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EACOP: Uganda sues to evict landowners standing in way of regional pipeline
Published
4 months agoon
Uganda’s government is in a legal tussle with 112 landowners who are set to be displaced by the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) as low-value payment, absentee landlords and a complex landownership system in some parts of the country delay compensation, causing a headache to the project developers.
Because of this, a Ugandan court will on September 16, 2024, hear a case in which the government has sued 80 people, seeking to evict them from their land in three districts within the Greater Masaka region on the route of the Eacop, whose developers are racing against time to meet the timelines set for the country’s first oil exports next year.
This week, two similar cases were also heard featuring landowners in Hoima and Kyankwanzi districts, which are part of the 296km Eacop stretch in Uganda, where at least 32 absentee landowners and others who rejected low-value compensation pose significant delays.
Energy Minister Ruth Nankabirwa, while addressing the media in Kampala last month, acknowledged the 112 cases “under consideration for compulsory land acquisition due to issues such as untraceable individuals, landowner disputes, refusal of compensation offers, and lack of legal title.”
Eacop officials told The EastAfrican that the project is entering a critical stage to start laying the pipeline, with early civil works almost complete.
Works on the 12 main camp persons yards (MCPYs) and six pump stations are ongoing, while the coating plant in Tanzania was commissioned in March, and 700km of line pipe has already delivered in Tanzania.
“Early civil works are ongoing in both Uganda and Tanzania,” Ms Nankabirwa said.
“In Uganda, work has been completed at three of the five MCPYs located in Hoima, Kakumiro, and Sembabule districts, while work continues at the MCPYs in Mubende and Kyotera districts.”
Stella Amony, communication lead at Eacop Ltd, the special purpose vehicle that is managing operations of the $5 billion project, said the first consignment of coated pipe “is to arrive in Uganda this month.”
But the pace of clearing the 1,443km Eacop route has been slower and dispute-ridden on the Uganda side, which is the shorter strict of the corridor, with only 96 percent of project-affected persons (PAPs) in the country having received compensation, compared with 99 percent in Tanzania.
The pipeline corridor spans 2,740 acres across 296km in Uganda, with 3,660 PAPs, while in Tanzania, it covers 10,081 acres across a distance of 1,147km, with 9904 persons eligible for compensation.
As the hearing of these lawsuits seeking to evict the landowners kicks off, some of the affected people who were sued for lacking a legal standing or a representative to process their families’ compensation have blamed their woes on NewPlan, the firm that was hired to implement the Eacop resettlement action plan.
Sarah Namatovu, for instance, says her family was sued for lacking a legal representative or letters of administration to the estate after the rightful landowner died, and this required processing of a death certificate, which the resettlement action plan contractor promised to pursue.
“NewPlan came to our home in 2018 and informed us that the death certificate we have was not fit for purpose. This is because the certificate was not issued by the National Identification and Registration Authority,” she explained.
“NewPlan promised to support us to acquire the right death certificate so that we could process letters of administration and get compensation, but they never did. The next thing we heard is that we had been sued because we rejected compensation, yet we did not.”
Activists say the majority of the landowners are women, the elderly, and persons with disabilities, who could become homeless if the courts grant the government’s prayers to evict the PAPs, with the government to blame for their failure to receive compensation arising from a complex land tenure system in parts of Uganda.
For instance, Peter Arinaitwe, a lawyer who represents some of the affected people in court, explained that government years ago directed the Administrator-General to stop issuing certificates of no objection and letters of administration for estates under Buganda Kingdom.
“The affected estates are those under the Succession Register in Buganda Kingdom. Matters relating to those estates are supposed to be administered by the kingdom,” he said, adding that because of that directive, it has been difficult for some people in Buganda to obtain certificates of no objection from the office of the Administrator-General to process letters of administration.
According to minister Nankabirwa, the government proposes to deposit the landowners’ compensation in court, pending the processing of legal documents that would facilitate access to their money.
It is understood that most of the people affected by the Eacop lawsuits fall under this category, and their lawyer argues that even if their compensation is deposited with the court, the families will not access it without letters of administration.
“If affected people cannot access their compensation, yet the Uganda Constitution of 1995 says that government cannot take possession of citizens’ property before compensation, then the government will legally and morally have no right to use the land taken from the families without compensation,” said Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance.
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Happy 2025 to you all! Please join Witness Radio again this year to protect thousands of local farmers who are losing their land to a tree plantation owned by a Taiwan investor.
Published
2 days agoon
January 13, 2025By Witness Radio team.
Dear supporters and followers, we are deeply grateful for your continued support and commitment to our cause. Your involvement is crucial as we navigate the challenges ahead. Welcome back from the festive holidays.
At Witness Radio, breaking off for a holiday was not possible because we received devastating news about the sentencing of three community activists to Muyinayina prison before the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Prisoners include, Byakatonda David, Kabuuka Levi, and Byamukama Yuda. Prisoners include, Byakatonda David, Kabuuka Levi, and Byamukama Yuda. Byamukama is the Kicucuulo Local Council One Chairperson. Their imprisonment is a grave injustice that we cannot ignore.
The situation in the Mubende district is urgent and cannot be overstated. The activists are currently held in Muyinayina prison, located in southwestern Uganda, and their immediate release is crucial.
A magistrate court in the Mubende district deemed the trio’s activities, which were aimed at defending their community’s land, criminal. This unjust ruling led to a 30-month jail sentence, a grave injustice that we cannot ignore.
We chose to sacrifice our holidays to visit the victim’s local farmers. We started with visiting prisoners at Muyinayina prison. However, upon reaching the prison, we were informed by officers at the prison’s quarter-guard that the prison authority had banned all prison visits in the country until mid-January 2025 due to the Christmas holiday. We engaged the Muyinayina prison administration about our visit as lawyers, and eventually, we were allowed in and met our clients. Despite being incarcerated, very calm, confident, and committed activists felt energized by our visit.
See brief facts from the fact-finding mission below;
- The investor, with the help of Mubende district police and other private security firms, has seized over 2,590 hectares so far and continues to expand.
- Mubende district police and investor’s workers continue to invade the homes of the community, defenders, activists, and leaders opposed to the illegal eviction in the wee hours and cause arbitrary arrests.
- The investor is claiming land that hosts ten (10) villages occupied by thousands of smallholder farmers.
- The investor’s name was established as Mr. Chang Shu-mu, commonly known as Martin Chang, and his wife was Anna Kyoheirwe.
- Locals report cases of violence and destruction of properties against the investor to police but are not investigated as all perpetrators are enjoying their freedoms uninterrupted.
- The trio claim they were unheard of before a prison sentence was passed.
- Locals have raised their concerns with various government offices, including the office of the Resident District Commissioner (the president’s representative at Mubende district). However, no intervention has been made, and forced evictions continue unabated.
The situation is dire and requires immediate action. We urge you to join us in demanding a review of the case file, protection of the community’s land rights, and, most importantly, a thorough investigation into the conduct of the Mubende district police and investor’s workers. Those in power must be held accountable for their actions.
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Africa’s carbon deals and the hidden tenure challenge
Published
5 days agoon
January 9, 2025I. New pressure on land?
Observers marked 2023 as a “make-or-break” year for voluntary carbon markets and a key “ inflection point ” for their role in addressing climate change and global deforestation. Proponents highlight that forest carbon projects channel much-needed funds towards forest protection and are pivotal to climate change mitigation. On the other hand, critics emphasize that carbon deals set incentives for overcrediting. Moreover, carbon offsetting allows the biggest emitters to simply outsource their climate mitigation efforts with potentially adverse impacts for affected communities .
The debate was fueled when several large-scale carbon offset projects were reported in Sub-Saharan Africa just before the UN Climate Change Conference COP 28 took place in Dubai in 2023. The sheer dimensions of the planned projects bring back memories of the last major wave of large-scale land deals in 2011 — notably, memories of evictions of local communities and Indigenous Peoples, loss of livelihoods and a lack of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) practices.
2007/2008
The global financial crisis unleashed.
2010/2011
A major wave of land investments for food and biofuel production in across Africa and the Global South.
2022/2023
Seventeen years on, the pressure on land never eased with a new wave of deals related to carbon offsets, green hydrogen schemes, and other “green investments”
Picture: Demonstrators at COP 25 in Madrid, December 2019, against carbon offsetting schemes, advocating for equitable climate solutions and rejecting market-based approaches.
In 2023, four land-sector organizations came together, with support from the European Commission, to strengthen the central role of data in securing equitable land rights for sustainable development, poverty eradication, peace and the protection of human rights. The Land Data Partnership , which includes the International Land Coalition , the Land Portal Foundation , the Land Matrix Initiative , and Prindex , aims to improve the complementarity of global land data initiatives and to identify opportunities to hold key actors responsible.
Organisations collaborating in the Land Data Partnership
At first glance, carbon offsetting projects appear to be win-win-win deals for local communities, governments, and the environment, and a key strategy in mitigating climate change. Yet, if we look more closely the question arises: how much can communities benefit if they face insecure land rights and weak land governance systems?
This data story explores in detail the consequences of climate change mitigation for land tenure, and vice versa. Zooming into several case studies in East and West Africa, it highlights the dimensions of tenure security and how people-centered, inclusive and effective land governance systems can help manage the influx of carbon offset projects.
A group of women in Kenya’s Kasigau Corridor, supported by the REDD+ Project manager Wildlife Works, gathers to create sustainable crafts and strengthen their community livelihoods.
Civil society organizations, as well as policymakers, are concerned about the pressures exerted by large-scale carbon deals and the corresponding threats to the land rights of local populations. In this context, Kenya provides an important example. According to Land Matrix and LANDex data, conflicts were reported in 57% of all large-scale land acquisition deals in Kenya.
“The Mau is Kenya’s biggest forest. The Ogiek people are on the front line of a climate solution that is used to justify ongoing evictions and emission. In our view it’s clear that the interest shown by offsetting companies is prompting the Kenyan Government to assert its control.”
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COP16 in Riyadh: World Leaders Commit $12.15B to Combat Land Degradation and Drought
Published
4 weeks agoon
December 17, 2024The 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has concluded in Riyadh, marking the largest and most inclusive conference in the organization’s history.
With over 20,000 participants, including global leaders, scientists, private sector representatives, and civil society groups, the conference laid out bold strategies to address land degradation, drought, and desertification.
The highlight of the conference was the announcement of the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership, which secured $12.15 billion in pledges to support drought-affected regions in 80 vulnerable countries, including Uganda.
This funding aims to strengthen food security, promote sustainable land management, and protect ecosystems from the growing impacts of climate change.
For Uganda, where over 40% of the population relies on agriculture, this commitment offers hope for combating the devastating effects of prolonged droughts in the cattle corridor and other semi-arid regions.
In a move to enhance global preparedness for droughts, COP16 launched an AI-powered Drought Observatory, a groundbreaking tool designed to provide real-time data and predictive analysis.
Uganda, with its ongoing challenges in monitoring and responding to climate impacts, stands to benefit immensely from this technology, which will enable the government to anticipate and respond effectively to severe drought conditions.
This could mitigate the recurring food insecurity and water scarcity issues faced by communities in Karamoja and other drought-prone areas.
H.E. Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen AlFadley, COP16 President, in his closing remarks, stated:
“This session marks a turning point in raising awareness and strengthening efforts to restore land and build resilience. The Riyadh Declaration sends a clear message: the time for decisive action is now.”
For Uganda, this turning point is critical as the country battles desertification in key ecosystems like the cattle corridor and Lake Kyoga basin, which threaten biodiversity, agriculture, and livelihoods.
With only 6% of land restoration funding currently coming from private sources, COP16 introduced the Business for Land initiative to increase private sector engagement in land restoration.
Over 400 companies participated in discussions on sustainable finance, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, and strategies to mobilize private investment for land restoration projects.
Uganda, which has already seen successful private-sector participation in conservation projects such as carbon trading and reforestation in areas like Mabira Forest, could tap into this global momentum to attract more investments for land restoration initiatives.
To promote inclusivity, COP16 placed women and youth at the forefront of the fight against land degradation. Key outcomes included:
The launch of youth-led initiatives to drive grassroots climate action.
Adoption of gender-responsive policies to ensure equitable participation in land restoration efforts.
For Uganda, these measures are especially relevant.
The country has a youthful population and strong women-led grassroots organizations that are already leading efforts to promote climate resilience through tree planting and sustainable farming practices.
The resolutions adopted at COP16 provide a framework for scaling up these local efforts while ensuring inclusivity and equitable representation.
Scientific data presented at COP16 painted a dire picture of the planet’s land resources:
77.6% of Earth’s land is drier today than it was 30 years ago.
40.6% of the planet is now classified as drylands, threatening ecosystems, food security, and livelihoods.
For Uganda, this data underscores the urgent need for action.
With parts of the country already facing desertification and reduced rainfall patterns, the findings highlight the importance of restoring degraded lands like Nakasongola and tackling deforestation in critical areas such as Mount Elgon.
As COP16 wraps up, attention now shifts to COP17, which will take place in Mongolia.
Delegates will continue discussions on establishing a global drought regime, building on the momentum and progress achieved in Riyadh.
For Uganda, the outcomes of COP16 represent a pivotal moment.
The historic commitments, technological innovations, and inclusive policies offer the country an opportunity to address its growing environmental challenges.
If implemented effectively, these resolutions could help Uganda restore its degraded lands, safeguard livelihoods, and build resilience against future climate shocks, positioning the country as a leader in sustainable land management in Africa.
Source: nilepost.co.ug
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Happy 2025 to you all! Please join Witness Radio again this year to protect thousands of local farmers who are losing their land to a tree plantation owned by a Taiwan investor.
COP16 in Riyadh: World Leaders Commit $12.15B to Combat Land Degradation and Drought
West and Central African grassroots organisations reaffirm their commitment against tree monocultures and in defence of their ancestral lands and forests
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Invisible victims of Uganda Land Grabs
Resource Center
- LAND GRABS AT GUNPOINT REPORT IN KIRYANDONGO DISTRICT
- FORCED LAND EVICTIONS IN UGANDA TRENDS RIGHTS OF DEFENDERS IMPACT AND CALL FOR ACTION
- 12 KEY DEMANDS FROM CSOS TO WORLD LEADERS AT THE OPENING OF COP16 IN SAUDI ARABIA
- PRESENDIANTIAL DIRECTIVE BANNING ALL LAND EVICTIONS IN UGANDA
- FROM LAND GRABBERS TO CARBON COWBOYS A NEW SCRAMBLE FOR COMMUNITY LANDS TAKES OFF
- African Faith Leaders Demand Reparations From The Gates Foundation.
- GUNS, MONEY AND POWER GRABBED OVER 1,975,834 HECTARES OF LAND; BROKE FAMILIES IN MUBENDE DISTRICT.
- THE SITUATION OF PLANET, ENVIRONMENTAL AND LAND RIGHTS DEFENDERS IS FURTHER DETERIORATING IN UGANDA AS 2023 WITNESSED A RECORD OF OVER 180 ATTACKS.
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Happy 2025 to you all! Please join Witness Radio again this year to protect thousands of local farmers who are losing their land to a tree plantation owned by a Taiwan investor.
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Africa’s carbon deals and the hidden tenure challenge