Karamoja burns as trees smoulder one at a time

White smoke seeps from the base of the mound.
Slowly, it rises, blends with and melts into the air.
Pulkol Lotee, 32, walks around.
Under the mound is a smouldering pile of wood.
The wood is from a tree Lotee felled a week earlier.
He has been felling trees for six years now in Acegeretolim parish, Nabilatuk sub–county in Nakapiripirit District in Uganda’s semi–arid northeast.
“Instead of risking being shot during cattle rustling, let me do this,” Lotee tells Daily Monitor.
Whereas tree felling elsewhere in Uganda is not new, it is an emerging trend in Karamoja.

More Karamojong, who for years mostly tended cattle, are now turning on the unprotected grassy plain, stripping it – one tree at a time – of the trees the area has.
In Kotido District, charcoal production happens mostly in ‘Chamkok’ in Kotido sub–county.
In Kaabong district, tree felling, though on small scale, happens in Kapedo sub–county.

“There used to be many trees,” Julius Lokiru, 74, an elder in Kaabong, says.
“Many were cleared. Now people are asking ‘why are the rains failing’?”

John Jolamoi, 63, a resident in Kaabong, notes that few Karamojong use charcoal to cook.
The National Population and Housing Census 2014 Main Report, which the Uganda Bureau of Statistics released in March 2016, bears him out.
The report says 86 per cent of the households in Abim district, 91 per cent in Amudat; 90 per cent in Kaabong; 85 per cent in Kotido; 77 per cent in Moroto; 90 per cent in Nakapiripirit; and 89 per cent in Napak use firewood to cook.
Seventeen per cent of the households in Moroto, 10 per cent in Kotido and Abim, 6 per cent in Kaabong, Nakapiripirit and Napak and 5 per cent in Amudat use charcoal.

What is fuelling charcoal trade in Karamoja?
Much of the charcoal produced in these districts ends up in Mbale District – where 32.47 per cent of the households use charcoal to cook.
In Karamoja, a 50–kilogramme sack of charcoal costs between Shs8,000 and Shs10,000.
In Mbale, the sack retails for about Shs30,000.
The difference between the price at which the middlemen buy the charcoal in Karamoja and the price at which they sell it to traders in Mbale takes care of the fuel, and ‘levy’ those who are ‘unlucky to be caught by the environment officers’.

The levy
Shs5,000 is a ‘levy’ on each sack.
Local governments collect Shs2 billion annually from the movement of charcoal, according to the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema).
During various trips from Mbale to Nakapiripirit and Moroto and between Soroti and Kotido, the Daily Monitor observed that many trucks from the northeast to the east were transporting charcoal.
Much of the charcoal from Kotido is transported through Abim District, Amuria to Soroti. Some remains in Soroti; some goes to Mbale.
The charcoal from Nakapiripirit is transported via Muyembe, Bulambuli and Sironko to Mbale district, over 90kilometres away.

The charcoal sellers in Mbale who agreed to be interviewed for this article affirmed this.
When asked whether she makes the charcoal she sells, Rebecca Nabukwasi, who operates outside Mbale Central Market, says she buys it from middlemen.
“The people who sell to us the charcoal tell us where they get it from, from Kotido, Moroto, Nabukwasi, 29, says.
Salama Namataka, 37, adds that the rest is from Katakwi, Apac and Gulu Districts.
Namataka says she gives the middlemen Shs27,000 for each sack of charcoal.

She then sells it at Shs30,000.
Clearly, most of the money goes to the middlemen. And it drives many to look for charcoal but it is costing Karamoja its trees.
Currently, 53.8 per cent (14,902 square kilometres of 27,700 sq. km.) surface area of Karamoja is protected area – for wildlife conservation.
That leaves the people with just 46.2 per cent.
When the World Food Programme (WFP) was providing the Karamojong with rations, few of them would dabble in charcoal production.

Besides, some of them still had cattle to tend. Others had guns, since the government hadn’t completed disarming those who were holding guns illegally.
After WFP weaned Karamojong off rations in 2012, and the government disarmed those who had guns, some turned to artisan mining to get money to buy foodstuffs.
Others, especially those who had contact with entrepreneurs who had travelled from elsewhere to Karamoja, turned to tree felling.
Since the districts neither license nor keep records of charcoal traders, the Daily Monitor could not establish how much charcoal is produced in Karamoja and how much of it leaves the region.

Still, one could infer from the some of lorries the authorities have impounded it is much.
In January, they offloaded 220 sacks of charcoal from a lorry that was lumbering from Kotido to Mbale via Abim.
The authorities auctioned the charcoal at throwaway prices to ‘punish’ the trader.
To check tree felling and charcoal trade, the Renewable Energy Policy for Uganda, 2007 provides for the regulation of charcoal production and transportation.

None of the seven Karamoja districts licenses charcoal production.
“We do not want charcoal activities,” Joseph Kiyonga, Kotido’s district environment officer, says.
“If we were to license charcoal producers, we would be encouraging tree felling.”
Nakapiripirit authorities in September imposed Shs5,000 levy on each sack of charcoal transported from the district.
“In one month, Shs5 million was collected,” John Lonye, a local councillor, says. They scrapped the levy ahead of the campaigns for Uganda’s 2016 polls.
It was done not to jeopardise the incumbents’ re-election prospects.

Authorities move
The election is over.
However, the authorities have not reinstated the levy.
To check tree felling and charcoal production, Nakapiripirit district’s assistant principal secretary Jobs Ilukor says the local government crafted a bylaw against tree felling.
The bylaw would penalise, through fines or community service, the Karamojong courts will find guilty of disregarding the regulation.
Barbara Nekesa Oundo, the State minister for Karamoja Affairs, says government has started giving the Karamojong tree seedlings to plant around their manyattas and kraals.
Each household, Oundo says, gets between 100 and 150 seedlings.
Lotee says he has never been given any tree seedling.
Oundo says the seedlings are given out to households during community meetings.

Whatever the minister says, wherever the tree seedlings are given out, Lotee says to stop felling trees for charcoal he needs cereal crop seeds to plant for him to quit the charcoal business.
“I have land. If you bring me seeds, oxen and an ox plough to harrow the land, I will leave this work [charcoal trade],” he says.
“Smoke from smouldering wood is not good for my wife’s health,” Lotee adds, pointing to Anna Nakiru, a mother of five.

What the law says
The National Forestry and Tree Planting Act, 2003 states that for one to cut, take, or remove forest products, one must get a licence.
Those who contravene the law, should court convict them of the offense, pay a fine of Shs600,000.
Alternatively, they have to spend three years in prison or pay the fine and spend the three years in prison.
According to the Nema, Uganda’s total forested land has reduced from 3,594,462 hectares in 2005 to 3,309,042 hectares in 2010 – the most recent year for which such national data is available.

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