Let’s do all we can to stop charcoal cartels

Police officers dismantle a charcoal kiln during an operation in Palaro Sub-county, Gulu District in September 2019. Security personnel have been accused of conniving with charcoal dealers to smuggle charcoal. PHOTO/TOBBIAS JOLLY OWINY
What you need to know:
- Protecting their habitats is vitally important if anything because without trees other plants and animals would be lost for ever. Let us wake up and smell the coffee. The charcoal cartels should be stopped in their track
This newspaper’s recent reportage on how cartels have rendered President Museveni’s 2023 ban on charcoal trading useless should worry us all.
Probably more than most care to admit. If indeed our collective national identity has little tolerance for error, deforestation ought to be a troubling occurrence for anyone who cares about the present and future in equal measure.
We should interest ourselves in all that fuels tree loss. While the effect of farming, grazing and logging should not be glossed over, it is clear that the fact that the vast bulk of Ugandan households use charcoal for cooking needs close examination. It is indeed worth noting that the discerning eye of environmentalists has vividly brought to life the fact that Uganda loses 100,000 hectares of forest cover annually.
Lest we forget, the aforesaid is no small beer. And the role that tomorrow's leaders play in it, albeit unwittingly, is vexing. Empirical evidence shows that 7,000 hectares of forest cover are lost each month of a school term.
This is all thanks to the schools’ collective demand for firewood. It therefore cannot be stressed enough why the previously mentioned demand has to drop off precipitously. If it is any consolation, Uganda is not an outlier. As a matter of fact, 420m hectares of forest were lost between 1990 and 2020. Even more troubling, between a third and half of the slightly under 60,000 tree species in the world are at risk of extinction in the wild.
While a rebuking finger can be pointed at birds, amphibians and reptiles for the sad state of affairs, mammals—including humans, obviously—are not blameless. The human interests in trees that are contributing to the dwindling forest cover can be named off the finger of one hand.
These are: food, fuel, medicine and construction materials. But other interests should not be reduced to footnotes. The human interests we would like to draw your attention to are those that leave our trees standing tall. In case it needs to be spelled out, we are talking about biodiversity here.
Think how they shelter us from storms, how they reduce soil erosion as well as how they absorb and store carbon dioxide. Evidently, our settled views that have normalised deforestation thanks to our consumptive needs—especially those around cooking—have to be challenged in all ways possible. It cannot be business as usual by any stretch of imagination. What the charcoal cartels have vested interests in represents a clear and present danger.
The sooner we recognise this the better. Protecting their habitats is vitally important if anything because without trees other plants and animals would be lost for ever. How about that for a fact? Let us wake up and smell the coffee. The charcoal cartels should be stopped in their tracks