Challenges
Plunder of Protected Areas
Over a quarter of Uganda’s land area (6.43 million hectares out of 24.1 million total) is a protected area – national parks, forests and game preserves. The economic and cultural worth of this rich store of protected lands is incalculable and gains value every year.
These protected lands support a tourism industry that is our second largest source of foreign exchange, and one of the most important tourist industries in Africa. They provide a sustainable livelihood to communities in and around those areas. More important, these protected areas preserve for future generations a biodiversity envied by other nations and constitute our patrimony to future generations of Ugandans.
Threats to Protected Lands
Yet these protected lands are also under constant threat of encroachment and serious damage by short-sighted economic development projects – with more to come.
Every year new projects surface that would permit minerals mining in even our most cherished parks, such as limestone mining in Queen Elizabeth National Park, oil development and refining in the Kabwoya Wildlife Preserve, clear cutting for a sugarcane plantation in the Mabira Central Forest Reserve, destroying much of the Bugala Island Central Forest Reserve in Lake Victoria for a palm oil plantation, flooding of the heritage Bujagali Falls by a downstream hydroelectric dam on the Victoria Nile, and even a proposed golf course and swimming pool in Murchison Falls National Park.
We suffer from a government mindset that protected lands have little economic value and should remain protected only until someone proposes using it for “economic development.” This triggers a “degazetting,” that is, an official removal of protections – instead of preserving their priceless natural and economic value.
Our leaders must abide by the laws that established protected lands and seek reasonable modifications only after administrative and legislative proceedings openly concluded with the participation of all affected parties.
NAPE declares: Protect our protected lands!
To read documents about the plunder of protected areas, click here for Library.
To read more about NAPE’s action agenda, click here.
