Uganda's toxic growth: Economy eating environment

May 24, 2021

Water is life. This popular saying has been watered down by water-related disasters, which also threaten Uganda’s development agenda, writes Gerald Tenywa.

Youth in Busiu village, Mbale district mining sand from River Manafwa

NewVision Reporter
Journalist @NewVision

Steven Wakwale lives like a “gladiator” on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda. He has to battle weather extremes —droughts and floods for survival.

Wakwale spent half of his life toiling on the ground before he abandoned his hoe, a weapon that had proved useful in providing food for his children until five years ago.

“I still remember the drought of 2016, which robbed me of my harvest. I got nothing from my two acres of maize,” he says, adding that he borrowed money to buy food for his children to stay alive.

Wakwale sold everything, including his land, to buy a motorcycle, which he rides as a taxi in Mbale city.

“I abandoned the hoe for a motorcycle because farming is vulnerable to drought. I was becoming poorer and poorer as a farmer because of the growing losses caused by diseases, pests and exploitation by middlemen.”

Unknowingly, Wakwale’s battle for survival is driven by water. During times of extreme weather events, water is either too much, causing landslides and floods or too little, leading to drought or severe dry spells.

“I use sh2,000 for buying water per day, but my expenditure rises to sh5,000 during the dry season,” he says, adding that residents of Mbale have to dig deeper into their pockets to buy water.

This is because River Manafwa thins out during the dry season, hence providing less water to the residents of Mbale.

Agriculture activities encroaching on the banks of River Manafwa in Mbale district

Agriculture activities encroaching on the banks of River Manafwa in Mbale district

As much as Wakwale and thousands of his colleagues are victims of the extreme weather events, they are equally to blame for causing the disasters. They are behind the rising demand for food, firewood and charcoal. This is what is pushing agriculture to wipe away trees to establish farmland.

In addition, the felling of trees for energy has led to massive deforestation.

According to experts who attended the recent Water and Environment Week in Kampala, the wanton destruction of the environment, as well as the changing climate, are being manifested in water-related disasters (climate change), such as landslides and floods.

The experts were deeply concerned that water is linked to many aspects of life and affects many people, but it remains underfunded.

They also pointed out that the destruction of the environment is accelerating the impacts of climate change and that the cost of inaction is much higher than the cost of investment in better management of the environment.

During the launch of the State of Environment Report in Kampala recently, Dr Tom Okurut, the executive director of the National Environment Management Authority, pointed out that soil was being washed away through soil erosion and that this is leading to silting of water bodies, including rivers and lakes.

“What you see on the lakes as the brown colour is soil. It is going to cause eutrophication on the lakes.”

Okurut refers to eutrophication as the excessive richness of nutrients in a lake or other body of water frequently due to run-off from the land, which causes a dense growth of plant life.

In short, the water mirrors how well or badly the land is being managed. In the case of the pollution of Lake George and Lake Victoria, Uganda has to go back to the drawing board to secure its water.

MINING THE ENVIRONMENT

As the economy grows, the degradation of the environment increases. The forest and wetland cover have been retreating as the expansive agriculture takes toll on the environment. This is what some experts on environment referred to as mining the environment.

In the last 30 years, the forest cover declined from 24% in 1990 to only 12% last year, meaning Uganda has lost half of its forest cover.

“We now know that agriculture is expanding at the expense of forests,” says Tom Okello, the executive director of the National Forestry Authority.

After clearing forests and exhausting the water and nutrients, subsistence farmers move to virgin forested areas, which they clear to pave way for cultivation.

The pattern is repeated many times on private land across the country. As a result, most of the forests on private land have been converted into farmland at the expense of the environmental services that they offer.

Also, the wetland cover has declined from 15.6% in 1994 to 8.9% within the last three decades, according to Collins Oloya, the director of environment in the Ministry of Water and Environment.

According to a report on the Economic Policy Research Center titled “Achieving Uganda’s development ambition. The Economic impact of Green Growth: An agenda for action”, most Ugandans are engaged in agriculture, which also suffers from low productivity.

As a result of low productivity in agriculture and the over-dependence on firewood and charcoal, the environment is suffering from destruction.

FREQUENT DISASTERS

The frequency and intensity of disasters is increasing, according to the Prevention Web, a publication of the UN Disaster Risk Reduction.

“Extreme events leading to disasters, such as floods, droughts and landslides, have increased over the last 30 years,” stated the UN Disaster Risk Reduction.

Over the past two decades, an average of 200,000 Ugandans are affected each year by disasters.

“Increased intensity of heavy rainfall has led to greater impact of floods, which are causing more damage due to expanded infrastructure, human settlement and general development of the country,” stated the UN Disaster Risk Reduction report.

As floods sweep through the low lying areas around lakes Victoria, Kyoga and Albert, Rose Nakabugo, the acting commissioner of disaster preparedness in the Office of the Prime Minister, put the displaced at about 800,000.

GDP SUFFERS

A recent report, titled Achieving Uganda’s development ambition. The Economic impact of Green Growth: An agenda for action, stated, “Climate variability already impacts water availability, crop yields and energy production.”

As far back as two decades ago, Uganda was experiencing losses caused by the changing climate.

In 2010 and 2011, drought caused damages and losses of $1.2b or 7.5% of Uganda’s gross domestic product (GDP). A drought in 2016, due to the El Niño effect, impacted 1.3 million people and decreased 1.5% of Uganda’s growth forecast (from 5% to 3.5%). By 2017, more than 10 million Ugandans were food-insecure, according to the UN report.

The report added, “Together with natural resource depletion, the effects of climate change negatively impact the most vulnerable in society and pose a major threat to prosperity. A recent study estimated that climate impacts could cost Uganda $3-6b per annum by 2050.”

MISMATCH IN FUNDING

A study titled, “The Contribution of water resources development and environment management to Uganda’s economy”, states that Uganda’s GDP could suffer as a result of under-funding of the water and environment sector. The funding allocated to the water sector has been under 3% of GDP every year in the last 15 years.

The report stated, “Meeting Uganda’s economic 2040 growth targets will require a tripling of reliable water deliveries relative to today’s levels, which will require heavy investment in environmental management and water resources.”

The report added, “As Uganda seeks to industrialise to meet national development goals, water management will be critical to ensure steady growth of the manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors.”

WATER AND NDP3

As part of the means to achieve SDGs, Uganda’s Vision 2040 has been put in place as a development strategy to operationalise the country’s vision statement, which is “Atransformed Ugandan society from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country within 30 years”.

This path places emphasis on the creation of modern industry and services, ensuring that the benefits of development are shared and promoting developments that take into account the natural environment.

In achieving Uganda Vision 2040, the country is employing five-year National Development Plans (NDP). Under the new five-year NDP3, Uganda is aggressively promoting industrialisation.

While industrialisation is an opportunity to improve earnings of the population, it is also going to increase pressure on water resources in terms of water demand and pollution of water.

WATER FOR ALL

Access to clean water and sanitation is a right, but not all Ugandans have water. Such people will have to wait longer, according to the Minister of State for Environment, Beatrice Anywar.

“Our target in the manifesto was to increase access to clean and safe water from 65% to 79% in rural areas and from 77% to 100% in urban areas by 2021,” she said. “To date, the rural water coverage is estimated at 69% and the urban areas coverage stands at 79.1%.”

This means that access to safe and clean water has increased over the last four years, but the water ministry has not hit the pledges on access to safe and clean water, according to Anywar.

River Rwizi as it crosses Kasanyalaze in Mbarara city. Rwizi originates from Buhweju and pours its water into Lake Victoria

River Rwizi as it crosses Kasanyalaze in Mbarara city. Rwizi originates from Buhweju and pours its water into Lake Victoria

Anywar was speaking last year during the Manifesto Week. She also pointed out that the NRM Manifesto is a contract between the people of Uganda and their elected leaders for the period of 2016-2021 and beyond.

“The safe water coverage has not been as much as we expected,” Anywar said, adding that Uganda’s population is increasing and this has not been matched with investment in the water and sanitation sector.

WAY OUT

As crises bite and the population increases, Uganda will have to rely on its environment to grow its economy and also become resilient to climate change. So far, the right path is being taken to transform from subsistence to commercial agriculture. At the same time, Uganda is also seeking to become an industrial country. This will be sustainable if Uganda embraces Green industries that use waste as raw materials, in what is known as “circular economy.”

In addition, integrated water resources management has been put in place to bring communities at the heart of decisions relating to water, according to Dr. Florence Adong, the director of water resources in the Ministry of Water and Environment. They have also come up with 32 water catchment areas for Uganda and that different players, including communities and the private sector, have made 17 catchment plans. The Ministry has de-concentrated into four water management zones — Victoria, Kyoga, Albert and Upper Nile, according to Adong.

As a way of addressing the funding constraint, the importance of water in terms of social-economic transformation, the water sector is going to use studies to put value on water, according to Tindimugaya. He said the role of water is not well-articulated and that this is the reason behind low priority when it comes to budget allocation.

“We want to give the value of water. Water is important to tourism, agriculture, energy and the economy. We want to give the value of water in figures,” Tindimugaya said.

As much as water experts keep complaining about the little funding, what has the little funding done? Onesimus Mugyenyi, the deputy director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), observes.

“We have sung about the little funding, but we do not follow up to see what it is doing,” he said, adding that a lot of funding that goes into the water sector is for constructing water supplies and less is directed into catchment management.

ACODE’s executive director, Arthur Bainomugisha, concurs. He says the performance of the water sector should be followed up in what he called a scorecard. He also pointed out that the entities that are high-performing should be supported so that they do not back track.

17 SDGS AND WATER

In the 2030 development agenda, which is about the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), water is the fuel of the 17 SDGs, according to Dr. Callist Tindimugaya, a commissioner in the Ministry of Water and Environment.

“Water is related to all SDGs,” he said, adding that it will be difficult to achieve the 2030 development agenda without considering water as a priority.

THE 17 SDGS ARE

1-No poverty

2-Zero hunger

3-Good health and well-being

4-Quality of education

5-Gender equality

6- Clean water and sanitation

7-Affordable and clean energy

8-Decent work and economic growth

9-Industry, innovation and infrastructure

10-Reducing inequality

11-Sustainable cities and communities

12-Responsible consumption and production

13-Climate action

14-Life below water

15-life on land

16-Peace, justice and strong institutions

17-Partnership for the goals.

This is a global transformation agenda or plan of action for people, planet and prosperity that was adopted by world leaders in 2015. There are 17 SDGs that cover an ambitious global agenda: from ending poverty to regaining peace and stability while leaving no-one behind.

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