Forest Day: Fight between man and the environment

Mr Denis Bwana, on average burns and sells 15 sacks of charcoal a month. He, however, cannot quantify the number of trees he cuts to raise the said sacks or the firewood his family uses in the same period. Neither has Bwana planted a tree to replace the ones he has felled for charcoal.

His 30 acres initially covered with a variety of trees is now bare, with only stumps standing in just five years of wanton charcoal making. Bwana now relies on buying trees from other people’s land to make charcoal.

Bwana sells a charcoal bag at Shs27,000 and earns about Shs400,000 in a month, an income good enough to cater for the costs of the business, pay for his six children’s school fees, meet daily home expenses and healthcare.

“When you make charcoal you get money, but also create space for grass to grow for the cattle,” says Bwana, who is also a cattle keeper.

His endurance to making charcoal, an occupation that involves suffering daily burns, is part of the reason several trucks ferrying charcoal bags to Kampala make rounds in Nabiswera Sub-county, Nakasongola District.

According to a 2014 ministry of Energy and Mineral Development report on energy consumption in the country, urban centres consume 22.5 million tonnes of charcoal annually.
The report warned that biomass energy (from trees) demands may hit 135 million tonnes, up from the current 44 million tonnes, by 2040.

What is taking our trees?
Trees in Uganda account for 90 per cent of energy sources used in homes for cooking, small scale industries such as bakeries. As a result, Uganda’s forest cover has dwindled from more than 10 million hectares at the time of independence in 1962 to less than five million by 1990 and to less than 3.6 million by 2005.

Considering that the national census results put Uganda’s population at about 35 million, it will require many Bwanas to cut more trees to sustain the biomass energy demands.

“Out of the 44 million tonnes, the tree resource is estimated to sustainably supply (energy) only 26 million tonnes which is well below the demand,” the report warns.
But wood fuel is just one of the causes of deforestation in the country.

Agriculture
Another key contributor to deforestation is farming which keeps expanding to meet the food needs of the growing population.
Francis Bwiso in Mayuge District had to cut his mango, avocado and jackfruit trees to pave way for a sugarcane plantation.

“The factory that gives us canes for planting does not allow us to have trees in our fields so we have to cut them to pave way for the canes,” Bwiso says, expressing guilt that his children may never enjoy the fruits.

Bwiso is, however, quick to note that between January and late March, some of his canes on the six-acre land withered in the dry spell. “We used to plant in late January but these days we wait until April and I do not know why it happens,” he says.

With such climate changes, even the little economic gains that Bwiso and Bwana are seeking to make may stand to be reversed and fuel a humanitarian crisis.

What Bwiso does not know is that like all forms of vegetation, rainforests are important in rainfall formation as they absorb heat and later releases it back to the atmosphere, where it condenses and falls as rain.

This means the loss of forest vegetative cover will result in less heat absorption, translating to less moisture being taken up into the atmosphere to produce rains.

Like the two men, there are several other activities involving the destruction of forests daily either for furniture or to support the fast growing construction sector.

Scope of destruction
A study done in 2012 by the National Forestry Authority (NFA) indicated that encroachment on protected forests was high.

A forest, described as a large area mainly covered with trees and other undergrowth, can be natural or man-made.

The NFA study indicated that in Budongo Forest Reserve, 30,598 hectares are lost annually; around Lake Kyoga that figure is 26,772 hectares, and in Achwa, 24,786 hectares.
In West Nile, the destruction is at 5,966 hectares while 732 hectares are destroyed in the southwest.

Gilbert Kadilo, the NFA spokesperson, says private individuals own up to 70 per cent of forests and trees. This means that to curb deforestation, such people should be at the forefront of both stopping deforestation and carrying out afforestation.

HOW SECTORS CONSUME WOOD ANNUALLY

Burning bricks. Six million tonnes
Tea industries. 71,000 tonnes
Lime production. 270,000 tonnes
Charcoal. 75 tonnes
Tobacco industry. 200,000 tonnes
Sugar jaggeries. 500 tonnes of wood and 2,000 tonnes of bagasse
Cooking oil production. 17,000 tonnes
Smoking fish. 20,000 tonnes
Confectionery industry. 313,000 tonnes
35,000 recognised hotels., 200,000 tonnes of wood and 50,000 tonnes of charcoal
Prisons. 5,435 tonnes
Hospitals. 1,900 tonnes of the same
Education institutions. 1.7 million tonnes

What needs to be done

Prof Ogenga Latigo, who has cleared chunks of land for farming in northern Uganda, says unless alternative means of survival are provided to the people, encroachments on the forests will be hard to check.

“The government is saying ‘stop deforestation’, but how will people stop cutting trees when they need firewood or have to construct?” he wondered.

“Farmers are clearing forests because such areas are fertile but fertilisers can do the same [to areas with wanting soils] and our forests will be protected.”

Another option, Prof Latigo says, should be compulsory planting and nurturing a specified number of trees by every family.

Valence Arinaitwe, a senior forest officer at the Ministry of Water and Environment, says some hectares of trees have been planted although the shortfall is still enormous.

“Makerere University has given us three hectares at Kabanyoro [on Gayaza Road] and Rukungiri District, another two hectares where we intend to plant 20,000 and 6000 trees respectively during the Forest Day today [Saturday],” he says.

This year’s Forest Day celebrations were expected to take place in Rukungiri District.
Although such efforts are being done, Arinaitwe says locals should be educated to be sensitive about their environment because without it, all efforts will be in vain.

He also says the two ministries of Energy and Environment are encouraging the use of improved cooking stoves that use half of the charcoal a conventional stove uses, to reduce degradation of forests.