and maintaining the rate of deforestation at around 0.58 percent by 2030, thus avoiding the emission of 170 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
“Recognising the need to reduce the annual rate of deforestation in the country, in 2017 the government introduced the payment for environmental services mechanism on a pilot basis, by supporting the private sector in promoting forest plantations in the landscape of Zambézia Province”.
This REDD+ initiative enabled the disbursement of 6.4 million dollars for emission reductions under the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The current challenge is to extend this initiative to the rest of the country.”
Within the framework of the legal and institutional reform of the forestry sector, Maibaze spoke of the Forestry Policy and its Implementation Strategy and the Forestry Law, now in the regulatory phase, as instruments that promote the revitalisation and restoration of national forest reserves, a contribution to the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100).
“The new legal framework will bring improvements in the management and monitoring of forest resources and in their supervision, enhancing local economic development through nature-based services,” she emphasised.
To improve the value chain for wood from forest plantations with exotic and fast-growing species, she said, a national agro-ecological zoning has been developed, which has identified an area of 7 million hectares with potential for the establishment of forest plantations, and an area of around 770,000 hectares has been requested for forest plantations.
Of this area, around 76,000 hectares have already been occupied. The establishment of forestry and agro-forestry plantations is a viable alternative for supplying forestry products to the population without putting pressure on the native forest and which contributes to reducing the rate of deforestation.
Historical data on deforestation in Mozambique indicates an annual rate of 0.79 percent, equivalent to 267,000 hectares lost annually, representing around 40 million tonnes of greenhouse gases.
The main causes of this phenomenon are associated with shifting agriculture, with a contribution of around 86 per cent of annual deforestation, logging for wood and timber with 13 per cent and the conversion of forests into human settlements with a contribution of 0.1 per cent.
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