Government will no longer degazette forests for human use
Government will no longer support requests from communities to degazette forests for human use.
Prime Minister, Robinah Nabbanja made the revelation yesterday while responding to a question posed by Iganatius Mudimi (Elgon County) on how far Government has gone to process requests by various local governments to open up some forest reserves for human use.
“I heard the Prime Minister in her response that the President gave a directive that we should utilize part of South Busoga forest that they gave to the community. But the law says any changes in forest use has to be degazetted. Has Government brought an instrument to degazette that area? On top of that, there are districts which submitted areas to degazette like Mbale, Mbarara, Ntungamo so I want the Prime Minister to tell us the progress of those requests,”said Mudimi.
The Premier replied that although some decisions to degazette some forests date back as far as 2002, Cabinet rescinded on such decisions and there won’t be any forests opened up for human occupation.
“We, as cabinet have come up with a strategy, we need forests, we need to protect our eco-system and we agreed no more degazettement of forests. That was done way back but as of now, we agreed as government that we have to protect forests that are there now and we also have to plant more trees,” said Nabbanja.
However, Deputy Speaker Tayebwa called out the contradictions in decisions by Cabinet, citing the case of Gulu University that got an African Development Bank funded project to take over 25acres of the forest reserve and in replacement planted 25acres of trees in Nwoya, but Government refused to fulfill its pledge.
Tayebwa also cited the case of Ntungamo district that is in court because the Minister allowed the district to get part of the forest park in exchange for another land where the forest was planted but the district is yet to receive the land from the forest reserve.
“When you move in Gulu City, the forests you are talking about aren’t there , they are full of high rise building. So instead of lying to ourselves, why not agree that where we have no forests we come in we realign and stop lying to ourselves instead of lying to ourselves that we have a forest in Gulu when we don’t have it. It is only high rise buildings,” said Tayebwa.
Statistics indicate that Uganda’s forest cover has been depleted to 8% up from 24% in 1990s, largely attributed to human encroachment for different activities such as tree cutting for charcoal and timber as well as agriculture.
From 2002 to 2021, Uganda lost 71.6kha of humid primary forest, making up 7.6% of its total tree cover loss in the same time period, while the total area of humid primary forest in Uganda decreased by 14% in this time period. From 2001 to 2021, Uganda lost 967kha of tree cover, equivalent to a 12% decrease in tree cover since 2000.
