By: Kato Paul
Worth Noting:
- Putting the proper systems between the local governments across the country and government lead agency (NEMA). This will help to ease the collection and understanding of the data regarding to environmental destructions and increasing environmental conservation efforts.
- Enhancing the capacity of the environmental police units in the districts and cities. This will to respond to escalating environmental issues, increase enforcement and reduce a lot of work imposed on the small number of police women and men. It is noted that currently the county is having only 40 police women and men under the environmental police unit.
There is no reason why the country like Uganda joined the celebration of the world environmental day on 5th June 2022 when environment is still under a big threat by investors, rich business men and local people carrying out human activities in the sensitive biodiversity’s.
This was a shame for the country to celebrate world environmental day when there is still massive destruction of the forests and wetlands across the country.
It is noted that according to 2016 water and environment report indicates that Uganda has lost 37% of its forest cover. This is terrible to the people’s livelihoods, country’s economy and environment itself.
Therefore, for country like Uganda to ease the work for government agencies like NEMA and NFA and to reduce the number of the challenges facing the environmental sector they need to do a bee hive of activities to ensure that forests, wetlands and wildlife are conserved. These include the following:
Putting the proper systems between the local governments across the country and government lead agency (NEMA). This will help to ease the collection and understanding of the data regarding to environmental destructions and increasing environmental conservation efforts.
Enhancing the capacity of the environmental police units in the districts and cities. This will to respond to escalating environmental issues, increase enforcement and reduce a lot of work imposed on the small number of police women and men. It is noted that currently the county is having only 40 police women and men under the environmental police unit.
National environment Management Authority (NEMA) engaging the natural resource committee of parliament to enable them to allocate enough funds for facilitating the environmental conservation activities that they intend to implement every year.
Increased awareness efforts on the environment issues to enable the public to understand the negative impacts resulting from the destruction of the forests and the wetland cover.
Enabling the behavior change among the Ugandan. This will help the Ugandans to
Understand that it is every one responsible to conserve environment and report the encroachers.
The encroachers should be sanction when brought before court. This will act as the lesion for others who would try to temper with the forests and wetlands and contribute to reduction of the Ugandan population encroaching the forests and wetlands.
Finally NEMA and NFA need to involve all the stakeholders in environmental conservation activities especially the schools with the big number of the students in the conservation of the environment. At least every student should plant a tree finishing primary level, O-level, A-level and higher of the institutions.
In my opinion therefore I believe the above strategies will help to ease the work government agencies and promote the environmental conservation efforts in the country.
Kato Paul- Research Associate at Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO)
Katop.adyeeri@gmail.com