Make a Difference
Challenges
| ZAMBIA! A Beautiful Land with Big Challenges! |
|
VICTORIA FALLS! Largest Waterfall in the World! Mosi-oa-Tunya (the Smoke that Thunders) is 306 feet tall and 5,604 feet wide! The main streams are named, in order from Zimbabwe (west) to Zambia (east): Devil's Cataract (called Leaping Water by some), Main Falls, Rainbow Falls (the highest) and the Eastern Cataract. Follow the link to read more: |
Zambia! Home of spectacular Victoria Falls! A land of gentle temperatures, abundant wildlife and natural resources, the former British colony of Rhodesia was a land populated by rural farmers and urban traders. While much of its land was never particularly fertile, mobile, small-scale farmers could get several years of maize out of a plot before moving on the next field, burning off the forest and planting their maize once again. Most villages were able to survive on their traditional subsistence farming skills, and relied on immediate resources, including wildlife, to make up the shortfall. Colonization brought increased pressures including a growing urban population, a cash economy and a demand for copper - which grew exponentially during two world wars. In the 1970's the price of copper plummeted and Zambia lost over 30% of its economy between 1975 and 1990. During this same period, the population of Zambia skyrocketed from 5 million, to over 7.5 million people. This population boom is still present today as Zambia approaches 13 million people. By the 1980's HIV was hitting Zambia hard; somewhere between 14% and 21% of the overall population of Zambia is HIV positive. The 1980's saw tens of thousands of people die, creating "the missing generation". The average Zambian is now 16 years old, and has a 7th grade education, with a life expectancy of about 39 years. |
|
|
Hunger and Poverty: The Constant Companions
When was the last time you went to bed hungry for lack of food, or had to turn away hungry child with an empty belly? For most of us, missing a meal means either we’re dieting or couldn’t find a drive-through! To truly never know where your next meal is coming from is a desperate thing. To read more about food security in Zambia and its root causes, click here!
|
A HISTORY OF MIS-MANAGEMENT
Throughout the 80’s hungry people living in Luangwa Valley relied heavily on the use of snares to kill wild animals as a substitute for crop production. By exchanging game meat for grain they had failed to grow themselves, rural people managed to get by on very poorly producing farms. Thousands of animals were killed annually, often slow and agonizing deaths; strangled and cut by steel wire. Such exotic and charismatic species as the lion, wild dog, kudu and roan were especially vulnerable to this horrific fate. |
|
Snaring became widespread in the Luangwa Valley and conventional efforts to police against it failed. Poaching with snares became a silent killer of wildlife, and its detection by wildlife police officers became almost impossible. With so many people relying on snaring to meet their food security needs, conventional law enforcement was doomed from the beginning. |
Coming Soon: the latest report on Food Security in Zambia |
|
|
Thousands of snares recovered by COMACO Destructive Practices: The wrong response The cries of the hungry child drove Isaac into the forest to look for meat and food. Hundreds like Isaac unknowingly still whittle away at the resources of the Luangwa Valley, poaching its wildlife and charcoaling it’s forests for cash to trade for basic food like maize. To read more about the destruction of Luangwa Valley, and COMACO’s response, click here! |
The 1990’s saw large-scale agricultural out-grower schemes owned by multi-national companies, who found a ready workforce of poor farmers in the valley to grow cotton and tobacco. This agribusiness briefly flourished, unfettered by any kind of controls. The use of broad, toxic pesticides accelerated as did the rate of land clearing. Illegal settlements have penetrated deeply into the Luangwa Valley's protected national forest network in search of more fertile soils to grow cotton. Prime farm land is exhausted after 4 to 5 years of growing cotton, driving farmers to open new farm plots on hilly slopes where gully erosion and downriver effects of flooding are the result. This causes a erosion via run-off of rainwater needed to replenished ground water reservoirs. |
Cotton grown for cash crops depletes poorly managed soil and displaces food crops used for sustaining family needs. |
|
With most of Zambia's grain mills located in towns many kilometers away from small-scale farmers, markets to reward crop production instead of poaching and other destructive practices may as well be non-existent. To read about the effect of poor market development on Zambia's rural farmers, click here! |
The final insult to the Valley has been the increasing urban need for energy. Plans for the rural electrification of Zambia have staggered to a halt, while electricity costs have skyrocketed. Zambians throughout the country, desperate for a fuel source they can afford, have turned to charcoal as their heating, cooking and light source. More and more of Zambia's forest land is being clear-cut and burned by the illegal charcoaling industry, with little to no interference from local authorities. The sight of charcoal heading for market is so common that it goes un-noticed. There are charcoal sales along every roadside with no fear of arrest. |
|
|
Charcoal truck on its way to Lusaka: A common road hazard.
|
Where are we now? |
|
