President should take action against wetland encroachers

This week, it emerged that President Museveni recently directed that investors be chased away from wetlands. The directive could have been reported as news, but it has now started sounding like a broken record.

The President’s position on wetlands has always been clear. Following the floods in Mbale District and the surrounding areas that killed close to 30 people a year ago, the President issued new directives on wetland degradation.

Weeks earlier, during the 2022/2023 Financial Year Budget speech, the President ordered all encroachers out of wetlands, saying there would be no negotiations with them. At the beginning of 2019, government also issued tough guidelines, saying all titles in wetlands would be cancelled.

But to see that years later, the President is coming out to repeat the same things means it is time he took action against disobedient civil servants.

Whereas government institutions are fighting themselves on how to implement the President’s directives, Uganda’s wetlands are getting depleted.

“We have been pulling ropes with UIA [Uganda Investment Authority]. We insisted that any wetland, whether in gazetted industrial parks, must be protected. UIA, on the other hand, was of the opinion that all land in gazetted industrial parks, including wetlands, must not be excluded from construction,” minister for Water and Environment Sam Cheptoris told this publication this week.

Wetland encroachment, according to the National Environment Management Authority (Nema), goes on in the form of settlement, agriculture, dumping of murram and draining. A 2015 report by Nema indicates that the most affected protected arears have been used for human activity such as farming, construction of structures and dumping of waste.

According to the wetland mapping exercise of 2008, wetland resources were noted to have reduced from 15 percent in 1994 to 10.9 percent of Uganda’s land surface area. This should inform government’s attempts at protecting wetlands.

The longer we drag our feet on implementing this directive, the more the wetlands get encroached on.

Those issuing titles in wetlands should personally be held accountable. Threats against them should now move to arrests and prosecutions so that others see what happens when you aid the breaking of the law.

Nema recently announced that there is going to be an overhaul of the Environmental Protection Police Unit. This is a welcome move, but we must remember that without funding and political will to go after the encroachers, especially the “connected” ones, the new environmental unit will face the same challenges.

Finally, the President needs to stop repeating directives and instead start cracking the whip. Who are these defiant subordinates who are not following presidential directives?