{"id":4476,"date":"2019-08-09T10:25:54","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T07:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=4476"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:28","slug":"a-wooden-rwanda-for-climate-change-mitigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/08\/09\/a-wooden-rwanda-for-climate-change-mitigation\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018Wooden Rwanda\u2019 For Climate Change Mitigation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Pan Butamire<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethiopians certainly broke a\nclimatic record the other day. On a voluntary basis, they planted 350 million\ntree-seedlings in a single day! It\u2019s a feat that none else has conquered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rwandans, used to being the preserve of swiftly-bagged firsts in diverse areas, should feel a tinge of healthy envy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHealthy\u201d in the sense that\nthey should civilly give Ethiopians their deserved thumbs-up, without\nforgetting that being beaten to that heroic tree-planting exploit is a strong\ncensure on their conscience<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only problem: 350 million\ntrees? Rwanda may be a land of countless hills \u2013 a \u201cthousand hills\u201d is a\nminiaturization manner of speaking, by the way. But accommodating that number\nof trees would be a sure dilemma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A population of 12m; hosting\nrefugees and migrants unwanted elsewhere; habitation units, other buildings in\ntowns, villages; domestic, wild animals; roads, pathways; lakes, rivers, rocks;\nthen addition to existing trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these jostling it out on\n26,338 square-kilometres?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, Rwandans, you\u2019d better\ngive that a pass and do with the little tree-cover you can garner. Yet what an\nenvironment-and-fresh-air good it\u2019d do you, only Mother Nature knows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, fret not; all isn\u2019t\nlost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you put your heads\ntogether and devise ways of getting benefits of large-scale tree-cover in other\nways, maybe you may not benefit from the abundance of the \u201clungs of the earth\u201d\n(the Amazon rainforests). But, for sure, it\u2019d stand you in good stead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s the big deal about\nbeing wooded, you may ask?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, as we learnt in\nelementary Biology classes, plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out\noxygen. And oxygen sustains us all as living things. But little elementary\nknowledge is one thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge of the complex\nphotosynthesis process that produces oxygen is a totally different other.\nCertainly, a mystery to some, like a PhD friend who never saw the inside of a\nScience classroom!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mystery or not, anyway,\nagain, none need fret. All talk about wood and other plants is a lot of hot air\nover little oxygen contribution: a tiny 0.01% for our entire earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A veritable tiny mystery to\nus all that we need to kneel down and worship is a dot of a marine plant known\nas a plankton. It\u2019s a microscopic, single-celled photosynthetic organism that\nlives suspended in water, I am told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These plankton darlings are\nresponsible for the bulk of our vital oxygen. So, for their survival, you\nshould tenderly tend your few freshwater basins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the most important task\nwill be to keep carbon dioxide at bay lest it displaces oxygen, pollutes our\nuniverse and sends all to certain obliteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your wee contribution? Avoid\nburning any oil. A tall order, of course, the way you love your cars, riding\nbuses or hopping onto the nearest motorcycle taxi. Other hurdles: ridding\nyourselves of herbivorous-animal waste, mitigating industrial processes (cement\nmanufacture, etc.) and all forms of fossil fuel combustion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deforestation was an irksome\nhabit you have managed to kick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the next logical thing\nI\u2019ll suggest, dread of all dreads, is a return to \u201cNyakatsi\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before you go for your\nhammer, hear me out! It\u2019s only in a manner of speaking. Still, sit on a chair\nin your home or any other building and seriously look around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the metallic\/plastic\nchair, the cement floor, concrete-and-steel walls, plastic ceiling to iron\nroof, they are deadly carbon dioxide emitters. In short, you are snuggled\ninside a carbon poison-box!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are safe only if your\nchair, floor, walls, kitchen, ceiling, roof, all are wood. Which is not exactly\n\u201cNyakatsi\u201d but remember how wood and grass used to be inseparable partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I say: take the timber\nroute if you want a truly well-protected, friendly environment. Wooden\nbuildings, it\u2019s been scientifically proven, is a solution to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timber structures \u201cwould\nallow us to draw carbon from the air and store it in our homes\u201d, offices,\nsocial halls, stadiums, churches, name it. When these structures are in\nconstruction, the sites won\u2019t only be quiet and clean but the structures will\nalso smell good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take your KICC, for instance.\nIt\u2019d not be an imitation of your culture; it\u2019d be your 21-century-modernity\nculture incarnate. Steel columns and pillars (inkingi) for strength and as\nsupports completely wrapped up in wood but otherwise timber core, walls, floor\nslabs and also those imitative spirals (imbariro) all as wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for height, fret not\neither. I\u2019ve heard of wooden 60-storey skyscrapers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To render it strong and\nrobust, it\u2019ll be built with what I hear is called \u201cengineered wood systems such\nas cross-laminated timber\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then you and every visitor\nwill sit and marvel at this wonder structure that\u2019s lighter by 5%, is cleaner\nand smells good. You can bet that the whole country, nay, the world, will \u2018go\nwood\u2019!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tricky part: where to get\nall that timber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s little sweat.\nConsidering the high demand, everybody, especially \u2018jungle-covered\u2019 neighbors,\nwill learn how to regularly plant and harvest as many trees as possible. After\nall, in old age trees cease to \u2018breathe out\u2019 oxygen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good time to turn them into\nwood that draws carbon from the atmosphere and stores it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Original\narticle<\/a> on The New Times.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Pan Butamire Ethiopians certainly broke a climatic record the other day. On a voluntary basis, they planted 350 million tree-seedlings in a single day! It\u2019s a feat that none else…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}