Kampala, Uganda — All Uganda’s forests will have disappeared in the next 30 years, if nothing is done to save them today. That is what the experts at the National Forestry Authority (NFA) say. But not many people believe them.
John Diisi is among the believers. He has worked in Uganda’s forest department for over 30 years.
Over that time, he has witnessed firsthand how the country’s forest cover has dwindled from around 5 million hectares in the early 1990s, which is almost three quarters of Uganda’s central region which covers 24 districts, to less than 1.5 million hectares today, which is about 20% of the same area.
In a recent interview, Diisi told The Independent that most of Uganda’s forests like Mabira were destroyed by charcoal burners and timber dealers mainly because forestry officials lacked the capacity to monitor and protect them.
Diisi describes how, until recently, the person in charge of Mabira Central Forest Reserve or any other forest in Uganda would have to walk or ride a motor bike or even drive a car to monitor events in a particular area within the forest reserve.
“If they saw a suspicious path within the forest, they would need to follow it up and eventually find a charcoal kiln and confirm that people are burning charcoal,” he says.
Fortunately, over this time, Diisi has also witnessed the gradual adoption of technology to fight forest destruction. And, it appears, no technology has excited him as much as what he has now.
Diisi is today the coordinator of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Mapping at the National Forestry Authority (NFA). The GIS is now incorporated in a new system called the Natural Resource Information System (NARIS) which can be used to trigger real-time response to any unwanted activity in forests by enforcers.
The system, developed by the NFA in collaboration with the UNDP, enables Diisi and other authorized officers of NFA to know where exactly deforestation or even afforestation is happening.
“This system gives us what the people in the security sector refer to as ‘intelligence.’ I can now monitor a lot of things happening while I am seated in my office,” Diisi says excitedly. The technology can be useful for foresters superintending over hard-to-access reserves such as those located in mountainous, and water-logged or insecure areas.
“With this system, I can look over and monitor the whole of Mabira forest. I am able to show you where they are burning charcoal or cutting trees or cultivating crops. I will then call the on-ground people and point them to particular coordinates where something is going on.”
Diisi says if the NFA were to rely only on people on the ground to effectively monitor the country’s forest estate, as was the case before, it would need tens of thousands of personnel to do on-ground monitoring. Instead, his department relies on technology. When we spoke, there were
a few of his 10-strong personnel hunched in front of big computer screens, monitoring forest activity in almost real time.
These support about 250 on-ground personnel comprising sector managers, supervisors and patrol men who are further supported by the Environmental Protection Police Unit.
“Our job here is to inform those people in the field about what is happening in the field. If the field people go out in the forest and find charcoal kilns and timber being cut, they call for re-inforcement because the police force is not enough and they cannot be everywhere.”
The new system was developed by the NFA and UNDP after they recognised a gap in recent data to track deforestation in the country. It was officially unveiled on Nov.30.
Speaking at the launch of the system in Kampala, Tom Okello; the executive director of the NFA, said it will lead to a more coordinated approach to natural resource management in Uganda.
“What could be cut down on private land has been cut down; there is no more to cut down and so, what we are protecting now, we are protecting jealously,” Diisi said a few days later during our interview.
Technology boost
The experts say the new system– the NARIS– will enable them to forecast trends in the country’s fast declining forest cover. It can be used both online and offline and incorporates a Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping technology with Uganda’s land cover map as a baseline to assist with field monitoring and validation of information gathered from satellite imagery.
The system which also has the capacity to monitor human and wildlife migration patterns, urban development and other variables beyond deforestation has been made accessible to government bodies, the private sector and other key stakeholders in the forestry and environmental sectors.
Diisi says it is important for Uganda’s forestry agency to know where exactly deforestation or even afforestation is happening.
Another expert, Leonidas Hitimana, the team leader for forestry in the country office of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told The Independent on Dec. 06 that long before it was possible to deploy technologies such as satellite or remote sensing data to map forest resources, ground-based measurements were used. But these were very expensive in terms of money and human resources and it was difficult to map the entire country.
He said modern technology such as satellite imagery is now fundamental in forest management.
“It enables the efficient mapping and monitoring of our forests at a large scale. You can know the state of a forest without visiting it physically on the ground,” he said.
Uganda’s forest estate
Elsie Attafuah; the UNDP Resident Representative in Uganda says deforestation threatens Uganda’s environmental, economic and social wellbeing which is tightly bound to the benefits healthy forests provide.
“Deforestation has the potential to threaten this fine balance through exacerbating climate change and reducing biodiversity, and if deforestation is not addressed the impacts have potential to stall or even reverse Uganda’s development trajectory.”
Conservationists say Uganda’s fast growing population combined with an economic model based on rising demands for wood, wood products, and land for agriculture and settlements are driving the country to unprecedented forest loss.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Uganda’s forest cover (mainly tropical high forests and woodlands) stood at almost 45% of Uganda’s total land. But by 1990, this had dwindled to 5 million hectares or about 25%.
In 2005, it declined further to 3.5 million hectares and by 2009; the country’s forest cover had shrunk to 1.5 million hectares. The forest managers say if deforestation is allowed to continue at the present rate, the country risks losing all its forests by the year 2050.
Interestingly, there has been a recent turn in fortunes for the country’s forests. Tom Okello, the executive director of the NFA told The Independent in March, this year, that the country has started regaining its forest cover.
The NFA says the most recent land cover mapping published in 2016 showed how Uganda’s forest cover now stands at about 2.5 million hectares or 12.4% of Uganda’s land surface (excluding water). More forests, however, are outside protected areas and this is where deforestation is taking place on a massive scale.
NARIS is no silver bullet
This is why Onesmus Mugyenyi, the deputy executive director of the Advocates Coalition on Development and Environment (ACODE), a Kampala based policy think tank told The Independent that much as NARIS is a good and modern tool for monitoring forest gain and loss, it will not solve the country’s deforestation challenge.
Citing the most recent State of Environment Report of 2018/2019 compiled by the National Environment Management Authority, the country’s environmental management agency, Mugyenyi who is also the coordinator of the Forest Governance Learning Group, a loose coalition of 54 NGOs and individuals, said population pressure, unplanned urbanisation, plantation agriculture and corruption in the forest sector are the key drivers of Uganda’s fast declining forest cover.
“Lack of data does not feature prominently,” he says, “That tells you that while it is a very good technology, it is not going to be a silver bullet in solving real issues that plague the forestry sector.”
Mugyenyi told The Independent that data is supposed to help planning and implementation of the plans. Unfortunately, he said, this is Uganda’s biggest challenge. “We tend to do short term planning but even with those plans, we rarely implement them,” he said.
Mugyenyi also mentions poor coordination of the government agencies involved in conservation. This too has impacted negatively on the country’s forest estate.
“The NFA does its own things; the Ministry of Water and Environment which is responsible for policy and regulation also does its own things. These institutions are not working together.”
“There is no coordination mechanism between the agencies that manage the forests and the Ministry of Lands that is responsible for titling and issuing the land titles; that is why the Lands ministry issues titles in a protected forest.”
“That tells you that this is not going to be corrected by having this information system,” he says.
Jessica Webb, the Senior Manager for Global Engagement at Global Forest Watch, a programme run by the Washington-based World Resources Institute also told The Independent on Dec.07 in an email that there have been enormous advances in the use of satellite data for forest monitoring in the past two decades.
“Twenty years ago, if forest rangers and other decision-makers wanted to analyse forest change over a period of time, they would have to purchase satellite images for their areas of interest, wait for it to be mailed to them, and view the areas and information on a paper map which was already likely out of date.”
“It was not only costly data but it was also not interactive, and it was not easily comparable across geographies and time periods,” Webb told The Independent.
Now, mobile applications, such as “Forest Watcher,” allow rangers to download and navigate to recent deforestation alert areas, document their observations and take photos, all with smart phones. The digital reports can then be shared through messaging applications or uploaded to a database and analysed. But, she said, improvement in Uganda’s forest cover will need a lot of funding and political will.
“Technology is not a “silver bullet;” it is just one tool that can help make forest monitoring more efficient and effective,” she told The Independent.
“Forest managers need funding and support in order to be able to have sufficient numbers of staff to be able to monitor large areas effectively, training on technology as well as complementary tactics such as personal and digital security and community engagement.”
“If the deforestation is being caused by commercial operations or other actors who are willingly violating the law for personal gain, rangers need to follow through by law enforcement and the courts to ensure that illegal deforestation has consequence.”
“If deforestation is being caused by communities who have historic rights to live in and around protected areas or have nowhere else to go, there needs to be funding and support for social programmes to create livelihood initiatives so that communities have economic alternatives, and/ or processes to come to agreements about allowable limited sustainable use of forest resources within protected areas.”
The concerns raised by Mugyenyi, Webb and others could be addressed if, as UNDP says, the NARIS platform is scaled up to also monitor and provide data for other natural resources.
The UNDP says it has secured US$628,950 from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) through the Anti-Corruption Innovation Initiative (ACPIS), to scale-up the platform to facilitate the management of Uganda’s environmental ecosystem.
The UNDP will be working alongside new partners such as the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U), and Civil Society Organizations, among others.
Erik Francis Acanakwo, the new country representative of World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Uganda says besides deploying the latest technology, Uganda also needs to revise its forest policy and the National Forest and Tree Planting laws to address contemporary challenges.
He mentions finding new ways through which trees can be grown to increase the country’s forest cover and promoting business opportunities that are complementary to forest resource management.
“Promoting the increase of trees-on-farm is one such opportunity that tree cover can increase on private land,” he told The Independent, “The ability for people to provide and use their own woody biomass would reduce the dependence on woody biomass from gazetted forest reserves.”
Acanakwo is also a strong advocate of eco-tourism in most of Uganda’s forest reserves. If this were deliberately promoted, he says, communities neighboring forest resources can benefit economically from the very existence of the forests.
“For this to work, however, there should be deliberate efforts geared towards provision of low cost loans, in addition to other relevant business management support,” Acanakwo told The Independent.