Challenges
Uganda’s Disappearing Forests and Biodiversity
Uganda is exceptionally important in terms of biodiversity, with surveys reporting the occurrence of 18,783 species. Although the country covers just 241,551 km and accounts for only 0.18% of the world’s terrestrial and freshwater surface, Uganda harbors 4.6 % of the dragonflies, 6.8% of the butterflies, 7.5% of the mammals, and 10.2% of the bird species globally recognized. Uganda has more species of primates than anywhere else on Earth of similar area.
-- Uganda Biodiversity and Tropical Forest Assessment, U.S.
Agency for International Development (2006)
Our priceless biodiversity is a gift from Uganda’s unique location between the drier savannas of East Africa and moist rainforests of West Africa, along with varieties of dramatic geological features from glacier-topped mountains and Great Rift Valley to the largest tropical freshwater lake in the world and the legendary Nile River. Forests are just as varied and provide a rich bounty of food, fuel, materials and medicines.
Yet all this in imperiled.
The worldwide observance of the United Nations 2011 International Year of the Forest should have raised awareness of the extent of forest loss in Uganda – with it our extraordinary biodiversity – and the necessity to reverse that by adapting sustainable management practices.
Instead, Uganda has lost 40 percent of forest cover since 1990 – falling from 24.1 percent of land area in 1990 to 15.2 percent in 2010, according to the United Nations. More losses occur every day, much of it driven by our voracious consumption of firewood and charcoal, which accounted
Most shocking, at this rate, Uganda will have no forest left by 2050, the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) concluded in 2005.
Government Actions the Problem
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. And there are good forest protection laws and on the books.
Instead, as a 2008 monitoring report (by NAPE) found, there was little awareness of CBD biodiversity standards, limited funding, and replanting programs that ignored biodiversity techniques. The report found few assurances that Uganda would meet 2015 goals.
Deforestation Expands Deserts
In arid zones, once forest cover is destroyed, the land may dry and become inhospitable to new tree growth – leading to loss of topsoil or even deserts where there were none before. As desertification takes over more land once forested, higher temperatures and drier air increases wind erosion of topsoil.
In fact, Africa exports some 50 million tons of airborne soil and dust particles every year to Europe and South America. Without soil, forests cannot grow until the long process of soil creation has been completed – if erosion allows this to happen.
In some tropical areas, forest cover removal may result in hard surface crusts that effectively seal off the soil to water penetration and root growth. In other words, restoring denuded forests can be much more difficult and costly than simply protecting them in the first place.
Fatal Mudslides Growing
Further, when forests in hilly and mountainous areas are cut down, trees can no longer retain heavy rains or hold back soils, and disastrous mud slides can happen. In 2010 on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda, torrential rains caused three mudslides that swept away several villages, killing over 300 people. More fatal mudslides occurred in 2011, with residents near Mount Elgon worried about new cracks growing on the unstable slopes where trees once anchored the soil.
Causes Are Many
The causes of forest loss – and with it, their biodiversity – are many, but all share a short-sighted focus on short-term economic gain at the expense of long-term sustainability. These causes include clear-cutting to create both large factory farms and small farm plots, excessive logging to produce firewood that is by far our biggest household energy source, illegal encroachment into rainforests and other protected areas, and rampant urban sprawl. About the latter, the 2005 NEMA study cited above noted that the three districts surrounding Kampala City lost 78 percent of their forest cover.
False Solutions
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 brush 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 we urgently need new policies to protect this natural process and reverse our loss of forests. Forests also can remain our most renewable economic resource, if sustainably managed.
Stop Government “Degazetting”
We can begin by demanding that our government stop eliminating established protections, a process called “degazetting” – then granting, selling or leasing protected forests to the highest bidder – or simply giving it away for free. In August 2011, President Yoweri Museveni revived a 2007 plan to give for free one fourth of the Mabira National Forest Reserve to clearcut for a huge sugar plantation, no matter that it is a protected area. We must accept as an governing principle that preserved or renewed forests are among our most valuable economic resources.
Other needed measures are replanting depleted forests, encouraging urban forestry, enforcing protections for national forests and parks, expanding household use of efficient charcoal cook stoves, finding alternative fuels to firewood, and stringent urban growth management.
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To read more about NAPE’s action agenda, click here.
