Page 34 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

32 local voices, local choices
feedback cycle can be when young people are inspired. “When I grew up as a child,” he explains, “I was so passionate about agriculture because I came from a farming family. When I met Jane and when I started with Roots & Shoots, it changed my way of thinking about our resources. I was more inspired by crops and the land, the health of the soil, the micro- organisms. Before this, I never thought of the forest and its connections with rain, moderating climate, or as a habitat for fauna. I never actually thought of wildlife at all, particularly the chimpanzees and their need for an ecosystem with connected dispersal areas like forested corridors.”
Japhet goes on to list all the other environmental issues he’d never thought about while growing up: “I never thought of the common resource use conflict between the people and the wildlife, resources like water. I never thought of human encroachment as an issue, agriculture as an issue, the demography or population increase as an issue. I also didn’t think about how socioeconomic activities could be positive or negative. When I was inspired in conservation, these are all the aspects I began to realize as critical for sustainability for both humans and the environ- ment. When I studied wildlife, I was largely focused on zoology, look- ing at the behavior, looking at the microbiology of the animals and their health, anatomy, and physiology. Then I started to learn that it was more than that. It was more of an issue of ecosystem management,” looking at conservation policies but also focusing on economic activities that are more compatible with wildlife conservation.
Through Roots & Shoots, Japhet says, his role has been to inspire and teach, to educate the young generation that they are in control of their own natural resources. “Time is not on their side for complaining about the mistakes and the problems their parents are creating,” he points out.
“For its size, Tanzania is one of the leading countries for deforestation, and in some regions more than 1,000 hectares of forest is gone every single day. We cannot complain while sitting in a meeting. The young people must understand that they are also part of it.”