Prime
Educate farmers on value of conserving environment
Farmers prepare their gardens in the reclaimed Bubare Wetland in Rubanda District on May 29, 2024. PHOTO/ROBERT MUHEREZA
What you need to know:
The issue:
Conserving environment.
Our view:
We appreciate the President’s interests in protecting the wetlands, but appeal to govt to engage the farmers so that we find a lasting solution to this problem.
This week, this publication reported that some farmers from Kigezi sub-region had started reclaiming wetlands to plant vegetables. The farmers, it was reported, are taking advantage of the May to September season to plant food in wetlands, despite a presidential directive on wetland restoration.
During his Independence Day speech in Kitgum District last year, President Museveni emphasised the importance of protecting environmental assets such as wetlands, forests, rivers and lakes. But the President also noted the importance of helping farmers transition from wetland farming to either cultivation through irrigation, or other forms of farming.
He, however, ordered farmers in Busoga, Bukedi, and Kigezi to leave unconditionally, saying their presence in wetlands was a mistake. He specifically pointed fingers at locals living within 100 metres of lake shores and riverbanks. The directive was met with a lot of protests. Shortly after that, hundreds of farmers from Kabale, Rubanda, and Rukiga districts petitioned the Speaker of Parliament, demanding the halting of forcible eviction of people from wetlands. In Busoga, leaders appealed to the President to change approach as most of the locals livelihoods depended on the waterbodies.
“Everywhere I go, I tell the leaders, including the President, that Busoga is a great lake, anything concerning the lake also concerns Busoga and wetlands are also in the Busoga sub-region,” First Deputy Prime Minister Rebecca Kadaga said.
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) vice chairperson for eastern region, Ms Proscovia Salaam Musumba, said: “Busoga is largely a wetland. We are between River Nile and Mpologoma, Lake Kyoga and Victoria, and we are largely marshland. .. This is what we have, what makes us, where we inhabit and survive from.”
Wetland encroachment, according to the National Environment Management Authority (Nema), goes on in the form of settlement, agriculture, dumping of murram and draining. A 2015 report by Nema indicates that the most affected protected arears have been used for human activity such as farming, construction and dumping of waste. According to the wetland mapping exercise of 2008, wetland resources were noted to have reduced from 15 percent in 1994 to 10.9 percent of Uganda’s area.
We appreciate the President’s interests in protecting the wetlands, but appeal to government to engage the farmers so that we find a lasting solution to this problem.
Farmers should be educated on the benefits of conserving the environment so that they know that it is in their best interest.
Then the affected farmers should be relocated such that their livelihoods are not lost. Government should either get them alternative pieces of land, or introduce them to other forms of farming so that they can feed their families also earn some money. Finally, the evictions should be carried out in a humane way. Some of these encroachers have been using these wetlands for generations
