Bush encroachment: Turning a problem into an industry

BUSH encroachment – the densification and rapid spread of native bush and shrub species, resulting in an imbalance of biodiversity – is an acknowledged problem in Namibia.

However, the Namibia Biomass Industry Group (N-Big) believes this problem can be turned into commercial benefit for the country.

According to a recent N-Big statement, this bush encroachment phenomenon is caused by a number of interlinked and potentially compounding factors.

These include overgrazing caused by historically high stocking rates; preference of grazing livestock over browsers; increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which favour growth of bush over grasses; suppression of regular high-intensity fires; prolonged drought periods followed by high rainfall years; and fewer periods of frost.

The latest estimations are that bush encroachment affects up to 45 million hectares of land in Namibia, increasing each year by approximately 3,2%.

“This means that bush encroachment is growing faster than our national population growth,” the statement highlighted.

“Simply stemming this spread of bush encroachment each year would require de-bushing and biomass harvesting activities across 1,4 million hectares per annum but current concerted national de-bushing and harvesting efforts are optimistically estimated at a mere 200 000 hectares per year (0,5 % of the total national potential).”

Bush encroachment seems to be the silent killer of agricultural and associated sectors, thereby substantially suppressing the economy as it is slowly suffocating productive lands, sucking soils dry and driving out the country’s ecological diversity, the statement said.

“If business as usual continues, all of Namibia’s most productive lands will be blanketed in bush, hindering our very important socio-economic contributors, like the beef and small stock production industries, our tourism industry and our game farming and hunting industries,” the group warned. The current level of bush encroachment is causing substantial agricultural productivity losses through the drastic reduction of stocking rates.

This productivity loss alone is estimated to be costing the economy approximately N$2 billion per year. These losses will undoubtedly continue to increase, in line with the spread and worsening of the bush encroachment problem. It is now common for once productive land to be so densely bush – encroached that the movement of livestock and wildlife is impaired.

Ground water recharge is also significantly affected by bush encroachment, the statement added.

THE BUSH OPPORTUNITY

The idea of utilising the woody biomass is a relatively new concept and bears tremendous socio-economic and ecological opportunities.

The charcoal industry is the most developed biomass sector in the country, but it has not always focussed on the use of encroacher bush as its primary feedstock. However, lately, charcoal production is being used as a means of bush control and it has been successful in that it provides cost recovery for the de-bushing efforts.

Nonetheless, not all of Namibia’s biomass can be converted into charcoal, and therefore new ways of commercialising the resource should be pursued.

The enormous potential value that could be unleashed from encroacher bush biomass is a game changer, including the potential for additional tax revenue of an estimated N$750 million annually.

The lowest hanging fruit is energy. Encroacher bush as a feedstock for thermal energy generation is already gaining traction in Namibia.

The Ohorongo Cement plant near Otavi has proved that its thermal energy requirements can be covered almost entirely on encroacher bush wood chips, opening up a market of approximately 80 000 tonnes of wood chips per annum. However, while this market is worth an approximate N$65 million per year in wood chips, it is still going largely unmet.

The Namibia Breweries have also recently switched over to a biomass fuelled boiler, which converts roughly 7 500 tonnes of encroacher bush wood chips per annum into thermal energy for its operations at the Windhoek plant. Both of the above markets are substituting fossil fuels for wood chips, shifting from imported, unsustainable fuels to locally sourced, renewable ones, as well as ensuring that the encroachment problem is being addressed in the process.

Other benefits from fossil fuel substitution include foreign exchange savings, and additional job creation. However, the above capacities are a minute fraction of the potential that Namibia’s encroacher bush biomass holds.

Conversion of biomass into electrical power is the next step and is currently being investigated, publicly and privately. It has already been determined that, in principle, the establishment of a biomass power plant of up to 20 megawatt would be both technically feasible and economically viable.

The potential biomass industry would not only help to secure the existing 200 000 jobs within the agricultural sector through the restoration of Namibia’s rangelands, but it would also directly act to create its own sector-specific jobs.

Furthermore, primary harvesting and production of the biomass would lead to new value chains being developed, such as thermal and chemical processing, biofuels, construction materials, services and research and development, yielding even more socio-economic benefits.

And while it is difficult to project exactly how many new jobs would be created if the biomass industry were to receive its due attention and investment, utilising our vast wood-based biomass resource essentially equates it to an extractive industry. Thus, it would be safe to say that the biomass industry could align itself to other primary extractive, or resource-based industries, such as fishing or mining in the next 10-20 years.

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