Race on to restore Uganda’s forests

Dwindling forest estate

Uganda’s forest cover (mainly tropical high forests and woodlands) stood at almost 45% of Uganda’s total land area at the beginning of the 20th century based on mapping by the colonial British government of protected areas at the time.

By 1900 Uganda, which is about the size of the United Kingdom, had about 10 million hectares of forest cover or about 50% of land surface. But by 1990, this had dwindled to 5 million hectares or about 25%.  By 2005 it dwindled more to 3.5 million hectares and by 2009, just four years later, it was 1.5 million hectares.

To match Uganda’s annual population growth rate of 3% compared to the global rate of 1.1%, forests are being cut to open up land for new farmland and for wood products and fuel. And the population pressure is worsening.

Uganda currently has about 42 million people. But this number is expected to grow to about 80 million by 2040 according to the World Population Prospects published in 2019 by the UN.

Epicenter of deforestation

Analysis by Global Forest Watch, a Washington-based environmental conservation platform, notes that from 2002 to 2020, Uganda lost 67,900 hectares of humid primary forest, making up 7.6% of its total tree loss in the same period. Its Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) land satellite-based alert system for monitoring tree cover loss and wildfires around the world revealed that the top eight districts responsible for 54% of Uganda’s tree cover loss between 2001 and 2020 include; Luweero (86,400ha), Kibale (81,900ha), Mubende (74,100ha), Kyenjojo (57,700ha) Kiboga (53,700ha), Mukono (52,900ha), and Mbarara (45,600ha).

Conservationists say intrusion on protected forests usually begins with illegal logging. It is closely followed by charcoal burning and firewood cutting, a practice which leads to degradation as all the remaining trees, poles, and young trees are destroyed. Once the forest cover is stripped, cultivation begins.

Farmers sneak in and clear the remaining tree stumps to grow seasonal crops on small pieces of land. When the NFA does not chase them away, they turn to growing annual and perennial crops like coffee and bananas, completing the process of deforestation.

In the central districts such as Mukono, Mpigi and Luweero, major tracts of land have been cleared in the last decade, according to the 2019 Water and Environment Sector Performance report. But the epicenter of deforestation in the country today is the Acholi region in the north of the country which is emerging from a long armed conflict.

For close to 25 years, millions of people in the region were forced off their land by the government and were huddled into sprawling Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps as the government battled Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels. Conservationists say this policy ironically brought dividends to the region’s forests and woodlands.

When the war ended around 2008, the people went back to their villages to find their former gardens had become lush woodlands. Sadly, the returnees did the only thing they knew; cutting trees to burn them into charcoal.

“The people left the IDP camps empty handed to go back to their homes after the LRA insurgency and they had no other means to support their livelihoods and the only option was the sale of land full of trees for charcoal business,” says Arthur Owor, the director of the Centre for African Research and coordinator of the environmental pressure group, Our Trees We Need Answers.

Charcoal burning has been booming business in Acholi since then. Even prized indigenous trees such as the Shea nut tree and Affzellia Africana (African mahogany) are turned into charcoal daily.

“If the massive destruction of trees continues for the next five years, northern Uganda shall look like a desolate battle field,” says Willy Choowoo, a member of Our Trees We Need Answers.

“Our people have been from a war where they could hear gun shots, but the war on forests is a silent war that is claiming northern Uganda and its beautiful natural features,” he adds.

Unfortunately, the government appears to have no legal ground to intervene because, unlike the gazetted forest reserves that NFA controls, the trees being felled in northern Uganda are mainly in privately owned forests.

Onesmus Mugyenyi, the deputy executive director of the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), a Kampala-based policy think tank, told The Independent on April 07 that the biggest mistake the government has committed is to concentrate on the management of central forest reserves while paying little or no attention to forests on private land.

“When you look at the laws and policies governing forests in the country, everything is about government-owned forests yet most of Uganda’s forests (70%) are on private land.”

Private forests are not regulated, Mugyenyi, who also heads the environment programme at ACODE, told The Independent.

“Taking control of the deforestation challenge requires new methods,” says Jules-Armand Aniambossou, the French Ambassador to Uganda who in November last year accompanied seven other EU ambassadors on a one-week mission to western and northern Uganda to gain firsthand experience of the level of pressure Uganda’s forests like Zoka are facing.

“This visit was yet another confirmation that Uganda is indeed “gifted by nature but the rich biodiversity of these forests needs protection and sustainable use for the benefit of mankind,” he told The Independent recently.