Is Uganda ready for the green economy?
Instead of using firewood (inset), most factories such as Kakira Sugar Works, use alternative energy sources in their boilers. PHOTOS by Edgar R. Batte.
The environment is fast becoming an important aspect of any nation because it touches the heart of the existence of humanity. According to the Ministry of Water and Environment, sector performance report 2010, natural assets play a critical role in fostering economic growth hence the greater need to manage them well for sustainable development.
The report takes a multi-pronged approach in assessing utilisation and vulnerability of all environmental resources in the country. Uganda currently faces severe environmental problems including soil erosion and declining soil fertility, deforestation, pollution of land, water and air resources, loss of biodiversity and over-harvesting of forests, fisheries and water resources.
In a statement delivered by the Minister of Water and Environment, Ephraim Kamuntu, at the National Consultative Workshop on Post-2015 Development Agenda, he observed that the country is facing increasing challenges of deforestation, degradation of wetlands, river banks, lake shores, water pollution, making it difficult to achieve environmental sustainability as required in the Constitution.
He said, “It is a national objective and directive of state policy to promote environmental sustainability as required by the Constitution.” One of the responsible parties in environmental sustainability are corporate companies in Uganda, which also begs the question, is Uganda ready for the green economy initiative (GEF)?
The GEF initiative was developed by United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) with a working definition of a green economy as one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.
A green economy is one whose growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
GEF was launched in 2008. In Uganda National Environmental Management Authority (Nema), a semi-autonomous institution, is charged with the responsibility of coordinating, monitoring, regulating and supervising environmental management in the country.
Nema’s executive director, Dr Tom Okurut, explains that the environment cannot be defined without human beings and their actions. He observes that Nema has been keen on ensuring that corporate companies adhere to environmental regulations. “To Nema’s credit, most industries have invested hundreds of thousands of and in some cases millions of dollars to ensure that the environment is well managed,” he adds.
Some of the companies have previously been cautioned and a few closed over non-compliance. With inspections, companies have appreciated the need to protect the environment since it plays a critical role in their existence.
Some of them feed-off water bodies to run their production processes and they naturally need to devise means of managing their waste and recycle the water they use in order not to affect water levels of these bodies as well as maintaining good standards not to intoxicate the water which also serves communities in different ways.
Nema has put strict requirements for such industries and companies have had to make heavy investments.
Nile Breweries Limited have for instance, invested huge sums of money in improving their processes to conform to environment standards.
The site services engineer inMbarara, Nicholas Agaba explains that they only draw water that they need to partly run the brewery from River Rwizi in Mbarara. “We treat that water so that we can be able to use it our production processes because the beer by its nature is about 95 per cent water, so we use a lot of water. We use this water for brewing processes, for cleaning and in our boilers to generate steam. We naturally generate dirty water which we call effluent. We have an effluent treatment plant where the water from the processes is treated before it is sent back to the river. We do tests on this water daily,” he explains.
The engineer says they supply Nema and the Ministry of Water with monthly reports on how the company is performing regarding their environmental protection measures.
Kakira goes green
Kakira Sugar Works in Jinja admits to initially having not been keen on environment but with Nema’s regular inspections and guidance, they have been able to keenly improve on their environmental standards.
All effluence from its factories are collected and washed down from factories.
“We have collected it into an effluence treatment plant which was only commissioned a few months ago. We have taken some years to build it. We have started the testing processes on a regular basis to see that we comply with Nema requirements,” Kenneth Musinga Barungi, the assistant to the General Manager, explains.
In the Nile Breweries’ production processes, there are a number of wastes produced, one of which is a biogas ethane which is used in heating the boilers where steam is generated. Instead of using electricity to run the boiler they are using biogas ethane to fire them up.
Okurut commends among other companies, Nile Breweries and Global Paper Products Limited in Mukono District for putting in place modern environmental mitigation methods at their premises as good examples on how development can take place without necessarily hurting the environment.
Nema closed Global Paper in 2012 for more than a month for non-compliance with minimum environmental requirements as they used to dispose of their waste products into a stream in their backyard.
The closure hurt the business financially. Its product development manager, Sunny Lakhani, says they have since invested heavily in a waste treatment plant.
“We now recycle our paper. Environmental responsibility is not easy for the simple reason that it is a cost to the business but running business is a learning process. We have heavily invested in a water treatment plant. This was a recommendation from Nema when we were closed and since then, we are working hand in hand with them.”
He adds, “Uganda is far behind when it comes to environmental management but Nema has a team that is cooperative and helpful,” Lakhani explains.
Nema’s environmental audits and monitoring officer, Enid Turyahikayo says compliance is not a one off and companies like Global Paper have put in place measures to protect the environment and Nema still tests its waste being discharged to find out if it means the standards, during regular monitoring visits.
“For such industries, it is not about putting in place treatment plants. There is also the issue of incorporating cleaner production aspects because such a facility (water treatment plant) is expensive but the cost could have been reduced by doing some internal modifications like recycling the water,” Turyahikayo adds.
Energy saving initiatives
Another energy saving initiative at the brewery is handling of broken glass. Damaged bottled are stockpiled and sent to Nairobi for recycling. For every beer, they averagely use four litres of water. He says the brewery does not affect the river in terms of its water volumes. The water levels normally go down during the dry spell during which they turn to water from National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC).
One of the its core areas of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the environment. UNDP’s country director, Ms Almaz Gebru, during the National Environment Management Policy (NEMP) evaluation workshop recently observed about 20 years ago. UNDP supported the government of Uganda to develop the current environment policy.
“Since the adoption of the NEMP in 1994, Uganda has made tremendous achievements in institutionalising environmental management at national and local level.
“New opportunities and challenges have emerged including oil discovery, exponential growth of the ICT industry and oil and electronic waste; and climate change, that were not catered for in the current policy,” she explained.
Environmentalist Joseph Masembe, the brainchild of the Uganda Little Hands Go Green initiative, observes that Ugandans have not developed a consciousness to protect the environment.
“We have not yet developed the mindfulness to realise that greening up our environment is our responsibility. People will therefore go into this for the wrong reasons - the cash to be made. That’s not sustainable. People need to first own up and become environmental stewards, green ambassadors and advocates. Only then will we be ready. We need to learn to love our environment and have the desire to protect it,” he states about Uganda’s reasons for not being ready for the green economy.
Masembe works with children under 13 years of age to plant fruit trees and have organised climate change debates for children to awaken their environment consciousness when they are still young.
Recently UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, hosted the Climate Summit in New York that brought together more than 100 heads of state, along with chief executives, city mayors, and civil society and labour leaders, to spur renewed efforts on climate change.
The summit aimed to underscore not just the urgency of low-carbon, resilient development, but also that acting on climate can advance the direct interests of nations, businesses and communities.
At the summit President Museveni pointed out that environmental degradation is threat that could worsen the problem of climate change due to lack of electricity that leads to populations destroying the biomass in search of fuel for cooking and the lack of industrialisation that causes overcrowding of the people into subsistence and primitive agriculture. The president proposed that a fund to reclaim the forests and wetlands be put in place.
However, achieving the objectives of the green economy will take more than efforts of Nema because as its director reveals, the environment agency is under staffed and under funded.
