NEMA wants environment officers on land boards

By Alfred Wandera

The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) wants environment officers to be full members of the district land boards in order to curb issuance of land titles in designated wetlands.

NEMA executive director, Dr. Tom Okia Okurut, Monday said district land boards have persistently allocated land and issued titles to private investors in wetlands in total contravention of the existing laws on environment conservation.

“We must put in place a regulation on the district land boards to stop them from dishing out land titles in wetlands because these are key water catchment areas that we must protect lest Uganda trips into a desert.
The encroachment on wetlands by private investors is a big threat to the environment,” Okurut said.

Okurut explained that currently, the district environment officers are ex-officio members of the district land boards, which leaves a gap for the board members to exploit to flout environment laws.

He was speaking Monday during the opening of the two-day national dialogue on National Environment Management Policy (NEMP) at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala.

The dialogue is meant to review the old NEMP that was established in 1994 to include the emerging and new environmental including climate change and e-waste.

Masindi Municipality mayor, Joshua Amanyire Kiiza, reiterated Okurut’s concern saying district land boards have tended to work independent of the existing environment legislations to degrade wetlands.

Okurut also noted that currently, old cars are the major pollutants of the atmospheric environment, hence the need to include in the new policy a regulation on their importation. He explained that old cars emit gases that are not fully combusted hence leading to effects such as cancer to humans.

Fred Onyai, NEMA’s Internal Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, said the 1994 NEMP is old and has never gone through policy review and yet environment has continued to be degraded amidst emerging trends.

Onyai noted that there has also been lack of a communication policy to disseminate information contained in the NEMP, hence leaving most stakeholders unaware of the existing environment regulations.

Okurut explained that performance evaluation was carried out that exposed glaring gaps, hence leading to the process of validating the review of the old policy through regional and sectorial consultations.

“The private sector and the general public have not had their contribution in the existing policy and therefore we have invited them to be among the stakeholders to express their concerns and give proposals and expectations in the new policy,” said Okurut.

Dr. Mathias K. Magunda, the NEMP lead review consultant from Ecosystems Green Consult, said the review took into account global commitments such as the ratified conventions and international development agenda such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

However, Magunda noted that implementation of the 1994 NEMP has faced a myriad of challenges such as rapid deterioration of the quantity and quality of natural resources mainly due to increased pressure from high population growth and poor disposal of both solid and liquid waste.

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