By Raymond Baguma

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has blamed developed countries, particularly the United States, for the current phenomenon of global warming. The President was presenting a paper on the energy needs of Africa and climatic change during the European Union-African Summit in the Portuguese capital Lisbon over the weekend.

“Africa’s contribution to the greenhouse gases is only 3%, while the USA alone contributes about 24% of these global greenhouse emissions,” he said.

The emissions were mainly from cars, factories, power-stations, he noted.
“The energy sector alone is responsible for 25% of these gases, and deforestation is responsible for 18% of the global greenhouse gas emissions.”
In the highland areas of Uganda, which used to be cold, an increase of 0.1 degree had been observed, he told the gathering.

“Mosquitoes are invading new areas. The snow-cap on Mount Rwenzori is shrinking, thereby releasing water into River Semliki. The river, in turn, is causing massive erosion.”

Museveni called for the development of renewable clean energy sources in the form of hydro, wind, solar and geo-thermal power. He warned of a climate-induced disaster if profiteering and greed did not stop.

“As far as Africa is concerned, this is modern aggression to which we must find a rational solution,” he said.
“Renewable clean energy must be developed. One thing I would like to recommend to this summit is that profiteering and greed must get out of the equation. Otherwise, disaster may be the outcome.”

Comparing Uganda to the US, he said America used 12,187 kilowatt per person per year, while Uganda consumed a mere 58 kilowatt.

“If you look at the global consumption of electricity per capita, you will see that African countries are among the lowest consumers.”

This forced Africans to resort to destroying trees and vegetation for cooking and lighting, he explained.
Returning to his familiar theme, the President said the greatest causes of environmental degradation in Africa were lack of electricity and primitive agriculture, causing farmers to encroach on the forests to eke out a living.

“The latter is the reverse side of lack of industrialisation and under-development. If Uganda is to stop the destruction of 41 billion cubic metres of wood per annum, we need to be generating an installed capacity of 45,000 Megawatt on top of our present demands for energy.”
Social transformation was one of the factors that could save the environment, he further said.

The President also held a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the venue of the summit.

Museveni also met with the Managing Director of the World Bank, Madam Ngozi, with whom he discussed issues related to the development of Uganda.
The two meetings were attended by finance minister Dr. Ezra Suruma, and the Secretary to the Treasury, Chris Kassami.