NGO WORK
NFA deployment fails to halt logging, charcoal burning in Kyenjojo
Published
3 years agoon

Some of the timber from Oruha Central Forest Reserve awaiting transportation along the Kyenjojo-Fort Portal highway. Photo by Wilson Asiimwe
Local authorities claim that UPDF soldiers and the NFA officials connive with the illegal timber dealers to destroy the forests
Charcoal burning and illegal logging persist in Kyenjojo central forest reserves despite the deployment of Police and Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) officers attached to the National Forestry Authority (NFA).
The forests of Itwara, Muzizi, Oruha, and Matiri are the most affected with a number of truckloads leaving the forests each day.
Residents around the forest say that often assorted timber is transported out of the forest on trucks without abandon.
Julius Alinitwe a resident of Matiri says that several sections of Matiri Forest have been cut down by timber dealers and a few parts of the forest have been left.
“We have been seeing a number of trucks loaded with timber and charcoal leaving the forests under the watch of the law enforcement officers and nothing has been done,” Alinitwe says.
Richard Businge the LC3 chairman for Bugaki sub-county which is near Itwara Central Forest Reserve says that as local leaders their efforts to fight the timber dealers have been hindered by the enforcement officers.
“Itwara Forest has been depleted and very soon the forest will be no more all the trees have been cut down by the illegal timber dealers,” Businge says.
Gilbert Kato a charcoal dealer in Matiri trading center says that it is difficult for locals to completely give up on charcoal burning despite its negative effects on the environment mainly because it yields quick money to enable them to support their families instead of struggling for loans.
Army, NFA officials blamed
John Baptist Kansiime the LC3 chairman for Kanyegaramire sub-county says that the UPDF soldiers and the NFA officials connive with the illegal timber dealers to destroy the forests.
“We have on several occasions intercepted lorries ferrying timbers and charcoal from the forests and when we inform the army and the NFA officials they release the trucks and because of that we have also lost morale and we no longer report,” Kansiime says.
Jackson Kamara a resident of Bugaki says that many of their colleagues have been tortured by the soldiers when they give out information about the destruction of the forest.
Apollo Bwebale the resident district commissioner for Kyenjojo says that leaders should come out and report all such cases so that they can be reported.
“I have had several allegations and am going to conduct investigations in some cases where it has been alleged that senior army officials are involved in illegal logging in Kyenjojo,” Bwebale says.
Bwebale says that several forests have been destroyed and encroached on and there was a need for the NFA to open up boundaries because people have encroached on the forest land.

Col Allan Kyangungu the UPDF commandant of vital assets and installations unit says that UPDF works with the police and the NFA enforcement officers to protect the forests.
“We work under very unfortunate circumstances we enter the forests knowing that it’s a matter of death and life some of our officers have been killed the situation is so tempting however if there is any soldier who does not act professionally report him and we shall deal with him,” Kyangungu says.
He adds that there are clear procedures involving the UPDF soldiers in NFA patrols.
“The NFA officials must write to the commandant of the vital assess and installation unit of the army and get guidance then the order must come from the commander land forces to the division commanders and anyone who goes contrary to that will get problems.”
Tom Rukundo the director of natural forests at NFA anticipates that any illegal practice that happens is a result of limited staff.
He also blames the practices on increasing numbers of residents within the forest areas who failed to adopt alternative means of income generation.
“We are going to move to the forests in Kyenjojo district to assess the level of depletion and we are going to open up boundaries because many of our forests have been encroached on,” Rukundo says.
According to a 2018 report by the Global Environment Facility-GEF up to 6 million tons of wood are annually transformed into 1.8 million tons of charcoal. This means increased greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion and flooding in formerly forested areas.
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NGO WORK
Almost 2,000 land and environmental defenders were killed between 2012 and 2022 for simply standing up to protect our planet and us all from the accelerating climate crisis.
Published
2 weeks agoon
September 13, 2023
For the past 11 years, Global Witness has documented and denounced waves of threats, violence and killings of land and environmental defenders across the world, and 2022 marks the beginning of our second decade documenting lethal attacks. The world has changed dramatically since we started documenting these in 2012. But one thing that has not changed is the relentlessness of the killings.
Last year, at least 177 defenders lost their lives for protecting our planet, bringing the total number of killings to 1,910 since 2012. At least 1,390 of these killings took place between the adoption of the Paris Agreement on 12 December 2015 and 31 December 2022.
On average, a defender was killed every other day in 2022, just as was the case in 2021. Although the overall figure is slightly lower last year than in 2021, when we recorded 200 killings, this does not mean that the situation has significantly improved. The worsening climate crisis and the ever-increasing demand for agricultural commodities, fuel and minerals will only intensify the pressure on the environment – and those who risk their lives to defend it. Increasingly, non-lethal strategies such as criminalisation, harassment and digital attacks are also being used to silence defenders.

The situation in Latin America remains particularly concerning. In 2022, the region accounted for 88% of killings – an ever-growing majority of the world’s cases. A total of 11 of the 18 countries where we documented cases in 2022 were in Latin America.
Colombia tops the global ranking with 60 murders in yet another dire year for the country. This is almost double the number of killings compared to 2021, when 33 defenders lost their lives. Once again, Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, small-scale farmers and environmental activists have been viciously targeted. Yet there is hope; when Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president in contemporary Colombia, took office in August 2022, he promised social transformation and enhanced protection for defenders. No government had committed to that before.
In Brazil, 34 defenders lost their lives, compared to 26 in 2021. Defenders in Brazil faced relentless hostility from former president Jair Bolsonaro’s government, whose policies have opened up the Amazon to exploitation and destruction, have undermined environmental institutions and have fuelled illegal invasions of indigenous lands.

Mexico, the country with the highest number of killings in 2021, saw a significant drop from 54 murders in 2021 to 31 in 2022. At least 16 of those killed were Indigenous peoples, and four were lawyers. The overall situation in Mexico remained dire for land and environmental defenders, and non-lethal attacks – including intimidation, threats, forced displacement, harassment and criminalisation – continued to seriously hamper their work.
With 14 murders in 2022, Honduras has the world’s highest per-capita killings. The country’s first-ever female president, Xiomara Castro, has committed to protecting defenders. Yet early trends from 2023 point to ongoing rife violence, with reports of killings and non-lethal attacks across the country.
Read more: globalwitness
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NGO WORK
Africa Climate Summit 2023 Set to Surrender the Continent to Green Colonialism
Published
4 weeks agoon
August 30, 2023
—FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—
August 30, 2023; 12:00 AM PDT
Media Contact: amittal@oaklandinstitute.org, +1 510-469-5228
- Officials from African governments, international institutions, and the private sector will converge at the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, September 4 – 6, 2023, to shape the course of Africa’s climate action.
- With carbon offset schemes and tree plantations set to take center stage — despite their devastating impact along with the corruption and fraud that plague voluntary carbon markets — the Oakland Institute denounces the alarming direction taken by the event.
- An examination of the African Forestry Impact Platform (AFIP), bankrolled by European development finance institutions, Japanese oil interests, and an Australian investment firm, lays bare the green colonialism that President Ruto of Kenya is promoting on the continent.
Oakland, CA — With carbon offset schemes and tree plantations set to take center stage at the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) and Africa Climate Week (ACW) — despite their devastating social and environmental impacts and the prevailing corruption and fraud within the voluntary carbon markets — a new report from the Oakland Institute, Green Colonialism 2.0: Tree Plantations and Carbon Offsets in Africa, denounces the alarming direction taken by the Summit. Starting on September 4, 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, the two events aim to establish a common position for Africa on the climate crisis for the upcoming COP 28 conference in Dubai, slated for December 2023.
The outcome will have significant implications, given the ACS and ACW — both organized by the government of Kenya — are expected to shape the trajectory of climate action for the continent. The focus and intentions of the events, centered on “leveraging” Africa’s abundant “assets” to drive “green growth and climate finance solutions,” raise serious concerns. “This approach only paves the way for further resource extraction while sidelining the rights and interests of local and Indigenous communities,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.
Bankrolled by European development finance institutions, Japanese oil interests, and an Australian investment firm, the African Forestry Impact Platform (AFIP), examined in the report, exemplifies the green colonialism that President Ruto of Kenya is promoting on the continent — opening the door for more extraction of Africa’s resources. Despite AFIP’s claim of promoting “nature-based solutions,” a troubling pattern of exploitation and greenwashing underscores its investments, stakeholders, and financial backers. AFIP’s first acquisition is Green Resources, a Norwegian plantation forestry and carbon credit company notorious for its history of land grabbing, human rights violations, and environmental destruction across Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania.
Kenya’s promotion of voluntary carbon markets overlooks their fundamental flaws. Over the span of more than two decades, they have miserably failed to reduce carbon emissions, and instead wreaked social havoc by causing forced evictions, loss of livelihoods, and violence. Conflicts of interest, fraud, and speculation plague these markets while the expansion of carbon offset schemes and tree plantations results in expropriation of community lands to generate profits for investors. Far from benefiting Africa, the expansion of carbon markets sustains the status quo of resource exploitation, greenhouse gas pollution, and North/South power imbalances.
“The ACS and ACW represent a pivotal moment. African leaders have a historic opportunity to reject the false solutions that perpetuate the same exploitative model of colonialism that has fueled this environmental catastrophe. Instead, they must listen to the calls of over 400 African civil society organizations(link is external) and prioritize real solutions that account for historical responsibility, uphold the rights of Indigenous and local communities, and pave the way for an equitable and just transition. African people deserve climate justice, not more extractivism,” concluded Mittal.
Source: oaklandinstitute.org
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NGO WORK
African Development Bank’s Push for large scale Agriculture in Africa will spark more concerns over Food Sovereignty and Environmental Impacts.
Published
2 months agoon
August 1, 2023
Panel at the second international summit on food production in Dakar, 10 February 2023, from left to right: Allan Kasujja, BBC (moderator); Admassu Tadesse, Trade and Development Bank; Danladi Verheijen, Verod Capital; M. Malick Ndiaye, Banque Agricole; Dr. Olagunju Ashimolowo, ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development; M. Wagner Albuquerque de Almeida, International Finance Corporation. Source: African Development Bank Group.
“Agriculture must become Africa’s new oil,” said Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), at the inauguration of the “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience” (Dakar 2) summit, held in late January 2023 in Senegal. He spoke to 34 African heads of state and 70 ministers, representatives of the European Commission, the United States and several European countries, as well as multilateral institutions such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).[1]
While one of the main objectives of the Bank at the summit was to attract private financing for its projects, the intervention of the director of the Nigerian private equity fund Verod Capital explains the challenge: “I know that we talk about the future of Africa as being that of smallholder farmers, but (…), it is really difficult to experience governance at this level. Smallholder farmers are not the most efficient enterprises. Their bargaining power is limited, they have less money to invest in the infrastructure needed for more efficient agriculture and to get their products to market (…). So, we need bigger businesses where we can deploy capital. I think it will attract more private capital. »[2] Verod is one of the 70 private equity funds in which the AfDB is a shareholder.[3]
In financial terms, the Bank has a certain weight in the continent. It currently has USD 240 billion to invest and a portfolio of USD 56.6 billion already invested.[4] The main sectors covered by this portfolio are: transport (27%), electricity (20%), finance (18%) and agriculture (13%).[5]
Often these investments lead to conflicts with affected local communities. According to the Environmental Justice Atlas, the Bank is involved in at least 14 ongoing social and environmental conflicts.[6] It is in this context that social movements and women’s groups are preparing an African civil society campaign against the AfDB.[7]
So how does the Bank work? Which actors benefit the most? What agricultural model is it promoting? And what role does it play in relation to the struggles for food sovereignty in Africa?
Dakar 2 and the Era of Pacts
Among the “successes” of Dakar 2 claimed by the AfDB is the agreement to implement the “Food and Agricultural Supply Pacts” for 40 countries for the next 5 years.[8] The African Union has declared its strong support for this initiative.[9]
A first reading of the pacts surprises by the lack of care taken in their drafting. For example, the pacts of Burundi and Cape Verde are incomplete, and that of Togo does not make it possible to know whether it concerns this country, Niger or Madagascar. In others, like that of Cameroon, certain parts of the text are copied several times. Despite the supposed importance of these initiatives in attracting funding from the private sector and development banks and agencies, the total cost of the projects is unclear. Our conservative estimate of the total cost is around USD 65 billion.[10]
Far from promoting agro-biodiversity, which is Africa’s wealth, the pacts aim to promote mainly corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and palm oil. The aim is to increase their yields through the industrialisation of “value chains”, which will extend to livestock, dairy and fisheries. To do this, the pacts will promote mechanisation, certified seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, often via tax exemption on imports and other types of subsidies.
Throughout the summit it was repeated that 65% of the world’s uncultivated arable land is in Africa.[11] This is why the expansion of cultivated area is strongly on the agenda in the pacts and covers tens, hundreds of thousands or even millions of hectares, depending on the country. For example, under the Tanzania pact, only 23% of the land available for agriculture would be cultivated. The document proposes prioritising the production of wheat, avocado, market garden produce and sunflower. For this, it refers to the need to expand the agricultural area by more than two million hectares by 2025, in particular through a “transfer” of land currently owned by the village councils. The government is reportedly already identifying and acquiring land for industrial agriculture, installing irrigation infrastructure, an agreement with the “Building Better Tomorrow” initiative.[12]
The provision of open trade policies aimed at attracting investment, especially from the private sector, is also mentioned in the pacts, often in the form of very problematic public-private partnerships.[13] Among other policies aimed at attracting investment, the Kenya pact refers to the absence of restrictions on the repatriation of earnings and capital. It is also worrying that the pacts are based on failed agro-industrial programs. This is the case, for example, of that of Gabon, which specifies that the implementation will be based “on the institutional mechanism already existing and set up by the support project for the GRAINE program”. This program was entrusted to a public-private partnership between the Gabonese government and the multinational Olam in 2015. It has been denounced by the affected communities for having led to the grabbing of thousands of hectares by oil palm plantations.[14]
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MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK2 weeks ago
A multi-billion project funded by AfDB and NDF is furthering poverty and food insecurity in Paten community targeted for a development project.
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MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK5 days ago
Pushing back: The EACOP victim community rushes to court seeking reinstatement onto their land and compensation.
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NGO WORK2 weeks ago
Almost 2,000 land and environmental defenders were killed between 2012 and 2022 for simply standing up to protect our planet and us all from the accelerating climate crisis.