The minister of state for Fisheries Hon. Hellen Adoa condemned people who have encroached and built permanent structures in wetlands yet they act as breeding centres for fish.
She expressed the concerns while addressing the media at Lake Vic hotel in Entebbe, during the First Global workshop between regional fishing bodies and Basin management organizations.
According to the minister, many rich people have reclaimed wetlands and constructed permanent structures but instead of condemning what she termed as the dangerous act, she said, people praise them for being rich yet they are degrading and spoiling the environment.
“The wetlands have been destroyed, the flooding is increasing every day in the country and Ugandans are not crying about it, instead abusing the government because of relaxed laws governing the wetlands,” the fisheries minister remarked.
“When you go around river Kafu, the water is over flooding and it will take over six months for this water to go away, so we need to wake up as Ugandans and say no to wetland destroyers. Anyone who has built around lake Victoria must be put down if we as a country have to be serious,” she noted.
According to Adoa, wetland encroachers use bribes to pay Authorities as ways into the wetlands. She vowed to work hand in hand with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations to fight the Wetland encroachers.
Antonio Querido the FAO Country Representative highlighted that many African countries have a challenge of climate change which is affecting the Ecosystem in terms of rainfall patterns “but all this has been caused by the destruction of wetlands.”
“We decided to come up with this first-ever global engagement between the regional fishing bodies and basin management organizations to develop a roadmap on how to strengthen the collaboration and better manage the water resources,” he remarked.
Querido also appealed to the public to change their mindset and be mindful of how they can manage the wetland resources by conserving instead of destroying them.
Valerio Crespi the Fishery officer at FAO noted that the workshop’s outcomes will help in strengthening cooperation with organisations and the eight countries which was represented.
Uganda had approximately 30,000km² of wetlands by the year 2000 but this area has since reduced to around 22,500km² implying a 25% loss in the past two decades.
In 2015, the Ministry of Water and Environment estimated that Uganda was losing an average of 5,000 hectares of wetlands per year. This rate of wetland degradation and loss is of great concern, with many ecosystems facing rapid and irreversible changes.
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