Charcoal: Govt should go the Kenyan way, absorb gas cylinder costs

He said that half of the charcoal produced countrywide is used up in Dar es Salaam, while a big portion is exported  to neighbouring countries, and even as far away as Oman.

All that is believable but it doesn’t solve the issue, for it isn’t an export ban we need but a total ban, and thus the minister ought to address conditions for a total ban on charcoal, its real feasibility.

For one thing, export bans can be circumvented by ‘panya routes’ the moment agents are allowed to cut trees or bushes to make charcoal, in which case effective charcoal control begins with the preparation of the charcoal, by making trees more or less beyond reach.

There is the usual need for building materials, but here trees that are earmarked for harvest, from l special woodlands or elsewhere,, are much easier to mark out, and hence to control.

It is the sort indiscriminate felling of trees wherever one is seen standing that is pushing climate change by desertification. Effective control requires replacement of charcoal as basic fuel.

Strictly speaking this is an exam that we as a country have failed since independence, and it perhaps requires energetic intervention of the president so that we can get some of these things right.

Why is it that we know about coal deposits in Liganga in the southern highlands and responsible authorities since independence have failed to design or import a crushing machine, mix with cow dung, saw pulp and other materials to reduce the burning intensity and make affordable and safe, adapted coal bricks for domestic fuel?

This way the forest cover would still be characterising many regions in the country, but charcoal held sway.

Obtaining adapted bricks for domestic use is not on the table now with the spread of gas use, but if there were entrepreneurs in that direction making available such material at a low cost it would still have a stable market, even a mass market.

But with expanding gas capacity, it is appropriate that most people shift to gas use, as it is basically cheaper than charcoal and safer to use, compared to coal for instance.

They mostly realise that gas is much better but it isn’t a secrete that budgeting to purchase a cylinder and filling it on the spot is not open to so many urban families, and rural ones continue seeking the shrubs and can’t be thinking of gas now.

Despite that there are large budget variations between Kenya and Tanzania, it is a plausible proposition that the government can chalk up costs of obtaining gas cylinders, so that only a portion of costs is met by users or consumers, and the rest is recycled to the gas revenue fund to be settled.

In Kenya the government simply decided that gas cylinders should be given out for free, but some critics will say that households with stable incomes like salaried employees above a certain threshold out to meet their gas cylinders cost.

The formula can be different from our neighbours but we ought to treat the matter with the same urgency, unquestionably.

That is why the minister’s answer on queries relating to charcoal is decidedly insufficient, for all he has done is to throw the ball back to local authorities to decide if in this or that district tree harvesting for making charcoal will still be allowed or not.

The answer with many of them is that environmental degradation has to be tamed, so that vegetation regenerates to a viable extent, and they are decidedly right about that.

We need viable alternatives, and the best way to go is gas by simply making gas cylinders available to everyone without hitches.