ACCELERATING GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION MATTER OF URGENCY FOR ZAMBIA.

The Zambia Institute of Environmental Management (ZIEM) has called for comprehensive energy transformation in order to save the wood fuel (energy) and forestry resources.

ZIEM chief executive officer, Morgan Katati has noted that Zambia is rapidly expanding energy use, mainly driven by fossil fuels as seen by the number of filling stations in the country, however the generation of green house gasses from the vehicles, chimney in mines, deforestation and land change use explains the terrible impacts of Climate Change Zambia is experiencing.

“Although global warming, biodiversity loss, and disturbance of the nitrogen-cycle balance and other measures are important in the sustainability of the Earth’s ecosystem, Government need to act now and avoid the ‘business as usual is not an option,” Katati said.

“Government needs to seriously take environmental governance in order to augment policies and practice. At the moment policies in environment and natural resources management has been hanging and fail to create impact on the communities due to lack of structures at community level,” He added.

And Mr. Katati has said that Green economic thinking can unleash the opportunities that will power sustainable economic growth, social progress and environmental stewardship saying there should be complementary strategic objectives as the basis of focus for policy formulation by the government.

“Rather than viewing growth and sustainability as competing goals on economic development, we must see them as complementary and mutually supportive imperatives. This becomes possible when we embrace a low-carbon, resource-efficient, pro-poor economic models in our governance,” He said.

Mr. Katati further advised for a comprehensive national energy transition which he said is critical to this process and technological revolution for a green economy will be fundamentally the way forward.

In a statement issued in Lusaka Mr. Katati noted that the world has recorded growth in population, per capita income, energy and resource use, waste and the production of pollutants (including greenhouse gas emissions) have all increased exponentially since the first industrial revolution with Zambia not an exception.

“Reducing non-renewable energy and resource use, reducing waste and pollutants, and reversing land degradation and biodiversity losses would then seem key to greening the economy.

According to UN World Economic and Social Survey 2011 , About half of the forests Globally that covered the earth are gone, groundwater resources are being depleted and contaminated, enormous reductions in biodiversity have already taken place and, through increased burning of fossil fuels, the stability of the planet’s climate is being threatened by global warming.

The economic, social and environmental dimensions as the three pillars of development and this stresses the importance of inter-generational equity in development Continuation along previously trodden economic growth pathways will further exacerbate the pressures exerted on the world’s resources and natural environment, this developmental approach limited, where livelihoods were no longer sustainable.