Getachew Assefa
May, 2000, Stockholm

If there was an event other than the ongoing war and the problem of food crisis that deserved our focus this year, it was the forest fire. It had a wide news coverage in both national and international media. The issues surrounding it would remain to be of national significance for years or perhaps decades to come. This article aims at bringing some aspects of the fire back to our attention .

The merciless fire that engulfed large areas in western and south eastern Ethiopia was put out completely a month ago. But the footprint left behind for us to live with is not something that we can easily erase from the soils of history..

The blaze flared up in 35 different places and was raging for months consuming every entity it came across during its invasion from 71 different directions. Large territory of forest, residential huts, beehives, silos and hundreds of wildlife were among the victims claimed by the fire.

Areas that were under fire include: Jimma; Dincho - Eastern Wollega; Bedele - Illubabor Zone; Bale - Donsho, Dodolla, Madalewa - Abu, Goba, Berebere and Malangatu; Sidamo - Wondogenet; Borona - Bore, Shakiso and Adola; Southern Region - Nech Sar and Ogaden -Jijiga.

The total toll is estimated to be around 100,000 ha of natural and cultivated forest that had trees as old as 300 years. A complete arrest of the fire was possible thanks to a continuous rain that has showered that area on March 31 and April 1, 2000. According to an expert the biodiversity of Ethiopia gets richer as one scans across the country in the West to East direction. It was learned from the same expert in his interview with VOA (apologise for being unable to catch his name from a radio interview) that 10% of the species that are endemic to Ethiopia are found on this same part of the country that has been under fire since October, 1999. This percentage includes 350 big trees of the 800 different plant species the country has. This same forest is also known to harbour more than 13 different animal species along with Mountain Nyala and Red Fox. When the fire was approaching Bale Mountains National Park, one official of the World Wildlife Fund in Addis Ababa was quoted as saying "[International assistance to control the fire ] is critically important because Bale National Park has something like 52% of the indigenous mammal species in Ethiopia."

It is common knowledge that forest has a tremendous role, in addition to the above points, in maintaining both the well-being of the natural environment and that of the economy. Hence, it is possible to put up a long list of merits of keeping a natural forest unimpaired while utilising it with a replenishment rate exceeding the harvesting rate. In fact one finds nothing negative attributable to forest development works.

There are different ways of accounting for the forest loss incurred. One approach is the aforementioned case of assessing the loss in terms of the riches of plant species that has various medicinal and ecological values. In this piece, an attempt to translate the thousands of hectares of forest lost into energy value is found to be worth considering.

In our era, energy is every thing. Every action and reaction people exchange since the dawn of modern civilisation boils down to a vested interest to control a continuous and reliable supply of energy. In the new millennium, energy is more important than ever before. Energy related perspectives are often found attached to the string along which political threats are conveyed from the militarily "have"s to the "havenot"s. What business, if not energy , would possibly drag the big powers into most of the conflicts in every corner of the world?

In light of these points one would be inclined to know the magnitude of the energy value that thinned into air with the forest fire snuffed out with some help from South Africa .

How much forest did we have in the country? How much of it is gone with the fire? What could this loss mean to us? A brief answer to these question would presumably depict the legacy of the conflagration.

The country has an estimated 2.7 million hectares of forest in a total area of 112.713 million hectares. In other words only 2.395% of the country is or was covered with forest at least before the start of the fire .

As indicated above some sources have estimated 100,000 hectares of this already small fraction left is burned down to ashes. Carrying out some calculations based on crude but sound assumptions shows this loss is equivalent to a reduction of 20 million cubic meter or 10 million tons of biomass. This mass of biofuel amounts to 220 billion MJ of energy. But the natural question in looking at this figure is "how large and useful is this value?".

Comparing this amount of energy against the aggregate electricity currently generated in the whole country per annum, it is an energy that could be tapped continuously for about 50 years to come with a business-as-usual consumption and a one-to-one equivalency between heat and electric energy.

Though the recent fire has shot up our misery to a point of climax, our over all environmental problem is by no means only months old. Many historians indicated how the forest coverage in Ethiopia dwindled with time. The recurrent famine that is threatening the livelihood of a major part of the population has its roots on acts less of God than of man.

The problem has long been fanned by winds blowing out of our unhealthy attitudes. The following parable illustrates the consequences of such deadly attitudes.

A legendary town was inhabited by fourteen people. The town was once known for its endowment with the best of natural resources. Having used it continuously for centuries, the inhabitants were left with a small but potentially flourishing part of the resource that, if they would use it, could return back the blessings of the old times of the town. The problem with the resource available, however, was that they had to do whatsoever possible within a limited time to get it regenerating by itself which otherwise decays irreversibly bit by bit. As a positive feature of resources, even the last loaf of the resource, if used properly, is sufficient enough to save and maintain the historic riches of the town.

As time went by and the resource started to decay bit after bit, the inhabitants far from taking any action, begun to blame it on each other. None of them took the initiative to bring their efforts together to utilise the time and resource left to avert a looming disaster. In stead they intensified their "blame it on someone else" campaign. Unfortunately, their campaign did not last long before no one in the town was left to witness the aftermath of the decay of the last lot of this precious resource. The complete decay of the resource was followed by an immediate collapse of all sorts of life in the town.

This behaviour of the inhabitants of this ideal town parallels the attitude of many of us.

It is said Ethiopia had a much better natural forest coverage decades ago. Every one of us in this generation has seen with our naked eyes forest areas vanishing due to our indiscriminate actions. We have had no determination to break this trend through appropriate measures. If there would be an outsider to judge us, all of us would shoulder the curse for we had contributed to the extinction of our resource either being passive when others mismanage it for whatsoever reason or for not planting even a single tree to replace trees fallen. It might be important to present two incidents that would demonstrate the point at hand regarding our problem of keeping passive when actions that affect the environment are undergone.

One was when we were out for a tour around the city of Stockholm in a spring time during my studies in Sweden. After visiting different sites of environmental and historical concern, our guide, a famous Professor of Environmental Geology, led us to an old square in the centre of the city. There, filled with a sense of pride, the professor took us to a spot where a huge tree stands. He was pointing specifically to a fading cut around the lower part of the tree about a meter above the ground. Absorbed to all he had to tell us, we learned that he was one of the "heroes" who rescued this tree from falling down twenty five years ago during site preparation for a subway project. Their "tree-hugging" protest lasted for about twenty four hours until they got a guarantee from authorities that the tree with others surrounding it would be left as it was. Personally, he spent one whole night on this same tree. Here we go- the tree is still standing there with a scar indicating clearly a failed attempt to cut it down .

The second one was an incident I encountered during my career at Bahir Dar Polytechnic Institute(BPTI). It was at a time when we started a new course on Environmental Science. That time was also when I was working in a steering committee set up to establish environmental clubs at regional level.

BPTI campus known for its shady trees is envied by residents of Bahir Dar for having an easing breath of air specially in the warmest afternoons of the town. These typical and indeed enviable feature of BPTI was due to the presence of trees that filled its campus and lie their shades on large part of it. In 1996, when BPIT was in a process of upgrading its status to an engineering college level, the staff had to work intensively on different tasks from developing curriculum to identifying new buildings required for different purposes in the new programme. Taking different on-campus issues such as the need to leave the trees intact the staff indicated possible spots for new construction works within the vast territory of BPTI. To the surprise of the staff, however, decision makers ignored our proposals and no time was spent before site preparation was begun. Sadly, the clearing work started off by cutting down the trees that have been standing majestically there for more than three decades. Lacking the slightest strength to see the trees falling before my eyes, I called an Environmental Protection Unit under the Regional Bureau of Agriculture for a help to protest against such action. The reply I got was a discouraging one. " You may go ahead if you want to! But from our side, there is nothing we can help you with.". Shame on me! I stopped there, satisfied for having done "my best"'. In fact I did not do my best. I could have tried at least to inform students about all that was going on and lead them in shouting to save the trees. Today, unattractive blocks are seen erected in place of these trees.

In how many such instances did we carelessly allow trees to fall down?

The price of our negligence in face of environmental mismanagement is manifesting itself in almost every part of our daily life.

It is reported that soil erosion, triggered by massive deforestation, has already ruined up to half the potential agricultural land in the highlands. As Ethiopia can not feed more than half of its population, which is doubling every 20-25 years, the seriousness of this trend can not be overstated. The famine that has become almost routine in the country is the biggest of the price we are paying for our centuries old irresponsible activities. It will be years before the old picture of "natural beauty" is back into the scene.

At city level, within the last few years we have experienced an increased intensity of heat from the sun. Some of us in Addis joked " This couldn't be from one and the same old sun. There must be an additional sun showing up recently". In fact the local weather at least has been felt much warmer than ever before. The reason being we do not have trees in and around our cities to blanket us from the cruelty of the sun.

The gravity of the problem dictates the need to intervene urgently and persistently to rehabilitate our razed environment.

From the aforementioned problem of unconstructive consciousness, it goes with out saying that primarily there must be a change in attitude before any attempt of mitigating the problem of deforestation.

To win the will of the whole public, we need to get every body visualise the problem in terms of energy or in other words in terms of money. The probability of succeeding in the effort to afforest our country would certainly be higher if every one of us is able to see the economic side of it as well. Countries with forestry making up a major part of their export income are not rare.

One news source had it that more than 100,000 people were deployed to fight the raging fire manually. The spirit that led up to such mass collaboration was consoling though, understandably, controlling the fire empty handed was not as easy. On the contrary, afforestation demands neither high calibre studies nor hi-tech instruments other than acting in masse. Then, what about mobilising the public to afforest the whole area converted into wilderness by our environmentally hostile exercises? Planting trees and due follow-ups are tasks that we can not afford to postpone any more.

A possible domain of target could be campaigning to replace every tree lost to date by planting two new trees. In a bid to implement such ideas fellow countrymen in the Diaspora have a big role to play. Why not spare your vacations in groups devoting yourselves in planting and caring for an acre of trees? What about pooling funds, resources and information packages from our countries of residence for this purpose? What use is it to remain inactive in time of such disaster and still pretend to have concern for the betterment of the country and its people?

A good example in this regard is that of Ethiopian Students Association(ESA) in North America. Their initiative, currently at the level of exchanging ideas, is expected to bear fruit in the near future in involving students going home for vacation in tree planting programmes.

At government level, institutional infrastructure, especially as related to environmental issues, should be strengthened further to co-ordinate and/or facilitate public and private endeavours of afforestation and associated solutions. Evaluation of the nation's ecological heritage that considers its past, current, and foreseeable environmental problems is badly needed from academic and research institutions.

It is not too late to put aside any spirit of failure today and strive to solve the problem at hand. Tomorrow would definitely be too late for taking such actions as was the case with the ideal town in the parable.

We, thus, need to exert a maximum effort to cover our land within a pre-set timeframe starting with creating green patches in our respective localities. Of course, the point of prioritising deforestation as a number one problem by no means undermines the problem of waste management in our cities.

As a final remark, the legacy of the recent fire remains a cause for concern with regard to future environmental welfare and any victory in battle against the problem of food crisis. Provided we stand united and work hard to rehabilitate our environment, there is nothing we can not achieve.

What do you think? Forward me your action oriented ideas for discussion.

God bless our thoughts and efforts.