
Writer: Karoli Ssemogerere. PHOTO/FILE
It's official, 2024 again was the hottest year on record. Hot and drier weather with low moisture content is starting to manifest its ugly head in the form of wildfires. Hot weather is doing the reverse, dropping heavy rains in many corners of the world that in turn translate into landslides.
A recent feature in Ntoroko District shows that the 34km borderline between Uganda and the DRC along the Semuliki River is gradually chipping away along the river banks on the Ugandan side. The overgrown DRC side, testament to years of conflict is intact.
Ntoroko LC5 Chairman Williams Kasoro says river bank restoration will cost as much as Shs20b, one wonders from which budget line this would come. Residents are exasperated as graveyards, cultivation fields, and dwellings are being washed away.
Ntoroko, on the way to Bundibugyo is a beautiful plain, just before one ascends to the higher elevation in Bundibugyo. In 2022, I enjoyed a drive up to Bundibugyo, driving up the highway, were well-appointed rest areas where you stared down the beauty of the Rift Valley.
There had been landslides and fragments of rock had damaged the Fort-Portal-Ntoroko-Bundibugyo highway. At the Semuliki Gorge and at the Sempaya hot springs, nature demonstrated its allure. An egg boiling in the hot water, where time just stops for a moment.
Then the town of Bundibugyo looked like a town up in the Alps as dusk fell. Ntoroko rears more animals, making the loss of grazing land more remarkable. In 2014, along with former Executive Director of Uganda National Roads Authority, Ben Ssebbugga Kimeze, we flew in a private helicopter across Los Angeles Bay, with the Palisades on one side, a view of Hollywood and Santa Monica close by. Our host flew his chopper to his weekend home.
The view was dazzling. In 2022, I rode a train from San Diego to Oakland, almost the entire length of the Golden State. In Bakersfield, I switched from one train to another. I saw a bit of the Pacific coast. California, mostly desert has created great wealth for different generations of its residents, some came in the gold rush, many wealthy farmers relying on irrigation turned California into a producer of citrus fruits.
California has 5.8 million acres under irrigation. Cattle farmers were further north in the Modesto area. The train in the early morning woke up cows as it rattled up the west coast. Universities like the University of California at Davis specialised in harnessing knowledge on how man would tame the environment around him, conserve water, maintain soil fertility and increase farm yields.
Yet the success of man in taming the environment has been man’s own undoing. The American dream roared in California, the world’s biggest auto market. Driving everywhere became the norm as auto manufacturers defeated proposals to improve public transport. Environment beauticians drafted strict building codes limiting building inventory.
Homes are so compact, and expensive, that one fire is able to burn several homes before being contained. Water scarcity is another issue, as the waters from snow dominate water supply, relied on for 65 percent of water supply.
Dry winters produce the opposite problem, less moisture and more combustible vegetation, that is dry. The agony of climate change is that it is impossible to flee from. The global rich and poor in turn are all paying dearly. The disasters associated with climate change range from loss of life, livestock, property and rising costs of everything else, insurance to mitigate risk and future disasters.
There is yet consensus to emerge on what needs to be done for the same geometric world to accommodate a rising and more affluent population. The apocalypse of the environment must be managed before it becomes an Armageddon.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law
and an Advocate. [email protected]