South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
South Sudanese have been urged to embrace tree planting initiatives as a means to mitigate effects of climate change.
Garang Maguet Garang, founder of Greening South Sudan, an environment advocacy group, said planting trees at home and in public spaces will help restore the degraded land ecosystem.
“My message is we must put strict laws, once you cut down trees you plant. If you cut one, you plant three, and this is everyone’s responsibility,” Garang told The Dawn in an interview on Wednesday in Juba.
Garang warned of rampant illegal felling of trees which is likely to cause environmental degradation in the near future.
“There are a lot of threats for the trees, for timber, especially the teak. People are cutting down teaks but are not planting them, and this is where my concern is,” he said.
Garang said the government needs to protect indigenous trees from extinction, adding that these trees are being felled without people replanting them.
He suggested that the government imposes six month prison sentence for illegal loggers in order to curb the illegal activities.
“By the time (convicts) go back to the community, they will preach the gospel of tree planting, but not tree cutting,” Garang said.
He said that deforestation is already impacting on agriculture sector such as erratic rains.
“We don’t have a policy that can hold people accountable for what they are doing. But it is also a business,” Garang said.
He said that investing in tree planning now will yield profits in the near future.
“If companies can invest that one alone can create employment and they can also earn a lot of money from trees. This is business that has a lot of demand,” Garang said.
In South Sudan, illegal loggers target the lucrative teak forests.
Teak is a tropical hardwood used for wood carving, furniture, and shipbuilding.
In recent years, much of the world’s teak comes from South Sudan as its trees, planted in the 1940s by British colonists, reached maturity about the same time the country gained independence.
Rising demand for South Sudan’s teak has driven environmentally harmful and unsustainable exploitation of the forests that could otherwise have long-term benefits for South Sudan’s economy.
