The National Programme for the Massification of the Use of Cooking Gas aims to reduce the use of firewood and coal to protect the environment, but an expert warns that this is not the solution to combat deforestation.
Mozambique loses almost 270,000 hectares of forest every year due to indiscriminate logging. The “National Programme for the Massification of the Use of Cooking Gas” wants to reduce the use of firewood and charcoal in order to protect the environment.
The initiative to bring gas to people’s kitchens is from the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, which is massively selling cookers and cylinders at subsidised prices.
According to the director of the Provincial Infrastructure Service in Manica, Silva Manuel, the programme is having an effect, although he admits that “the mass campaign will take a long time”.
“We want our population to join, as it aims to make it known that we have to choose gas and not coal,” he explains.
The Government has teamed up with the private sector to show communities, especially in rural areas, more sustainable cooking practices, aiming to preserve the environment.
“The population must adhere to the use of cooking gas. It’s very good, because we will avoid cutting down more trees, thus preserving our environment,” says Silva Manuel. “It is better that we use gas, because Mozambique produces gas. We have deposits in Pemba and other provinces, so there is a need for us as Mozambicans to use this gas of ours.”
Edna Rodolfo Zione, a resident of Chimoio, considers that the programme is an asset for the health of the population, since it will “reduce the inhalation of smoke and ash derived from coal and firewood, and gas is part of clean energy”.
However, Edna emphasises that the government must ensure that gas is available at subsidised prices, “so that we continue to use it today and always”.
Rural communities are not to blame
For geographer and environmentalist Félix Alexandre Muzime, the initiative is not a solution to combat deforestation, as this practice cannot be seen as an action of rural communities. The expert blames the interests of forestry operators.
“Operators should take environmentally desirable measures, reforest, reuse waste, we cannot look at felling or eliminating forest, indiscriminate felling of trees only as an action of rural communities,” he says.
“Trees are very important because they conserve carbon. There are several local interventions that, in the aggregate, give climate change, so you have to think globally and act locally,” the geographer argues.
DW
