DESPITE the numerous forest resources at our disposal as a country, we appear to lack information about best practices to manage impacts of drought in a rapid changing climate. What is needed are future focussed mitigation and then adaptive measures that are aimed at addressing hunger, while at the same time minimising forest damage, from the local point of view. Local forest edible fruits and products provide food supplements and income to respective local communities, fostering food security.
Peter Makwanya
Thousands of people in Zimbabwe earn a living from the income derived from selling wild fruits and plant products. Besides engaging in selling wild fruit products, the relevant fruits also act as a supplementary diet and food varieties for the local communities. As such, wild fruit products reduce the vulnerabilities of local communities and contribute to resilience. What, therefore, needs to be communicated to the local communities, first and foremost is how they can conserve the forest resources and preserve them for future uses in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Gone are the days when the local people used to destroy the parent trees in futile attempts to harvest forest fruits. A sense of community ownership and forest stewardship should be inculcated in the minds of the local communities.
Forests and trees support food security and nutrition in many sustainable ways that are worth implementing. Forests and wild biodiversity nurture nutritionally viable foodstuffs that contribute to the diversity and living standards of local communities. While we get fruits from forest trees, the same forests help to improve the soil and resilience.
Droughts, whether El-Nino induced or climate related ones, have untold negative impacts to the relevant communities affected. When crops fail, then household incomes are eroded, and forest food reserves are not adequate in the homes, and as a result families become malnourished leading to adverse depreciation of health. Some of the advantages that we have or still have as a country include the vast forests inherent throughout the country. These forests are home to a wide range of fruit varieties with vast potentials for their nutrients and edible capacities. It is against the background of climate induced droughts and hunger that local communities can harvest the ripe-ready forest fruits and products without destroying the environment and coming up with forest food-reserves or wild fruit community banks in order to address food security and mitigate hunger. Strategic forest fruits or food reserves in communities is the way to go in this climate challenging 21st century.
Traditional fruit and food conservation methods would have to be utilised and harnessed in order to keep the foodstuffs in a relatively state of freshness and edible for quite some time. Communities possess a great deal of knowledge about their environments and how to manipulate them to the best of their knowledge and understanding so as to meet their requirements. Poor, natural-resource dependent communities in the developing countries are vulnerable to climate change. As such, they need to develop some home based interventions in order to mitigate the climate induced effects of hunger. In order to help cope with negative impacts of anthropogenic climate change, local communities need to employ traditional local and indigenous knowledge best practices to enhance capacity building skills.
Traditional-local and indigenous knowledge (TLIK) includes gender defined knowledge of indigenous plant and animal species, especially drought tolerant and pest resistant varieties, water harvesting techniques, food preservation methods such as fermentation, sun drying, use of herbs, ash, honey and smoke treatments to ensure food sustenance. There are so many local indigenous fruits that come into picture like ‘mazhanje’, ‘matamba’, ‘mauyu (baobabs), ‘hacha/nyii’, ‘matohwe’, ‘chakata’, ‘mapfuura’, while locally based crops include ‘sweet potatoes’, ‘melons’, ‘ mealie cobs’, ‘red-berries’, ‘rapoko’ and sorghum. Vegetable varieties include ‘tsunga’, ‘nyevhe’, ‘munyemba’, ‘muboora’, ‘runinga’, and other related edibles and delicacies such as ‘madora/macimbi’, ‘ishwa’, ‘majuru’ and ‘mushrooms’ just to mention a few. Methods of food preservation to be administered would not allow the wild fruits, products and other related consumables outlined above to be attacked by termites.
After the establishment of the local communities storage and preservation banks, then local and regional markets can be explored for value addition and beneficiation. Some wild leaves and bark residues can be used for treatment purposes as medicines to cure some simple ailments. Also in attempts to employ sustainable food preservation methods and techniques, the ‘empty-plate’ scenario may be implemented. The ‘empty plate’ scenario advocates that people cook and consume only the foodstuffs that they can finish so that they do not have unnecessary left overs, which pollute the environment.
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Also, bio-cultural based-approaches help to protect and revitalise traditional foodstuffs such as those mentioned and highlighted in this discussion, for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Investing in local food conservation techniques help to promote food value chains, crucial in achieving Sustainable Development Goal number 2, of, ‘ending hunger, at the same time achieving food security and improved nutrition as well as promoting sustainable agriculture and resilience. All this is necessary because, according to FAO, a third, by weight, of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted.
