Uganda marks Mother earth day
Youth minister Evelyne Anite launches a campaign on tree-planting at Nsambya Primary School in Kampala. photo by FAISWAL KASIRYE
What you need to know:
Saving the environment. Banning Buveera is one of the measures Uganda has taken to conserve nature.
Kampala. As Uganda joins the rest of the world today to mark the International Mother Earth Day, a day meant to help raise awareness and protection of the environment, voices on the need to conserve mother earth cannot be louder. Human activities such as poor waste disposal in urban areas such as Kampala city, alarming levels of tree cutting for charcoal threaten the natural environment, accelerating irregular changes in environmental conditions or what is technically referred to as climate change. Therefore, this year’s International Mother Earth Day global theme “It’s Our Turn to Lead” could not be more appropriate in Uganda. “It is a call to the citizens, not the international donors, to do something to save the earth,” says Joseph Masembe, Chief Executive Officer of Uganda’s Little Hands Go Green.
The steps taken
Uganda’s Little Hands Go Green has for the last three years been having child-led campaigns to plant fruit trees in schools and homesteads in a way of adapting to the impacts of climate change.
With the ban on buveera (polythene bags) below 30 microns shifting since 2009, and the recent pronouncement on April 15 yet to take firm effect, the country does not yet seem to have found the necessary balance between environment conservation and economic development.
Mr Bob Nuwagira, theNema Information, education and communications officer, says it is humans who, to a large extent, are responsible for accelerating climate change and in reversing such, the participation of children is very crucial.
