In 2019, cabinet issued a directive to the ministry of Water and Environment to open boundaries of Bugoma forest as one of the ways of solving the land disputes it is engulfed in. The boundary opening was to determine whether the land leased to Hoima Sugar Limited by Bunyoro kingdom in 2016 is located within or outside the forest reserve and also to protect Bugoma from illegal and future encroachment by communities and private individuals.
In August 2022, therefore, the ministry of Lands did and completed the survey process of opening the boundaries of the forest. However, more than a year later, the report for this survey has not been released.
Activists argue that the delay to release this report has led to continued encroachment and degradation of Bugoma forest and has stalled most of the actions they would take to conserve it.
According to Anthony Wolimbwa, the national coordinator for Climate Action Network, the purpose of the report is to clear issues of land conflict, resource ownership and knowing exactly where the forest boundaries pass, without the report, the current encroachment and degradation of the forest is likely to continue.
“It is unfortunate that the report has not been shared despite it having been concluded and the encroachers, land grabbers and those prospecting in land continue to take advantage of this. So, the earlier that report is released, the easier and quicker to save our forest,” Wolimbwa said.
He added, “We need government to come out clean on that and share that report to the public because it is supposed to be a public document. Any further delays are not good from the conservation point of view as this is likely to escalate the encroachment, land conflicts and overall degradation of the forest.”
In an interview with The Observer, Christine Nakimwero Kaaya, the woman member of parliament for Kiboga district and a conservationist, said they are very much interested in getting that report because of the oil activities going on in Bunyoro sub-region which have been projected to generate one million tonnes of carbon annually. The forest reserves in Bunyoro should therefore absorb those emissions before other forest reserves in other parts of Uganda.
“Without this report, it is difficult for the country to do negotiations and bargaining in carbon trade because we don’t know the exact boundaries and acreage of this forest reserve which can be based on to know the amount of carbon it can absorb and therefore demand the right amount of funds from the emitters,” Kaaya said.
According to the legislator who is also the shadow minister for environment, among the things delaying the boundary report are individuals who encroached on the forest illegally and they want to formalize their stay. She says these have tried to entice the local governments in Bunyoro to change Bugoma and Budongo forest reserves into national parks such that they can be accommodated under the eco- tourism concept.
“According to our laws, the management of national parks provides for eco-tourism and under that practice, an individual can apply to develop a national park by constructing infrastructure. But most of the investors when given that leeway, over concentrate on construction of tourism infrastructure and focus less on conserving the environment,” she said.
She noted that the release of this report was a concern by members of parliament in the last budgetary allocation where they even proposed that National Forestry Authority (NFA) be frozen out of the national budget. Though this didn’t happen, Kaaya said that in the upcoming budget allocation process, they will request NFA to update them about the report because it was a priority in the alternative government budget in the financial year we are concluding.
Juliet Mubi, the spokesperson of NFA, told The Observer that since it is the ministry of Lands that did the boundary opening, it is the one supposed to release the report.
“There is sometime last year when the minister of lands promised us that the report was going to be released in one week but it is now four months and it is still not yet out,” she said.
When asked about the report, the minster of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Judith Nabakooba briefly said the report was completed by her ministry and submitted to the ministry of Water and Environment which will present it to cabinet for discussion and decide on the next course of action.
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