Forests are carbon sinks and air filters, therefore need urgent and joint protection by all stakeholders.
Every 13th October, the World comes together to reflect on the state of disaster risk reduction. Uganda’s forest and tree cover has been sharply declining according to the reports dating back to 1990. At a time when Climate Change is ravaging vulnerable communities, causing untold suffering, climate related disasters killing people, posing an existential threat to humanity, deforestation remains a big elephant.
President Yoweri K. Museveni has been issuing Executive Orders; for example, banning charcoal burning in Northern Uganda and banning Timber Export, but up to today none of the two has effectively been implemented. It should be noted that forests are an essential foundation for Uganda’s current and future livelihood, growth and sustainable development. However, many natural forests like Mabira, Zoka and Budongo Forest are under threat. There are widespread agitations about the infamous give away of Bugoma Forest for sugar cane plantation by frontline Climate Activists, Journalists, Environmental Human Rights Defenders-EHRDs and Community leaders under the Save Bugoma Forest Campaign.
Sustainability in managing forests in Uganda has remained a great challenge not only to forest managers but also to policy makers given the ever increasing population which is heavily dependent on the forest for shelter, agriculture and energy production. This has driven high the demand for forest related products like timber, firewood and charcoal. The high demand for forest products, has led to depletion of large chunks of natural forests and woodlands.
By 2009, Uganda’s forest cover was about 18% (3,594463 ha) of the total land area having declined from 24% (4,933,746 ha) in 1990. Uganda’s forest cover in just about 25years declined to about 9% (1.83 million ha), accounting for a loss (of 3 million ha). The latest report from the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) puts the forest cover percentage at 13.5%. We need to plant atleast 100,000 hectares of trees per year to restore the 24% (the pre 1990) forest cover without cutting any other tree going forward!
Uganda’s Constitution restricts the management of forests to the central government therefore the local governments are like volunteers in the control and management of the central forests. Although sharing the resources is provided for in the Forestry policy, there are no guidelines for the forest-benefit sharing and therefore, without a clear framework in place, local leaders fail to administer the management of forests within their locality.
Section 28 of the National Forestry and Tree Planting Act (2003) promotes the collaborative forests management approaches where it states that it shall be in consultation with the local community. However, the collaborative forest management system does not provide the local communities with the opportunity to share power and reasonable benefits other than responsibilities. The Act provides for the registration of private forests with the district land boards unfortunately the law does not offer guidelines providing for the steps and procedures as well as incentives for registering the private forests.
Although the policy encourages the promotion of innovative approaches to community participation in forest management on both government and private forest lands there are no incentives associated with a protectionist approach to forest management, and the destructive practices associated with open access to forest resources.
There are no options for economic, social and cultural incentives to encourage private owners to maintain and manage natural forests. It has also remained difficult to develop capacity of institutions such as local governments, traditional institutions and user groups and to sustainably manage private forests, and the capacity of individuals including forest owners, women and youth groups, to support the management of private forests and integrate trees into farming systems. Suffice to note is that, it is intricate to monitor the protection of private forests, from alien species, pests and diseases.
Article 41 of the 1995 Constitution provides for a right of access to information and whereas Section 91 of the National Forestry and Tree Planting Act 2003 provides for the access of the information on the management of the forests in Uganda, the mechanism to trickle down the information is lacking. The local communities are not well sensitized on their roles therefore the community does not effectively engage in the protection of the forests with in their reach due to lack of information. Another limitation of forestry protection in Uganda is inadequate of resources both financial and personnel. Trained staff and facilities are few or absent in most rural areas. Concentration of effort in forestry extension in Uganda is largely in the hands of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) which are also facing acute funding challenges and a shrinking civic space.
Insecurity of land tenure also causes people to think that engaging in forestry activities such as establishment of woodlots may result in their land being taken away through gazeting as forest reserves.
The length of time over which forestry investments take to yield returns, coupled with high labour requirements are a disincentive to the local population who would prefer shorter-term agricultural investments. Uganda is at the same time faced with a rapidly increasing population, growing at average rate of about 3.4% per annum. This population has to be fed; it is subsistence based and natural resource dependent. Forests and Forest Reserves have thus been seen as areas where ‘free land’ exists to expand farmland. This is associated with the wrong perception of increasing agricultural productivity resulting from poor delivery and/or lack of extension services to farmers.
Encroachment is apparent in nearly all the Forest Reserves in Uganda, a situation that is not bound to stop any soon. In some parts of the country especially on the Mt. Elgon Forest Reserve and parts of Kisoro, Bushenyi and Kabale; population density is so high that land fragmentation has reached its peak with some households owning less than one hectare of arable land. The only available ‘free land’ is in the conservation areas and/or Forest Reserves; farmers thus keep encroaching on the forests. The increasing urbanization and commercialization of agriculture unfortunately remains a big threat to most forestlands.
I strongly recommend that; Local communities should be empowered through Community Development Agreements (CDAs) to enable them hold the deforesters accountable. Project Affected Persons (PAPs) too need timely access to environmental information pursuant to the Access to information Act (2015) and should be actively consulted during the conduct of Environment and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs). Key project operations should be subjected to thorough Environmental Impact Assessment to mitigate ecological degradation and adherence to the same by demanding for regular filing of environmental audits. All citizens should step up and back government’s effort to protect the forests because it is our Constitutional duty and ensure timely devastating biodiversity loss is reversed.
As a country, we need to roll out widespread, robust afforestation and reforestation campaigns through religious, cultural and opinion leaders. Engage millions of young people spread across the country by designating National tree planting days. The challenge of accessibility and affordability of alternative sources of energy is real and should be addressed urgently. Many of our people in the villages and lower urban dwellers cannot afford the high cost of alternative energy sources like solar energy.
The cost of electricity is too high for “omuntu wawansi” and therefore should be addressed by reducing the taxes to significantly cut down the costs in the next budget financial year to enhance affordability. Government too needs to increase funding for NEMA and streamline its enforcement mechanism mainstreaming a Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA), empowering the National Forestry Authority (NFA) and all District Environmental Officers with more human resource.
Time has come for all of us as civil society, youth, government, private sector to jointly work together to reverse this deforestation trend.
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