Battle for the Planet

The Great Rift Valley is a valley formed by two tectonic plates moving apart, leaving behind a lowland region. The Great Rift Valley starts in the northern area of Syria and ends in central Mozambique.

Furthermore, it is part of the Gregory Rift, the eastern side of the East African Rift which climbs from Tanzania up into Ethiopia. The Rift Valley contains spectacular views along with thirty active and semi-active volcanoes and several geysers and hot springs. Volcanic activity, in this region, has produced mountains such as the mighty Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and the Crater Highlands in Tanzania.

The Rift runs through Kenya, from north to south. There are thirty lakes on the Rift Valley such as Lake Tanganyika (in Tanzania), the second deepest on Earth; Lake Victoria, the second largest freshwater lake on Earth; and other lakes such as Lake Turkana, Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru.

This rift is dividing Africa into two and if the geothermal activity and the movement of tectonic plates continues, then in several million years’ time East Africa will break off from the rest of Africa and in the process create a separate landmass.

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For more information check out this article and this video-

This video shows the split has already begun where part of a highway collapsed in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.

In this article,  James Hammond explains the birth of a new ocean and a smaller Africa when the new ocean will split Africa into two and a huge island will enter the Indian Ocean.

 

The name Mozambique comes from an Arab trader, Mussa Bin Bique, who first visited the country around the time of Vasco da Gama. It was July, 2016 and I was moving from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Maputo, Mozambique. All I knew then was that Mozambique was a country somewhere near South Africa. I was excited about the move but I didn’t realise how different our lives would be. We arrived into Maputo via Doha and after exiting the airport gates, it felt like a different world. That was the moment we embarked on perhaps the most unique adventure of our lives.

For two weeks we lived in an apartment atop a hill facing the bay. The hill was green and upon first glance it seemed the hill was coated in grass but it was covered with a thicket of trees. There was a small pool outside the apartment but we didn’t swim in it because it was wintertime and the water was cold. Two weeks later, we moved into the house we would live in for three years. It had a yard and my brother and I played in it for hours and hours with our dog, Nelson.

Then on August 14th, I started class at my new school. That day I made friends with all the boys in my class and we played during recess. It was fun and that afternoon in class, I learned about marine pollution. All of Maputo’s trash ended up in the bay. The bay was already overfished and the remaining fish were dying from lack of clean water. Species were becoming extinct and life for the local fishermen got harder and harder.

A couple of months later, we went on our first safari in Kruger National Park. Kruger National Park is approximately 19,485 square kilometers, measuring larger than Israel. After we got into the safari car, our guide drove and talked about Kruger National Park and what animals we might see. Our journey was slightly bumpy on the unpaved roads. Then we saw our first African elephant. He was chomping on a nearby bush. Our guide told us that these animals were wild and they were not used to the car so we should keep our voices to a minimum as not to disturb the animals.  The safari guide told us about the Big Five. The term was used by hunters in the past as the Big Five were the most dangerous and difficult animals to hunt on foot. The five consisted of the elephant, the rhino, the lion, the leopard and the buffalo. We also saw herds of buffalo, impala (a type of deer), antelope, and a couple of rhinos and giraffes. We saw dazzles of zebra. A group of zebras is called a dazzle because when a lion is trying to hunt them, the zebras run side by side, making it hard to separate one zebra from another. The stripes of the zebra camouflage one another, making them a giant black and white blur.

We then saw our first lions in the wild. They were two of them lying on the ground, dozing. Midway through the safari, we stopped the car and enjoyed drinks and snacks as we watched the beautiful African sunset. After the sunset, we resumed our safari. Slowly dusk began to set but just before it did, we saw a leopard. She darted away as soon as she spotted us. Our guide explained to us how lucky we were to spot all the Big Five in one safari. Because of hunting, animal populations were declining and soon there might not be any left to see.

After we returned, we went back to school and carried on with our lives, visiting beaches and going on more safaris. One of the most spectacular beaches was in Vilanculos, part of the Bazaruto Archipelago. The Bazaruto Archipelago is a group of six islands in the north of Mozambique. We took a flight from Maputo to Vilanculos. As we descended into Vilanculos, the view was magical. The water reflected the pure blue sky. We arrived around 10 am and after unpacking we went down to the beach. The waves crashed down onto the white sand. Even though the colour of the water was beautiful and emerald green, the waves brought a constant stream of plastic bottles, biscuit wrappers and other trash from across the ocean. This was a stark reminder of how irresponsible we are in our daily habits. That night was beautiful. As we walked back from dinner to our room, we watched the picturesque sky. It was a perfect black, unspoiled by light pollution but what amazed me was the amount of stars studded onto the sky. There were millions and millions. There were many grouped together and they covered the whole sky. It was like something out of my imagination. It was beautiful.

The next day we took a speed boat to our resort on Bazaruto. The Anantara resort was great. They had a big pool with water slides and the food was amazing. We joined an ocean safari where we took a large speed boat out and watched two whales,  a mother with her baby. The whales were gigantic. Their backs looked so smooth and they seemed so calm against the beautiful clear blue water. We then ate lunch on the boat and went snorkeling afterwards. It was cold but I saw brightly colored fish and a small squid. We then got back on the boat and we saw the relatively rare dugong, which are a species of dolphin. We also saw a couple of sea turtles. We watched the sunset in a traditional dhow boat.

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During our stay in Mozambique, we also explored other beautiful places like Zambia’s Victoria Falls, the biggest waterfall in the world. We took the Garden Route through South Africa to see some of the prettiest sights on this planet. We visited Mauritius’ emerald green waters, Swaziland’s hilly landscape and Botswana’s semi- arid desert and the adventurous Okavango Delta. There is no lack of beautiful sights in southern Africa. South Africa’s Panorama Route offered stunning views, including God’s Window, heaven on Earth. Cape Town was something else to remember – with  the flat-headed Table Mountain, and Robben Island, the prison in which the famous rights activist and later President, Nelson Mandela was kept for 18 years. The famous Cape of Good Hope is the most southern- western point of Africa with its unbelievable ocean view of where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet.

After spending three years in Africa,  I have come across different people from different backgrounds and all with unique views. I have learned that there are so many things that we have yet to learn, how diverse and magical the world actually is and that we have urgent environmental problems that we have to face together because if we don’t then our Earth will fall apart.

I was incredibly sad to leave behind our dog and our lives but I was equally excited to meet the new adventures that our new home would bring. My time in Mozambique was truly a memorable one.

What is tree-free paper?

Well, tree-free paper is paper that is made of fibers extracted from sources other than trees. It’s not some product created to be environmentally friendly. In fact, before the early 1850s, the fiber used in paper was predominantly extracted from cotton and non-wood plants. A revolution began in the early 1850s, to more tree-based paper, as wood-pulping technologies were vastly improved upon to take advantage of the large forests across the world.

Whether or not we should make the shift to tree-free paper remains a controversial topic even after the argument of environmental damage has been put forth. The controversy lies in the fact that many people think that tree-based paper is a sustainable industry. Facts support this theory but while they are true, such facts fail to tell the whole story. For example, in the US, more trees are regenerated than harvested annually which apparently means the practice of logging to extract fibers from trees is sustainable. That argument cannot be justified for a range of reasons. The trees that are planted every year are predominantly one single species spread out over hundreds of hectares. This is called monoculture farming. The original forests that were cleared to harvest were diverse ecosystems teeming with life. Those diverse forests and all the animals that lived in them were driven out of their land and may have died. Monoculture farming has not allowed those animals to return to the land they once roamed. In monoculture farming, every time the trees are harvested, all the carbon the trees stored is released back into the atmosphere. This as such cannot operate as a carbon sink. According to studies, these monoculture plantations will only store 2.5% of the carbon as natural forests in the long term. Instead of storing carbon in the long term, the harvested trees are made into short-term products such as paper, which is used, thrown away, and left to decompose, creating even more carbon in our atmosphere.

Tree-free paper is a more environmentally friendly alternative to paper. Banana leaves are discarded in most places but since banana leaves contain fiber, paper can be made from it. This is a sustainable practice but only because the paper is a by-product of banana farming. If we began monoculture farming for banana leaves, that would defeat the whole purpose of shifting to tree-free paper altogether. The demand for paper is still high, despite how far technological innovation has come and the most sustainable and environmentally friendly plan for making paper is to use fibers from a range of sources so that monoculture farming practices decline and gradually become absent. Nature can be resilient, and perhaps the only way to get the natural forests we once had is to leave the land alone, undisturbed. In a couple of decades, much of the biodiversity that the original forests held can make a comeback.

Sources: The Economist