NEMA must act now or forever be quiet
May 19, 2011
SINCE the 1991 National Environmental Action Plan, Uganda has put in place a number of policies, strategies and plans whose major purpose has been to integrate environmental concerns into the overall social economic development processes.
Joseph Kiggundu
SINCE the 1991 National Environmental Action Plan, Uganda has put in place a number of policies, strategies and plans whose major purpose has been to integrate environmental concerns into the overall social economic development processes.
Such policies and plans may include, but are not limited to the following; the forestry, agricultural, wildlife, water and wetland policies.
Today, allow me concentrate on the wetland policy which was formulated in 1995 with the overall aim of promoting the conservation of Uganda’s wetlands and swamps in order to sustain their ecological and social economic functions for the present and future generations.
It looks like our policy makers do not take time to revise what they have documented. I am compelled to say this not only because of what I have seen happening in Lubigi swamp on Hoima Road the whole of last week, but also because of the many other instances where people have openly come up to encroach on swamps and wetlands while NEMA, the environmental conservation enforcement institution, is just watching.
It is very shocking that since last week a group of hundreds of people invaded the Lubigi swamp and started constructing one of the biggest markets I have so far seen in Uganda.
It is disappointing that this is being done in the very location where NEMA and the Ministry of Water and Environment have just cleared off the operations of Bemba Musota accusing him of encroachment on the swamp. While I have nothing to do with Bemba Musota, it remains a puzzle to me why NEMA and the ministry should send away one person who to me had no major threat to the environmental ecological systems in this area and then allow the activities of more than a hundred people who are going to carry out business on a daily basis!
If you think this is an exaggeration, I request you to physically visit this place and see how greedy and arrogant human beings are as far as their relationship with the non-human environment is concerned!
Do we need another teacher to teach us that by outwardly destroying such a swamp; we are not only destroying our own home and food as humans, but also we are destroying a permant home for the many non- human ecological entities whose purpose to the functioning of the eco-systems need no mention.
Swamps act as sponges because runoff water can temporarily be stored in them. This makes them a kind of natural reservoir and flood control agent. They function as nurseries and adult habitat for shrimp and recreational fisheries; they are exporters of organic matter to adjacent coastal food chains, and they are enormous sources of valuable nutrients.
Swamps trap debris, sediments, excess nutrients and toxicants through their natural filtering processes. This improves the water quality of rivers where they flow.
Why then allow these current illegal activities in the Lubigi Swamp? Either NEMA or the ministry concerned act now or keep quite for ever.
The writer is a university lecturer and a development consultant
SINCE the 1991 National Environmental Action Plan, Uganda has put in place a number of policies, strategies and plans whose major purpose has been to integrate environmental concerns into the overall social economic development processes.
Such policies and plans may include, but are not limited to the following; the forestry, agricultural, wildlife, water and wetland policies.
Today, allow me concentrate on the wetland policy which was formulated in 1995 with the overall aim of promoting the conservation of Uganda’s wetlands and swamps in order to sustain their ecological and social economic functions for the present and future generations.
It looks like our policy makers do not take time to revise what they have documented. I am compelled to say this not only because of what I have seen happening in Lubigi swamp on Hoima Road the whole of last week, but also because of the many other instances where people have openly come up to encroach on swamps and wetlands while NEMA, the environmental conservation enforcement institution, is just watching.
It is very shocking that since last week a group of hundreds of people invaded the Lubigi swamp and started constructing one of the biggest markets I have so far seen in Uganda.
It is disappointing that this is being done in the very location where NEMA and the Ministry of Water and Environment have just cleared off the operations of Bemba Musota accusing him of encroachment on the swamp. While I have nothing to do with Bemba Musota, it remains a puzzle to me why NEMA and the ministry should send away one person who to me had no major threat to the environmental ecological systems in this area and then allow the activities of more than a hundred people who are going to carry out business on a daily basis!
If you think this is an exaggeration, I request you to physically visit this place and see how greedy and arrogant human beings are as far as their relationship with the non-human environment is concerned!
Do we need another teacher to teach us that by outwardly destroying such a swamp; we are not only destroying our own home and food as humans, but also we are destroying a permant home for the many non- human ecological entities whose purpose to the functioning of the eco-systems need no mention.
Swamps act as sponges because runoff water can temporarily be stored in them. This makes them a kind of natural reservoir and flood control agent. They function as nurseries and adult habitat for shrimp and recreational fisheries; they are exporters of organic matter to adjacent coastal food chains, and they are enormous sources of valuable nutrients.
Swamps trap debris, sediments, excess nutrients and toxicants through their natural filtering processes. This improves the water quality of rivers where they flow.
Why then allow these current illegal activities in the Lubigi Swamp? Either NEMA or the ministry concerned act now or keep quite for ever.
The writer is a university lecturer and a development consultant