Amin killed our forests

Sep 22, 2015

A decade after Independence, Uganda had a relatively sound environmental record. The 70’s decade saw a decline as statistics indicate that by 1987, Uganda had lost 50 % of its forest cover, including virtually most of its primary forests.

By Mucunguzi Sam

A decade after Independence, Uganda had a relatively sound environmental record.  The 70’s decade saw a decline as statistics indicate that by 1987, Uganda had lost 50 % of its forest cover, including virtually most of its primary forests.

 By 2005, Uganda had lost 26.3 percent of its remaining forest cover, and deforestation continues today at a rate of 2.2 percent per year, mostly due to subsistence farming, cutting for firewood, and encroachment due to population explosion, worsened by weak regulation & conservation measures.

Uganda is home to some of the highest concentrations of biodiversity in Africa. More than 5,000 plant species are found in the country along with 345 mammals, 1,015 birds, 165 reptiles, and 43 amphibians.

Going by the NFA definition of a forest as a type of vegetation dominated by trees most of which at maturity are more than 5m tall and establishes a minimum tree canopy cover of 30% (National Forestry Authority, 2008), including all alpine, tropical high- and medium-altitude forests, woodlands, wetland and riparian forests, plantations and trees, whether on public or private land. Any area to be considered a forest, it should have a minimum tree cover of at least 20% or more and the area, and should not be less than 0.5 hectares in size. In spite the disappearance of Uganda’s Primary Forest, more than 25 percent of the country is under some form of protection. Why then, has the decline in forest cover continued to be steady?

REDD policies were designed to encourage better forest stewardship and to combat climate change. But critics believe it to be a ploy to trade off southern economic prosperity, allowing richer nations to continue to pollute the planet unabated. This is besides the usual argument that such commitments are used to build political momentum behind the appearance of restoring forest to drum up support for new funding agreements – in this case, “creating demand for REDD+.” In the Latter argument both the donors and the recipient groups, be they state or non-state, are culpable

Recent commitments, specifically, the New York Declaration contained little information about how or precisely where the restoration will happen. Ethiopia, the least-forested of the three African nations with less than 30 percent of its land mass covered by trees, committed to restoring 15 million degraded hectares. That’s roughly half of the Horn of Africa country’s current forested landscape.

 

“We currently internationally have no definition that has been accepted vis-a-vis forest degradation, nothing at all,” said D. Andrew Wardell, Senior Manager for Research Capacity and Partnership Development with the Center for International Forestry (CIFOR). “If you can’t define it, you can’t measure it.”

Hope is not lost for our political figures  traversing the country to preach this vital information about forest restoration/ environmental awareness for our dear mother land, NEMA  and other stake holders should package strategic information and reach out to restore our forests

Robert Frost had it right — the woods are lovely, dark and deep. They’re our respite, our places of peace. Our natural air filters, our water factories, our medicine cabinets. We literally can’t live without them.

Mucunguzi Sam is a programme Assistant –Tripartite Initiative for Resource Governance in Africa
 

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