The National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE) is an action organization committed to sustainable solutions to Uganda’s most challenging environmental and economic growth problems. We monitor government actions, conduct research, provide educational materials, develop science-based strategies, organize affected communities, make common cause with other civil society organisations and international organisations, and engage government officials at all levels.
It is an ambitious undertaking, but as lifelong Ugandans we cannot ignore what is happening to our precious homeland. While we stand ready to work with anyone committed to the public interest, we also will not allow powerful political or special interests to intimidate or silence us. We have done so since our founding in 1997.
To read a compilation of our actions, Fourteen Years of NAPE’s Environmental Struggle in Uganda, dated June 2011, click here.
We choose our actions carefully to use our skills and resources most effectively, addressing our most urgent challenges first, and expand our impact by involving like-minded organisations and individuals, and communities in need.
Categories covered here are click to advance:
Here in brief is NAPE’s action agenda, with links for more information:
Few nations will be as seriously affected by climate change as Uganda, but our government’s response has been ineffective and counterproductive. This compelled NAPE to create its own comprehensive strategy and advocate for its adoption. Key elements of this strategy address water stress, mitigation, adaptation, and public awareness and dialogue. To read more, click here.
Market-based carbon trading systems developed by international negotiation have the potential to finance meaningful responses to climate change in Uganda – but only if they result in significant cuts in emissions in the developed world – and increase funding for beneficial mitigation projects in developing nations like Uganda. While developed nations see this as a cost-effective way to mitigate the effects of their carbon emissions, they cannot rely on carbon trading alone. Their emissions must come down, as well. NAPE understands the potential for good in carbon trading, but also the harm it would cause if mismanaged, and we monitor their performance and impacts closely. To read more, click here.
In their natural state, Uganda’s rivers and lakes have sustained life for centuries. However, in recent years government has promoted projects from large dams and factory farms for export crops that degrade biodiversity, pollute our waters, deprive farm and fishing communities of their livelihoods, and violate human rights. NAPE conducts a wide range of action programs to protect Uganda’s rivers and lakes, including hosting the African Rivers Network. To read more, click here.
Few natural resources are more vital to Uganda – or more abused – than our extensive wetlands, some 13 percent of our land area. Undisturbed, they provide clean water, moderate our climate, control urban flooding, and a biodiversity that supports the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families. Despite this, our government promotes wetlands destruction in the name of “economic development,” indifferent to the long-term economic damage. NAPE has an action agenda to protect and revitalize our wetlands. To read more, click here.
With Uganda’s explosive population growth – estimated in July 2011 at 34.5 million – we face a crisis of clean water and sanitation that threatens to undo decades of progress in public health. Even Kampala residents with piped water drink bottled water or boil tap water because of mismanaged water systems, while the vast majority of other Ugandans routinely drink visibly filthy water. The death toll from water-borne illnesses is unacceptably high, yet government budgets for clean water and sanitation are falling – to barely US$2.41 per Ugandan in 2011. NAPE’s clean water and sanitation action agenda is a major priority. To read more, click here.
The rich bounty of Uganda’s once-vast forests sustained human life for centuries. But widespread clear-cutting for firewood, urban sprawl, and large-scale industrial and factory farm projects are denuding forests at a ferocious rate that, if not stopped, will leave Uganda with no forests at all by 2050. NAPE’s action agenda to protect and revitalize our forests includes campaigns to protect them from harmful projects, but also initiatives to replant and revitalize them. To read more, click here.
Uganda’s most important strategic asset – whether for competing in global markets or sustaining rural communities – is our rich biodiversity of plant and animal species, geographic features, water bodies, and climatic zones. Unfortunately, government and private interests see areas of biodiversity as unproductive, good only as candidates for “economic development” projects whose full costs exceed their benefits. NAPE’s action agenda for biodiversity consists of campaigns to protect and regenerate vital areas. To read more, click here.
The recent discovery of oil in Uganda’s Albertine Rift region has set off a historic oil rush. But instead of new wealth and prosperity for our people, it is likelier to be just another “oil curse” that afflicts all other African nations now producing oil. Our government’s mismanagement and corruption so far all but ensure this. NAPE’s action agenda is to produce a better outcome, including hosting the OilWatch Uganda Network. To read more, click here.
Uganda has the potential to produce vast new energy supplies from abundant alternative sources, to help our people improve their quality of life and to strengthen our competitiveness in world markets. However, instead of forging ahead with major geothermal, solar, mini-hydroelectric, and co-generation projects to produce 21st century energy, our government squanders billions of dollars we don’t have on large dam projects that continue to fail. NAPE’s action agenda for alternative energy focuses on projects that can yield sustainable, cost-effective results for generations to come. To read more, click here.
Our most cost-effective and surest new sources of energy for Ugandans are simple and inexpensive energy efficiency solutions to reduce the gross waste of the conventional energy we pay so dearly for today. These solutions include revitalizing our decrepit railroads, high-energy performance standards for new buildings, repairing our broken-down electricity distribution system, efficient charcoal stoves, solar water heating, and energy-saving lighting systems, to name a few. Yet government budgets shortchange such initiatives while lavishing billions of dollars on failed programs. NAPE’s action agenda promotes energy efficiency in various ways. To read more, click here.
Development of Uganda’s considerable mineral resources – such as copper, tin, gold, and cobalt – could help us achieve a more prosperous future if managed sustainably. That has not been our history, and today both illegal and legal mining operations cause serious harm to natural and human communities. NAPE’s action agenda includes campaigns against harmful projects and advocacy for sustainable mining practices for our long-term benefit. To read more, click here.
Wisely managed and used, chemicals contribute greatly to our quality of life and economic competitiveness. Instead, from leather tanneries to farm and industrial chemicals and household products, we are misusing harmful chemicals at an accelerating pace, poisoning our environment and damaging our health. Given the need to raise awareness and curb dangerous practices, NAPE established the Network on Sound Management of Chemicals-Uganda and pursues other initiatives to curb the rising tide of chemical poisons. To read more, click here.
Comprising 87 percent of our population, rural Ugandans have great potential to help solve many of our most serious environmental challenges because of their knowledge and skills learned over the centuries. However, powerful government and private interests treat these vulnerable people as obstacles to their harmful policies and seek to overpower them. NAPE’s Sustainability School is a “school without walls” to train communities to protect their rights and enhance their quality of life, their resilience and prosperity. To read more, click here.
Democracy, Corruption, Accountability
Uganda can overcome its climate change and other environmental challenges only if it can achieve good governance and full public involvement. We are not close to that yet, and are instead held back by rising public corruption, unaccountable and arrogant public officials, and threats and intimidation against those seeking a sustainable Uganda. Civil society organisations like NAPE are leading efforts to overcome these challenges. To read more, click here.
Powerful knowledge, talents and energies reside in Ugandan women, who could add immeasurably to our combined efforts to create a society that is sustainable both environmentally and economically. This may never happen if we cling to outmoded, entrenched gender roles that prevent their full participation in civic and community decision-making. NAPE is committed to an action agenda of gender mainstreaming to achieve women’s full participation in our own organization and throughout Ugandan society. To read more, click here.
Whether a neighborhood in Kampala or a rainforest village or a band of pastoralists, all Ugandans belong to communities much too vulnerable to either natural or human forces that threaten their ways of life and livelihoods. These threats range from climate change-caused water stress to land grabs by government or special interests. NAPE’s action agenda for community resilience includes projects that strengthen their capacity, mobilize public opinion locally and nationwide, and provide them with science-based sustainability knowledge. To read more, click here.
