Fighting Mabira Forest tree cutters

NARIS is no silver bullet

This is why Onesmus Mugyenyi, the deputy executive director of the Advocates Coalition on Development and Environment (ACODE), a Kampala based policy think tank told The Independent that much as NARIS is a good and modern tool for monitoring forest gain and loss, it will not solve the country’s deforestation challenge.

Citing the most recent State of Environment Report of 2018/2019 compiled by the National Environment Management Authority, the country’s environmental management agency, Mugyenyi who is also the coordinator of the Forest Governance Learning Group, a loose coalition of 54 NGOs and individuals, said population pressure, unplanned urbanisation, plantation agriculture and corruption in the forest sector are the key drivers of Uganda’s fast declining forest cover.

“Lack of data does not feature prominently,” he says,  “That tells you that while it is a very good technology, it is not going to be a silver bullet in solving real issues that plague the forestry sector.”

Mugyenyi told The Independent that data is supposed to help planning and implementation of the plans. Unfortunately, he said, this is Uganda’s biggest challenge. “We tend to do short term planning but even with those plans, we rarely implement them,” he said.

Mugyenyi also mentions poor coordination of the government agencies involved in conservation. This too has impacted negatively on the country’s forest estate.

“The NFA does its own things; the Ministry of Water and Environment which is responsible for policy and regulation also does its own things. These institutions are not working together.”

“There is no coordination mechanism between the agencies that manage the forests and the Ministry of Lands that is responsible for titling and issuing the land titles; that is why the Lands ministry issues titles in a protected forest.”

“That tells you that this is not going to be corrected by having this information system,” he says.

Jessica Webb, the Senior Manager for Global Engagement at Global Forest Watch, a programme run by the Washington-based World Resources Institute also told The Independent on Dec.07 in an email that there have been enormous advances in the use of satellite data for forest monitoring in the past two decades.

“Twenty years ago, if forest rangers and other decision-makers wanted to analyse forest change over a period of time, they would have to purchase satellite images for their areas of interest, wait for it to be mailed to them, and view the areas and information on a paper map which was already likely out of date.”

“It was not only costly data but it was also not interactive, and it was not easily comparable across geographies and time periods,” Webb told The Independent.

Now, mobile applications, such as “Forest Watcher,” allow rangers to download and navigate to recent deforestation alert areas, document their observations and take photos, all with smart phones. The digital reports can then be shared through messaging applications or uploaded to a database and analysed.  But, she said, improvement in Uganda’s forest cover will need a lot of funding and political will.

“Technology is not a “silver bullet;” it is just one tool that can help make forest monitoring more efficient and effective,” she told The Independent.

“Forest managers need funding and support in order to be able to have sufficient numbers of staff to be able to monitor large areas effectively, training on technology as well as complementary tactics such as personal and digital security and community engagement.”

“If the deforestation is being caused by commercial operations or other actors who are willingly violating the law for personal gain, rangers need to follow through by law enforcement and the courts to ensure that illegal deforestation has consequence.”

“If deforestation is being caused by communities who have historic rights to live in and around protected areas or have nowhere else to go, there needs to be funding and support for social programmes to create livelihood initiatives so that communities have economic alternatives, and/ or processes to come to agreements about allowable limited sustainable use of forest resources within protected areas.”

The concerns raised by Mugyenyi, Webb and others could be addressed if, as UNDP says, the NARIS platform is scaled up to also monitor and provide data for other natural resources.

The UNDP says it has secured US$628,950 from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) through the Anti-Corruption Innovation Initiative (ACPIS), to scale-up the platform to facilitate the management of Uganda’s environmental ecosystem.

The UNDP will be working alongside new partners such as the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U), and Civil Society Organizations, among others.

Erik Francis Acanakwo, the new country representative of World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Uganda says besides deploying the latest technology, Uganda also needs to revise its forest policy and the National Forest and Tree Planting laws to address contemporary challenges.

He mentions finding new ways through which trees can be grown to increase the country’s forest cover and promoting business opportunities that are complementary to forest resource management.

“Promoting the increase of trees-on-farm is one such opportunity that tree cover can increase on private land,” he told The Independent, “The ability for people to provide and use their own woody biomass would reduce the dependence on woody biomass from gazetted forest reserves.”

Acanakwo is also a strong advocate of eco-tourism in most of Uganda’s forest reserves. If this were deliberately promoted, he says, communities neighboring forest resources can benefit economically from the very existence of the forests.

“For this to work, however, there should be deliberate efforts geared towards provision of low cost loans, in addition to other relevant business management support,” Acanakwo told The Independent.

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