The Ministry of Water and Environment has embarked on the formulation of regulations that will guide the country to earn carbon credits. 

Carbon credits are the amount of money earned as compensation from those who release greenhouse gasses to those with solutions like forests that take in carbon dioxide. 

According to environmental experts, when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it leads to an increase in temperatures that affect rain formation. 

Because Uganda has natural resources such as rivers, lakes, and forests among others, that take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere from both within Uganda and from developed countries, whose industries release carbon dioxide in the air, the government is now working on a regulation to task these people and entities to pay for their actions. 

According to the Minister of State for Environment, Beatrice Atim Anywar, earnings from carbon credits will be used to conserve the environment through the promotion of tree planting, conserving wetlands, and regulating activities around river banks that eat up swamps among others. 

She made the revelation on Thursday, May 25, while closing a high-level stakeholders meeting on Transboundary Water Resources Management in Africa, at Speke Resort Munyonyo. 

The three-day meeting was organised by the African Network of Basin Organizations in collaboration with the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), supported by the World Bank, African Ministers’ Council on Water, GIZ, and the Ministry of Water and Environment. 

(L-R) Sylvester Anthony Matemu Executive director Nile Basin Initiative, Beatrice Anywar State Minister for Water and Rashid Mbaziira during the high-level stakeholders meeting on water resource management in Africa on May 25, 2023 at Speke resort Munyonyo.

“Such a meeting brings African leadership together to suggest actions and proposals that will help Africans manage and maintain natural resources like the Nile. We keep looking for funding globally but I call on Africans to use carbon credits and get the money for conservation,” said Anywar. 

For Uganda, Anywar said that her ministry is in the final stages of developing the regulations to guide the collection of these funds for conservation activities, adding that Uganda’s natural vegetation like forests, swamps, rivers, and lakes are already cleaning the atmosphere by taking in the bad air. 

Now we are saying can we put a cost to that? We can tap into the funding for carbon credits for cleaning the atmosphere. All this must be backed up with regulation, as Uganda we are working on the regulation for the process,” 

Beatrice Anywar State Minister for Water and Florence Adong Director Water resource management Ministry of water arriving for the high-level stakeholders meeting on water resource management in Africa on May 25, 2023 at Speke resort Munyonyo.

Through the regulations, whose formulation is funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) experts who understand the regulation, will be recruited to analyse how much credit Uganda has accumulated, and how to cost and market it among others, explained Anywar. 

Her call was in response to remarks by the executive secretary of NBI Eng. Sylvester Anthony Matemu called on participants to find ways of financing conservation activities of natural resources like rivers, threatened by the growing population and effects of climate change that have resulted in flooding.