Action Agenda
Forests
For centuries the people of Uganda used forests in sustainable ways adapted to the ebb and flow of climatic cycles, enabling their regeneration and availability for future generations. Because of ample rains, undisturbed water bodies and moderate climate, the land yielded vast forests enabling a rich biodiversity to sustain human life. Wherever there are forests, there is water – and where there is water, there is life.
However, beginning in the 19th century, widespread clear-cutting due to urbanization and large-scale agricultural and public works projects have seriously depleted these invaluable forests – even in our so-called protected forests – at an alarming, accelerating pace.
The worldwide observance of the United Nations 2011 International Year of the forest should raise awareness of the extent of forest loss in Uganda and the necessity to reverse that by adapting sustainable management practices. Instead, Uganda has one of the fastest rates of forest loss in East Africa. We have lost nearly a third of our forest cover since 1990; it has declined from 24 percent of our land area to 17 percent in that time.
If this continues, Uganda will have no forests at all by 2050, the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) concluded in 2005. The same NEMA study noted that the three districts surrounding Kampala City lost 78 percent of their forest cover as a result of sprawling urban development; that loss continues unabated.
Government Enables Deforestation
No longer able to blame colonial rulers since independence in 1962 – and with stable self-rule today – we have nobody to blame but ourselves. It is as if we embraced the worst colonial model as our own to continue the plunder of Africa in the belief that this is a natural, beneficial stage in our development – ignoring the growing irretrievable losses that can foreclose our long-term environmental and economic future.
This is doubly frustrating, given that government signed in 2002 the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a legally binding international agreement obligating Uganda to implement forestry programs using standards of sustainable use and management of biological diversity. Instead, as a 2008 monitoring report found, there was little awareness of CBD biodiversity standards, limited funding, and replanting programs that ignore biodiversity techniques. The report found few assurances that Uganda would meet 2015 goals.
The direct causes are many, but all include a careless focus on short-term economic gain at the expense of long-term sustainability. The direct causes of our deforestation include clear-cutting to create both large factory farms and small plots, excessive logging to produce firewood that is by far our biggest source of household energy, illegal encroachment in rainforests and other protected areas, and rampant urban sprawl.
We must also be alert to the misuse of programs like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) program that can cause more forest loss. For example, the UK-based New Forests Company is establishing tree plantations on 54,000 acres in Uganda, financed in part by selling carbon credits under the auspices of CDM. Its self-described “sustainable and socially responsible forestry” involves manual bush clearing and chemical spraying to eliminate all existing plant life, creating what can only be called “green deserts” of single-species trees, devoid of biodiversity.
Forests have long been called the lungs of a community, converting harmful gases into clean air and oxygen – and new policies to reverse our loss of forests are urgently needed. Properly managed, forests can and should be our most renewable resource.
NAPE Actions
President Museveni stunned Ugandans in August 2011, when he announced that he would give, at no cost, one-fourth of the Mabira National Forest Reserve to the Mehta Group for a sugarcane plantation – destroying 7,100 hectares (over 17,000) of Uganda’s largest rainforest. NAPE immediately helped organize broad opposition, reviving the broad coalition that defeated the same proposal four years earlier.
Instead of recognizing that forests are crucial for economic and environmental sustainability, President Museveni announced he would not listen to scientific evidence provided by NAPE and others, whom he has called “unarmed terrorists” bent on “economic sabotage.” He has proposed a constitutional amendment to deny bail for six months to anyone charged with “economic sabotage.
This latest is only one of numerous times we have been in the forefront of grassroots campaigns to demand an end to the leasing, granting or selling protected forest lands, called “degazetting,” by government officials to the highest bidder. Besides organizing affected communities, NAPE’s research provides compelling scientific evidence about the destructive environmental and economic impacts of biofuels plantations, mining and other projects in sensitive forest areas.
When President Museveni attempted to give away invaluable rainforest land in 2007, NAPE organized large-scale opposition by affected communities. Our campaign succeeded, and the government canceled the project, although heavy-handed police tactics at a demonstration in Kampala resulted in violence and several deaths.
In an attempt to silence NAPE’s leadership of the 2007 Mabira campaign, the government charged Executive Director Frank Muramuzi with unlawful assembly and inciting violence, but three years later dropped all charges.
NAPE was also active in the successful opposition to the government plan to convert three forest reserves on Lake Victoria`s Kalangala islands into corporate-owned palm oil plantations.
Knowing that valuable expertise resides among those who live there, we conducted studies of traditional communities’ forest management practices to include in national policies. These communities have used their traditional environmental practices successfully to ensure that resources will be endure and thus ensure their survival.
The Global Forest Coalition in 2007 selected NAPE as independent country monitor for compliance with the Convention on Biological Diversity’s standards for sustainable use and biological diversity of Uganda’s forests. The monitoring report in 2008 disclosed little progress, or even awareness, by government to meet 2015 goals.
We also advocate measures to replant depleted forests, encourage urban forestry, enforce protections for national forests and parks, expand household use of efficient charcoal cook stoves, develop alternative fuels to firewood, improve construction techniques to reduce wood consumption, and impose stringent growth management rules to minimize urban forest loss.
NAPE is encouraging greater implementation of the REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) Campaign to use proceeds from tradable carbon credits to expand forests in tropical nations and thus mitigate effects of rising greenhouse gases. This involves working closely with our government to develop implementation policies – and deny REDD funds to monoculture plantations of nonnative trees or biofuel plants – earmarking funds instead only for forest projects that restore biodiversity.
