Wetlands
Few natural resources are more vital to Uganda – or more abused – than our extensive wetlands, which measured some 13 percent of our land area in 1999. Undisturbed, they provide clean water, moderate our climate, control urban flooding, and sustain a biodiversity that supports the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families.
Despite this, our government tolerates, sometimes even promotes, wetlands destruction in the name of “economic development,” indifferent to the long-term economic damage. As a result, the 13 percent of land area has declined to 11 percent, by a recent estimate. NAPE has an action agenda to protect and revitalize our wetlands.
For centuries the people of Uganda used our wetlands in sustainable ways adapted to the ebb and flow of climatic cycles, allowing their regeneration and availability for future generations. Because of ample rains and undisturbed water bodies and moderate climate, Uganda’s wetlands sustained a rich biodiversity to sustain human life.
But today our wetlands are under intense stresses that impair nature’s ability to filter out pollution, protect flourishing ecosystems, and provide clean water for our growing population. Poisonous algae blooms, turbidity, and dangerous chemicals now enter once-pristine waters – especially Lake Victoria – and damage their ability to sustain nearby communities.
Healthy Wetlands are Critical
If forests can be called the lungs of an ecosystem, wetlands are the kidneys – filtering and capturing pollutants – as well as regulating downstream flooding and replenishing aquifers. They are among our most valuable natural and economic resource.
They help moderate the climate, ensure adequate rainfall, remove wastes and purify water supplies, maintain reliable sources of water by replenishing aquifers, and support abundant fish, wildlife and farm animals. For example, as sources of papyrus, they provide livelihoods to thousands of families who harvest and create useful products from these water-dependent plants.
Rapid Loss of Wetlands
Ironically, in the colonial period before Uganda won its independence in 1962, wetlands were designated reserves to be protected by traditional institutions. After independence and self-rule, our government encouraged draining wetlands for large-scale farming and urban development – successfully destroying much of this centuries-old patrimony. Draining wetlands also became a priority in malaria-eradication campaigns a half-century ago. Our wetlands were gradually becoming degraded wastelands.
One of the starkest examples of destroying a wetland’s effectiveness has been in Kampala’s Nakivubo wetland, which drains runoff from much of the city’s downtown and industrial areas into Murchison Bay of Lake Victoria. Years of encroachment – much of it illegal – then construction of a channel though the wetland now release huge volumes of untreated sewage and industrial wastes into the lake, with no flood control benefit.
Ironically, the government has embraced the Ramsar Convention on wetlands, designating 11 sites for such protection, and enacted fairly comprehensive wetland protections, but such protections have failed because of inadequate funding, political interference and lack of public awareness. Even when designated as a Ramsar site by the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), the Lutembe Bay wetland at Lake Victoria near Entebbe is being swallowed up by new real estate developments and flower farms – with approvals by NEMA.
NAPE Actions
Protecting Uganda’s wetlands from further degradation – and revitalizing abused wetlands – are major NAPE priorities. For example:
Unfortunately, NAPE has had to expend great efforts to stop or improve government initiatives that encroach further into wetlands – and to oppose private projects to fill wetlands for agricultural or urban uses. The government should take the lead to protect wetlands – and has numerous policies in place – but has shown little backbone in implementing them when powerful financial interests are involved.
NAPE has also been pursuing wetlands protection and restoration in the broader context of water users multi-stakeholders dialogs centering first on other civil society organizations and government ministries. Central to this effort is our advocacy for increasing the share of the national budget for water programs in line with Ramsar Convention guidelines.
Having signed the Ramsar Convention in 1988, Uganda is obligated to implement its provision, especially the sustainable use concept and reconciling its laws with those provisions – an incomplete process which NAPE is pressing government to accomplish. Even though the government by 2006 designated 11 Ramsar “Wetlands of International Importance” sites totaling about one million acres, NEMA’s failure to protect these wetlands has prompted demands by NAPE for strict enforcement of protections.
We believe that informing and mobilizing affected communities are the best way to preserve wetlands and so have carried out workshops, research, advocacy communications, and community organizing in a bottom-up approach to build a collective voice that government will listen to. This is not without challenges, but has achieved some successes.
