Forest officials, residents in row over Sango Bay trees

Mar 27, 2006

IT is a case of Oliver Twist, the legendary schoolboy, who asked for more. Residents in two villages near Sango Bay forest in Rakai gathered at its edge recently to ask for more.

By Gerald Tenywa

IT is a case of Oliver Twist, the legendary schoolboy, who asked for more. Residents in two villages near Sango Bay forest in Rakai gathered at its edge recently to ask for more.

Although they had been allowed to fish and harvest herbs from the forest, they also want to fell hard wood for timber.

The demand to fell trees has triggered off a dispute between the villagers and environmentalists who insist that making herbal medicine would earn the forest-edge people more money than felling trees.

“We are not going to keep on wallowing in poverty yet we have all those trees in the forest,’’ says Kasita Gonzaga, who heads the residents.

Many residents believe being barred from logging in the richly- endowed forest reserve, is intended to deny them the resources they have always lived with.

This is part of what is being described as the growing “political hot-bed for hardwood trees’’ around protected areas.

The Forestry Department, which was partly replaced by the National Forestry Authority (NFA) two years ago, had always insisted that the forest reserve is “a no-go area.” However, they bowed to pressure and allowed residents to collect raw materials from the forest about five years ago. In return, the communities watch over encroachers.

In the past, villagers would go to the forest up to five times a week, to fetch firewood. However, Gonzaga says these days, they collect firewood once a week.

This idea was pioneered by the Forest Department under the funding of the Global Environment Facility – a cross-border bio-diversity programme, about a decade ago.

Fiona Driciru, NFA’s community partnership specialist, is so far pleased with the local communities around Sango Bay.

Driciru contends that since the local people were allowed into the reserve, illegal activities are almost unheard of.

This is one of the concepts sweeping across many countries and is being described as a revolution that has been embraced by government and environmentalists.

There is realisation that as long as people do not see any life-changing benefits out of conservation, they would never take it serious.

“That is what we are seeking to change by working with the local people,’’ says Doreen Wandera, the national co-ordinator of EMPAFORM in Uganda.

EMPAFORM, a programme to strengthen civil society for participatory forest management in East Africa, is a four-year programme which is being undertaken in East African countries.

Ironically, Sango Bay, which is surrounded by poor people, is one of the richest areas in the country. It runs along the shores of Lake Victoria and swathes of it cover parts of northern Tanzania.

However, Wandera who led the team of EMPAFORM to Katera in Kanabulemu sub-county, attributes poverty among residents to exclusion from decision-making over resource allocation and control.

In a paper by Hassan Muloopa, an advocacy officer under the programme, the forest resources are referred to as “assets’’ needed for survival.

Wandera says they would help communities benefit from the emerging pro-poor laws and policies and build capacities of community-based organisations around protected areas.

She says the communities were entitled to cut down trees if the agreement spells it out, but the demand to fell trees, as a way of earning a livelihood, is a weakness.

“They lack knowledge and skills of harnessing profitable enterprises such as bee keeping, medicinal plants and rearing butterflies. This is widely practised by forest-edge communities in Kenya and Tanzania,’’ Wandera says.

The richness of the area is also seen from the forest elephants and buffaloes that could be harnessed through eco-tourism. Instead, residents complain about the incidences of crop raiding as the elephants trample on the farmland.

Changing this heritage into a resource requires the communities, civil society, private sector, local government and the Government to work hand in hand.

Empowering local communities is one of the ways of making sound partnership, but there is need for more time and training to achieve this.

The local communities abandoned the tree nursery that was established to raise seedlings for trees that should have been their future source of wood and energy products.

“It seems they only want access to trees and do not bear any responsibility,” says Robert Nabanyumya, head of EMPAFORM in East Africa.

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